Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint dig around in each other's closets,

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Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint dig around in each other's closets, create great ensembles
- Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic
Thursday, June 22, 2006
It would take some surly rock star from England to remind us colonials of our own natural resources.
Elvis Costello doesn't normally pull audiences to their feet at the end of every song. But at the Paramount in his joint performance Tuesday with New Orleans music great Allen Toussaint, Costello was getting standing ovation after standing ovation for songs the audience had largely never heard before in an evening they won't soon forget.
With four brash and splashy horns, an extra guitarist and maestro Toussaint on the Steinway grand and vocals, Costello revamped his customary razor-sharp rock quartet into a full-blown New Orleans rhythm and blues orchestra. Not only did this luminous ensemble play the material from the recently released joint album by Costello and Toussaint, "The River in Reverse," but Costello had Toussaint write new arrangements for nine of Costello's older songs -- from well-known pieces such as "Clubland" to songs that, Costello allowed, he and the band had forgotten about, such as "Tears Before Bedtime" from his 1982 album, "Imperial Bedroom."
Although Toussaint has been the dominant figure on the New Orleans R&B scene since Fats Domino stopped having hits, his work is not popularly known outside that city. His arrangements not only graced the many '60s R&B hits he wrote and produced in New Orleans studios, but they brought figures such as Paul McCartney or the Band to New Orleans to work with him.
With their collaboration born from a series of benefits last fall in New York City, where lifelong New Orleans resident Toussaint is currently living while he rebuilds his destroyed home in his swamped neighborhood, Toussaint and Costello bring the specter of Hurricane Katrina and the disaster of New Orleans onstage with them. The four-man horn section, Toussaint's guitarist Anthony "AB" Brown, and Toussaint himself are victims of the storm. Costello brought the subject powerfully alive with his song "River in Reverse," an angry ballad he wrote specifically to perform at one of last year's benefits with Toussaint.
At the Paramount Tuesday, Costello clearly relished the experience, staying onstage almost three hours, playing a generous 34 songs and sometimes acting like little more than just another fan with the best seat in the house as he glowed watching Toussaint weave his spell.
And Toussaint is truly an underappreciated, virtually undiscovered gem. If anything good has come out of Katrina at all, it is the attention his career has received as a result of benefit albums he has appeared on and television appearances, including last year's Grammys (too bad the knuckleheaded announcer couldn't get his name right). That was the first such appearance in his near-50 years in the record business, since he got his start putting piano parts on Fats Domino records while the '50s rock 'n' roll star was on tour. He has long been a national treasure, just unknown outside New Orleans and record business circles.
Wearing a conservative tailored suit, socks and sandals, Toussaint presided over the keyboard with a dignity and authority uncommon outside the classical world. When he returned for an encore, Toussaint held the crowd in the palm of his hand as he waltzed them through a piece -- "Me and Tipitina," a solo piano piece in the style of Professor Longhair, another little-known New Orleans pianist, long dead -- that can best be described as chamber R&B. He spun delicate and airy glissandos that hung in the air like lace.
Costello, standing by the side of the piano as entranced as anybody, explained that he asked Toussaint to transpose that piece and Costello wrote lyrics to the music to create a song called "Ascension Day," which they performed like they were in a cathedral. It was a solemn, sublime moment of artistic transcendence; the meeting of many worlds, blending into one heartbeat, a profound convergence that held the standing crowd hushed.
Costello has been on an amazing creative roll in the past few years. He is still performing his first ballet score with symphony orchestras across the country and did an album with a 52-piece jazz orchestra with Charlie Mingus and Billy Strayhorn covers mingled with new versions of his old tunes. He has collaborated in the recent past with R&B songwriter Jerry Ragovoy, who co-wrote "Piece of My Heart," and, even more memorably, did an entire album with Burt Bacharach, "Painted From Memory," in 1998.
But with Toussaint, Costello has really unearthed something special. Songs off their album such as the obscure "Who's Gonna Help a Brother," "Tears, Tears and More Tears," or "Nearer to You" were pure Toussaint classics, lingering in his massive back catalog. How "Freedom for the Stallion" has been lying around unused for all these years is a complete mystery; it's not as if the Pointer Sisters, Glen Campbell, Labelle and others haven't had big records with Toussaint. In the record business he hasn't been an unknown since Al Hirt made a No. 1 record out of his instrumental "Java" in 1964.
But his stunning remakes of Costello's songs were the treasures of the evening. He made "Poisoned Rose" sound like a forgotten Fats Domino blues. He gave "Clubland" this big, booming Cubano riff, which Costello keyboardist Steve Nieve matched on the piano, while Toussaint took over the organ for the sassy, brassy version. His supple, sweet, high harmonies softened the sometimes harsh sound of Costello's gritty delivery. It was the big, billowing, seductive sound of Toussaint -- Elvis at the fore -- that had them jumping out of their seats.
The fans that came Tuesday may have been making a leap of faith since the new album has been out only a couple of weeks and has hardly been pounding from the radio anywhere or selling off the front counter at Tower Records. But Costello has tapped something very potent and vital in this historic collaboration.
With the future of the city itself something of a question mark, Costello and Toussaint are keeping New Orleans culture on the front lines. And it never needed to be there more.
E-mail Joel Selvin at jselvin@sf chronicle.com.

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Topic - Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint dig around in each other's closets, - LWR 08:08:28 06/22/06 (0)

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