River in Reverse discussion

[mood swung]

Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time, and it only annoys the pig.

[migdd]

very nice avatar, Extreme Honey.

[verbal gymnastics]

At least you got something right! Unless migdd was joking.

El Vez - does Alan Twosaint really own a penguin?

Muggy - may the farce be with you.

[johnfoyle]

It's begun!

http://www.suntimes.com/output/music/sh ... ola20.html

( extract)

"By that time the water was seven feet high," he said. "There was no hope. I was able to get on a charter school bus that night and get a ride to the Baton Rouge airport. I was safe at all times. The next morning I boarded a plane to New York."

The move has not slowed him down. In the weeks since Toussaint relocated to New York, he's become acquainted with Elvis Costello. Last week, they began recording an album together. Costello is following the lead of Paul McCartney, the late Robert Palmer and Paul Simon, all of whom have collaborated with Toussaint.

[King Hoarse]

If I'm not mistaken, AT did the incredible horn arrangements for the Band's Rock of Ages shows. I sure wish he'll cook up some more of that for this album. Then, an Imposters With Horns tour would be nice...

[BlueChair]

If I'm not mistaken, AT did the incredible horn arrangements for the Band's Rock of Ages shows. I sure wish he'll cook up some more of that for this album. Then, an Imposters With Horns tour would be nice...

You are not mistaken. Incredible arranger, that Allen.

[Dr. Luther]

If I'm not mistaken, AT did the incredible horn arrangements for the Band's Rock of Ages shows. I sure wish he'll cook up some more of that for this album. Then, an Imposters With Horns tour would be nice...

You are not mistaken. Incredible arranger, that Allen.

Indeed. The horn arrangements on Rock of Ages are just tremendous.

I've been listening to a lot of The Band lately -- transcendent, honest music...

[johnfoyle]

http://cahlsjukejoint.blogspot.com/2005 ... t-and.html

posted by Carl Abernathy

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint and Susan Tedeschi

Musician/producer Joe Henry announced on the World Cafe that Elvis Costello’s new album will be a collaboration with Allen Toussaint. I think that’s exiting news, especially if Henry is producing the album.

Henry made the announcement during a conversation about Susan Tedeschi with the show’s host, David Dye. Check out the World Cafe site at NPR for the interview and for a concert by Tedeschi. The show includes nice versions of Ray Charles’ “Sweet and Sour Tears," Bob Dylan’s “Protect My Child” and Fontella Bass' "Soul of a Man." And the band, particularly the organist, is great.

see also -

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=5035493

[bobster]

I've been mostly hanging at the annex lately and so have just seen this.

As a collaboration, this makes so much sense, I could plotz. Also, the possiblity of three words that always get me excited: live horn section.

[verbal gymnastics]

Also, the possiblity of three words that always get me excited: live horn section.

bobster - that sentence could get you in a lot of trouble in England A horn is a euphemism for the excited male organ. Unless that's what you meant of course

[bobster]

Verbal, man, you may have just saved my life.

I can imagine myself ending up a bloody pulp on my first trip to the UK, after going on drunkenly about my love of, er, these types of musical instruments in front of a bunch of soccer...I mean football...hooligans.

Of course, that would also be after I made that unfortunate reference in which I learned that "fanny" in England refers to a somewhat different body part than it does in the U.S. of A.

[verbal gymnastics]

Well whatever happens, don't get mixed up with the US/UK versions of the word "fag". Over here it mainly means a cigarette. America has a different meaning for it I understand...

[ReadyToHearTheWorst]

Well whatever happens, don't get mixed up with the US/UK versions of the word "fag". Over here it mainly means a cigarette. America has a different meaning for it I understand...

A friend of mine worked in San Francisco for a while. He realised he'd inadvertently said something shocking when he first announced that he was 'going out to smoke a fag'.

[Boy With A Problem]

and faggots are something else altogether.

[The Gentleman]

Well whatever happens, don't get mixed up with the US/UK versions of the word "fag". Over here it mainly means a cigarette. America has a different meaning for it I understand...

Not to mention suspenders and young girl's backsides...

[Otis Westinghouse]

and faggots are something else altogether.

As per the David Lodge (old university teacher of mine!) gag about Morris Zapp arriving in Rummidge in Changing Places and being perplexed by the advert with the caption 'Fancy a faggot tonight?', inexplicably accompanied by some meatballs.

I don't believe I've had a faggot in my mouth since the 70s. Do they still exist?

[johnfoyle]

................getting back to the point of this thread...

http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/120 ... o001.shtml



Famous New Orleans trio to take stage for benefit


By JOHN WIRT
jwirt@theadvocate.com
Music critic

( extract)

Allen Toussaint, Dr. John and Deacon John Moore, a trio of great New Orleans musicians, star in the 20th anniversary benefit concert for New Orleans Artists Against Hunger and Homelessness.

"We talked about what we were gonna do toward that," Toussaint said last week from California, where he's collaborating with Elvis Costello on an album of Toussaint songs. "But we, especially Aaron, said, 'What about the people in our own community? There's people hungry right here.' That was a grand idea and we got right to that. Aaron and myself started NOAAHH and we're very sincere about it. The good thing about it is, we actually see where the money goes. It goes to the people it needs to get to."

[bambooneedle]

where he's collaborating with Elvis Costello on an album of Toussaint songs.

That sounds like it will not be under EC's name at all but under Allen Toussaint's...

[sweetest punch]

where he's collaborating with Elvis Costello on an album of Toussaint songs.

That sounds like it will not be under EC's name at all but under Allen Toussaint's...

Since EC is the singer, i will most surely be under his name and problably under both their name, as was the case Painted From Memory that was credited to: "Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach")

I still see no reason to doubt this Billboard extract:
Henry likens the project to Costello's 1998 pairing with Burt Bacharach, "Painted from Memory" (Mercury/Universal). "That project was a very legitimate collaboration between the two artists, and this will feature Elvis as a singer doing both classic songs that Allen has written as well as new material [the two are writing]," Henry tells Billboard.com.

[bambooneedle]

Elvis is nobody's bitch!

[johnfoyle]

Musician/producer Joe Henry announced on the World Cafe that Elvis Costello’s new album will be a collaboration with Allen Toussaint. I think that’s exiting news, especially if Henry is producing the album.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=5035493

I've only now listened to this show and Joe Henry is quite detailed in talking about the Costello/Toussaint recordings. They will feature Elvis singing old Toussaint songs , a new song and so on. He also says that The Imposters will be involved.

The California recording studio being used isn't identified. However , Joe Henry produced the recent - excellent - ' I Believe To My Soul' album in Capitol Studios . Diana Krall has recorded there so doubtlessly Elvis is familiar with it.

http://www.capitolstudios.com/cshome.html

[laughingcrow]

What's the best album to get that's a good overview of Alan Toussaint's music?

[sabreman]

Boy that is hard one. AT did so much as a producer and songwriter. He pretty much wrote the book on 1960s & 1970s NO popular music but he didn't produce that much in his own voice (he is all over the place on backing vocals of the people he wrote and produced). AT is also one of the all time great NO style piano players. Super respected in NO jazz circles.

My favorite AT album is Southern Night's. I am not sure if it is still available (sin if it isn't) but that is one great album IMHO. My copy is on vinyl. All the songs blend together to set the mood of the album with the song Southen Night's (nothing like the GC cover) as the focal point.

I also have this AT CD which includes many of the songs from Southern Night's.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00000 ... nce&n=5174

I am also a big A. Neville fan. If you can find a CD of his early singles he does some great AT covers. Not the typical AT rocking LD stuff. AT used Naomi Neville as his pen name. Irma Thomas is another one to check.

[sweetest punch]

This is what Joe Henry told in the NPR interview:

EC is going to sing a number of classic songs written by Allen Toussaint. EC and Allen will write some songs together and they will also record a new song that EC wrote with Allen in mind and that Allen will arrange. (Could this be River In Reverse?)

The Imposters will be involved and Allen and the Band. Allen will be arranging for horns. The songs will be recorded live.

Joe said:" it will be mayhem, I don't know what is going to happen, but it will be very musical and interesting".

[johnfoyle]

More details - see highlighted paragraphs -

http://www.oregonlive.com/O/entertainme ... thispage=1

Living in the precious, and soulful, musical moment

Sunday, December 11, 2005
MARTY HUGHLEY
The Oregonian

"If a beautiful woman were to stroll past your front stoop on a summer evening, startling even the young toughs out for a smoke, you wouldn't need me to make sense of it for you," Joe Henry writes in the producer's note to the album "I Believe to My Soul."

"But if the young lady also happened to be the great-granddaughter of both Fats Waller and Amelia Earhart, you might like me to point that out to you; then that long, hard second look might offer nuances that you had initially failed to consider, like that swing in her step or the faraway look in her eyes."

Perhaps "young lady" isn't the phrase most likely to be in your mind while listening to "I Believe to My Soul" -- an album featuring such mature women as Mavis Staples, Irma Thomas and Ann Peebles, plus a couple of men, Allen Toussaint and Billy Preston, of the same generation. (Peebles, at 58, is the youngest of them.)

But the allure is there nonetheless. And the nuances as well. Henry's references to Waller and Earhart aren't idle; there's a sense of history evident here, and that history includes joyfulness and innovation in music, as well as personal courage and achievement.

And while this is rhythm-and-blues cut from a classic cloth, there is indeed a swing in the step of these performances, a subtle yet unmistakable sign of artists living in the precious moment, not the preserved past.

"I Believe to My Soul," recorded in June with a band handpicked by Henry, is a remarkable album. So is Solomon Burke's 2002 release "Don't Give Up on Me" and Bettye LaVette's recent "I've Got My Own Hell to Raise." And though the first recording sessions were conducted just a couple of weeks ago, you'd be wise to bet that a forthcoming collaboration between Toussaint, perhaps the greatest living ambassador of New Orleans music, and the redoubtable singer Elvis Costello, will join this list.

The list in this case being 21st-century soul classics produced by Joe Henry.

One of the great, under-recognized singer-songwriters of our time, Henry is typically modest about this new, almost coincidentally acquired sub-specialty. "If anybody ever introduced me as a record producer," he said in a recent phone interview, "I would drop dead.

"I identify myself as an artist who adopts that position on the other side of the control-room glass in order to get a certain thing accomplished. I don't see a distinction between if I'm singing the songs or someone else is doing it."

Starved for soul

Henry's been gaining a reputation as a producer in recent years; he handled the job for the latest releases by both Aimee Mann and Ani DiFranco. But it's been his work with these under-appreciated veterans that's been especially distinguished.

While doing interviews for the Burke album, he says in the "I Believe. . ." liner notes, "it became apparent that many others, not just myself, were starved for a contemporary version of authentic soul. . . . And I realized I had a choice: I could lie around the house in my bathrobe and hope that, say, Ann Peebles would one day be directed by the universe to seek me out as a conspirator, or I could imagine a scenario that would give me an excuse to call her.

"My bathrobe in tatters, and my house too noisy to lie in, I chose the latter."

By this time, his work with Burke was beginning to work as a calling card. "I did notice that when I started to pursue projects I was interested in, it made a difference," he said in the interview. "When I approached Ann Peebles, she didn't know who I was, but she knew Solomon and knew he'd just had a record that won a Grammy."

Henry doesn't bring a big name or sales cachet to the table, but he brings the right ideas and attitude. "My fundamental starting point is that I work from a place of respect with these artists, not from a point of nostalgia," he said. Much of Henry's magic touch involves keeping everyone from falling into nostalgia, that seductive trap. At the same time, he also avoids the cheap bid for contemporary relevance, the host-of-young-guest-stars approach that Carlos Santana's career now rests upon.

"It strikes me as wrong to say, 'I've got Irma Thomas, now I have to get her together with Wyclef Jean,' Henry said. "That's asking a mature artist to work in a style she's not necessarily interested in or suited to. I'm trying to walk a line that I recognize is a very fine line: doing something that's authentic to a classic style yet that is relevant to where these artists are now. If you can do that in a musical way, then I think you'll really have something."

Part of keeping nostalgia at bay is forgetting about pat notions of what constitutes soul music.

"Any music that is timeless and enduring is soulful -- whether you're talking about Caruso or Piaf or George Jones," Henry said. "I never think in terms of 'capital S' Soul Music.' That'd be the kiss of death. If I started doing that, death couldn't come quick enough. . . . I'd rather say, 'Let's just get these people who know how to deliver a beautiful song, and see what we can do.' "

A quick worker

What Henry's done is craft ingeniously sympathetic contexts for singers whose distinctive voices and rich, nuanced delivery have an incredible amount to offer listeners.

He always records quickly, seldom taking more than a week to track an entire album, resulting in a winning immediacy. For Burke's album, he persuaded such legends as Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Tom Waits to write songs specifically for the project, thus giving the album star power without stealing time from Burke's own natural wonder of a voice.

For "I Believe to My Soul," he had each singer bring in a couple of songs they'd never recorded before, either their own compositions or such inspired choices as Curtis Mayfield's "Keep on Pushing" and the traditional "You Must Have That True Religion" (both covered by Staples). LaVette, a stalwart of the Detroit music scene, turns her laserlike emotional intensity on a repertoire borrowed from such young women writers as Fiona Apple, Roseanne Cash and Sinead O'Connor.

As great as "I've Got My Own Hell to Raise" is, though, it didn't come close to preparing me for the power of LaVette's October performance at the Doug Fir Lounge. When I tell Henry this, he sums up the matter perfectly, a hint of his North Carolina upbringing in his voice: "She's got a thing."

In light of this track record, the Toussaint/Costello project is especially intriguing. Henry had talked Toussaint into making a solo album, but after Hurricane Katrina's aftermath left Toussaint's piano underwater in his New Orleans home, things changed.

"He went to New York and has been camped there for a while, and as one of the most prominent representatives of New Orleans music, he's been playing quite a lot," Henry said. "Elvis lives there part of the year also, and they renewed their relationship, having worked together before on Elvis' 'Spike' album. I think the wheels started turning."

Several days of recording were set to take place just after Thanksgiving, with another set of sessions due later at Piety, the first recording studio back in operation in New Orleans.

"It was really important to Allen to return, to show that music is not a dead idea in New Orleans, even now," Henry said. "And also, that we can't just talk about wanting New Orleans to come back, that if we really are serious about that, we have to go down and put some money into the music business there."

As for the prospects for Henry's projects within the music business at large, he maintains a philosophical detachment, even as he knows a "capital S" Soul tag might well be glued onto the work.

"The industry is not willing to put anything out to the mainstream without creating a package; they're stymied by something that is nuanced," he said.

But to consider whether he's saving soul music, or helping to make a new kind of soul music, or anything like that -- well, you might as well trip that young lovely as she walks past your stoop.

"It's just not my concern," Henry said. "I'm not saying that to be dodgy. It's just beside the point."

Marty Hughley: 503-221-8383; martyhughley@news.oregonian.com

©2005 The Oregonian

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
see also -

http://www.pietystreet.com/contact.htm

and

http://kenfoster.blogspot.com/2005/11/e ... treet.html


Monday, November 14, 2005

Elvis comes to Piety Street

Elvis Costello is coming to record in the studio at the end of my block starting next week. Joe Henry is producing, and it will be a collaboration with Allan Toussaint. If only the Po Boy shop would open up across the street I'd have the perfect venue for stalking them.

posted by kfoz