JazzFest Daze Between: Alligators & Allen

Dateline New Orleans (and environs) 04/28/10.

If you’re not familiar with my love affair with the music and talent of Allen Toussaint, it’s too late to explain it all now. (Read my previous dispatches from JazzFest.) I saw him last night at Snug Harbor, and will simply now cut and paste the email I just sent my piano teacher Chris Bizianes, who is also a fan.

By the time you get this on this Wednesday morning, it should be my appointment time and hopefully you will be channeling your inner Toussaint while simplifying “Tipitina & Me” into what I now would like to call “Tipitina, Allen & Chuck.”

His set last night was just lovely, inspiring, emotive.

To introduce his last song, he said, “People always ask me what my influences are, so here goes.” At which point he started with “Chopsticks” and moved seamlessly through, I don’t know, snippets of 20 melodies, 30, 50? From Mozart to “Mona Lisa,” and all stops in between. Bach, James Booker, boogie woogie. Stunning.

One of his many traits as a player/ musician is his ability to recognize the shared note combinations and themes and key signatures of diverse pieces of music so he can transition from one to the other in a logical way that makes sense both from a players’ standpoint and that of the listener.

He did that solo for, oh, ten minutes while his combo stood mute but ready. Until the first note of Longhair’s coda, at which point they jumped perfectly into “Tipitina.” For maybe a minute, then Toussaint took off again by himself. Ending with heartfelt full rendering with the full combo of Steve Goodman’s “City of New Orleans.” Even Allen’s brittle voice was in fine fettle and haunting, effective.

I have no more words about that. You know what it did to me and for me.

They also played “Traffic,” “St James Infirmary,” in E flat he said, “In My Solitude,” “The Bright Mississippi,” a Sidney Bechet tune, “Egyptian Something or Another,” and a few I am less familiar with.

Allen’s son-in-law, Herman LeBeau, played drums. We sat right next to Allison, LeBeau’s wife and Allen’s daughter/ business manager. She’s a very sweet, bright and engaging person. We didn’t get the opportunity to talk with Allen at all. Steve Masakowsy played guitar. He’s a new Orleans stalwart, and an academician, the chairman of the music department at either Tulane or UNO. I couldn’t understand the sax/ clarinet player’s name. but he was really good and something like Sidney Bechet’s grand nephew once removed. A fellow named Ramon Garron/ Garrow? played bass.

* * * * *

During the day, Joanie and I took one of those touristy air boat rides through the swamp. Plenty of which land/ waterscape, by the by, exists but a 20 minute ride from downtown New Orleans.

Our guide/ “driver” Ernie was a grizzled, old timer, LSU history grad, who grew up in the bayou, loves it and imparted his wisdom about the ecosystem, how it’s become endangered and what may save it. The latter of which has to do with your used Christmas trees, which are sent down here and used to effectively set up barriers to catch the river’s overflow of silt and sediment into which is planted new native plant life in hopes of holding off what seems an inevitable decimation. Big Oil could also stop building channels that allow salt water to creep northward and eat away the land and plant life.

Ernie believes the area where we were will be “Gulf of Mexico in 20 years.” I asked him about Plaquemines, the parish made famous in Randy Newman’s “Louisiana 1927.” Baically “under water with a ribbon of land down the middle,” advised Ernie.

Lots of gators in the swamp. And they love marshmallows. Who knew?