River in Reverse discussion

[noiseradio]

"Jeebus" was the name the native people gave to "Jesus" when Homer went as a missionary.

Um. No. "I don't believe in Jeebus," is what Homer said to Rev. Lovejoy when he informed Homer that he was sending him to be a missionary. "Save me Jeebus" is what Homer cries as the plane takes off. At no point in the episode do the natives refer to Homer as Jeebus. There's no need to try to inform me about anything Simpsons-related. My cousin wrote some of the most quotable episodes.

[Goody2Shoes]

I am consumed by a sudden urge to poke my eyes out with red-hot needles.

Sorry, random thought. Back to Jeebus.

[Turquoise Pajamas Pt Deux]

WWJD?

[johnfoyle]

From Elvis' PR people -

http://www.shorefire.com/artists/ecoste ... 02_06.html


In other news, Verve Forecast will release 'The River in Reverse' in June, Costello's partnership with pianist, songwriter and producer Allen Toussaint. This collaboration, recorded in Los Angeles and New Orleans at the end of 2005, "reverberates with the power of emotional eyewitness, born of the devastation just outside the studio's front door." (David Fricke, Rolling Stone)

[Otis Westinghouse]

Sounds great. June - it will soon be here!

[alexv]

You said it, man. Nobody fucks with the Jeebus.

[alexv]

Jeebus, I'm compelled to say more.

QUINTANA: "Let me tell you something, bendeco. You pull any your crazy shit with us, you flash a piece out on the lanes, I'll take it away from you and stick it up your ass and pull the fucking trigger til it goes "click".

DUDE: "Jeebus"

QUINTANA: "You said it, man. Nobody fucks with the Jeebus".

Jeebus walks away. Walter nods sadly.

WALTER: "Eight-year-olds, Dude".

Note: anyone know the etymology of "bendeco". I am aware of "pendejo", but not "bendeco".

[migdd]

All of this talk of Jeebus is scaring the be-Jeebus out of me!!!

Hey, how about that upcoming Costello/Toussaint CD??!! I think it might be pretty good. Any other thoughts?

[johnfoyle]

In anticipation of the Rivers In Reverse album I've put together this compilation of the possible Toussaint 'old songs' that may be part of it ; does anyone want to suggest versions that may be better?


1. Fortune Teller - Benny Spellman
2. All These Things - Art Neville
3. The Greatest Love - Lee Dorsey
4. Wonder Woman - Lee Dorsey
5. Tears, Tears And More Tears- Lee Dorsey
6. Freedom For The Stallion - Lee Dorsey
7. Yes We Can Can - Lee Dorsey
8. Who's Gonna Help Brother Get Further? - Lee Dorsey
9. On Your Way Down - Lee Dorsey
10. What Do You Want The Girl To Do? - Allen Toussaint
11. Nearer To You - Bettye LaVette

I had to get a few discs to put this together but , hunting through stacks of old 'Soul' compilations , I was delighted to find I already had most of the tracks . Bettye LaVette's take on Nearer To You is excellent but doesn't feature Toussaint ; he wrote it for Betty Harris. However Bettye's version has just been re-issued so was easier to get.


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000CQ ... nce&n=5174

Take Another Little Piece of My Heart
Bettye LaVette

# Audio CD (January 10, 2006)
# Label: Varese Records
# ASIN: B000CQQHFE

[johnfoyle]

From listsev -

Allen Toussaint will be interviewed tomorrow Feb 28 on World Cafe. This
can be heard at 2:00 PM EST at:

http://www.xpn.org

This is a syndicated show which can be heard on various NPR stations.

Check here for a station in you area:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=4724307

Jeff

[sabreman]

I would track down some early Aaron Neville compilations (60s - 70s). Hercules should be on some of them plus other AT / NN songs. Wrong Number is a good one. Some really moody stuff.

[hollyh]

Well, I went to the Tibet House benefit tonight, to hear Allen Toussaint perform -- on the sneaking hope that Elvis might show up as a surprise last-minute guest -- didn't happen, but by the time the show was over I didn't care, there'd been plenty of other fine music to satisfy me. But Allen did mention the upcoming album with Elvis, and there was a thin smattering of applause. (The Tibet House crowd, remember, are reliably NYC uber-snoots, way too busy saving the planet to care about Elvis Costello).

[Copenhagen Fan]

anybody like I'll Take A Melody?

[johnfoyle]

http://www.charliegillett.com/phpBB2/vi ... php?t=1927

Charlie Gillett posts to his forum -

Before I became a radio DJ, I scratched a living as a free-lance journalist, writing for anyone who would have me. Among those who offered opportunities were Record Mirror, Cream and NME in the UK, and Rolling Stone, Creem (spelled differently from the UK magazine, based in Detroit) and Fusion (in Boston) in the USA.

http://www.RocksBackPages.com, which does such a great job of archiving reviews and features from the past forty years, has unearthed this piece about Allen Toussaint for Fusion, which I had completely forgotten about. For my recent programme about Allen for Radio 2, I went back and did the research from scratch, whereas if I'd remembered it, I could have simply plundered this piece.

There are things I'd prefer to change, including the strange assertion that the Meters didn't sound as if they came from New Orleans, but let it be, this is what I thought in 1971.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Allen Toussaint

by Charlie Gillett

Fusion, 23 July 1971

IF BRITAIN HAD a good system of radio stations, the history of the world might have been at least a little different.

As you must know, just one station supplies the entire country with music. So the only people who plan to be radio disc jockeys are those with a lot of presumptuous ambition (to be one of the nation's handful of disc jockeys) plus as much insensitivity (to be willing to play anything, just anything). Other people who liked the music and wanted others to hear it, but who saw the impossibility of becoming a self-determining radio DJ, instead became living juke boxes: groups, playing r&b and rock 'n' roll.

This isn't the place for the rest of that story; but there was a peculiar side-effect. American radio continued its own process of developing popular music, demanding constant change of sounds and styles while at the same time requiring the content to remain the same. And American record producers dutifully did what they could to meet the needs. But the British groups who originally sang the r&b songs as if they'd written them and had lived the life that led to their creation, began finding that there was a contradiction between their own lives and the r&b songs; they believed themselves to be sophisticated, and felt the songs to be simple. r&b, which had already spawned rock 'n' roll, now produced rock. But where the first had been mainly derivative, the second son was less respectful. Rock 'n' roll fans could dig r&b too; rock fans tend to despise soul.

So, the curious side-effect: Allen Toussaint, whose songs and arrangements were the inspiration for a number of rock groups in the early and mid-Sixties, is now ignored by the rock press and unknown to the rock audience. Ironically, two sounds which he did most to popularize, funky drumming and gospel piano chords, now show up on every other record. Worse yet, Allen himself has recently produced an album, by a Southern singer/group called Mylon, which applies all the clichés of modern funky-gospel-rock and sounds like everything you heard yesterday and nothing you had to hear today.

Much more interesting, particularly to disillusioned fans of Sly and the Family Stone, are records Allen has produced by the Meters, most of which have no claim to be anything but dance records: tight, multi-dimensional rhythms, recently augmented by wah-wah guitar, and even, on 'Message from The Meters', by a Sly Stone-type get-together lyric. There isn't any particular "New Orleans" sound about the Meters, nor much, apart from the discipline of their sound, to identify them with "soul." Toussaint does seem genuinely interested in "all kinds" of music (as he has claimed in an interview — but that doesn't always mean a lot), and it's strange that at a time when all kinds of relatively untalented amateurs are commissioned to produce, he hasn't been given more work.

Allen Toussaint's recording debut hardly suggested what he might do later. He was working as a session musician in New Orleans in the late ‘50s when someone from RCA heard him and arranged for him to do an album, Wild Sounds of New Orleans. I haven't heard the record, but one of the tracks was 'Java', which Al Hirt later dealt with. Nothing much happened with the album, but when a local record distributor, Joe Banashak, formed his own label, Minit, in 1959, Allen was hired to audition singers and write material for those who didn't have songs of their own. "And that was most of them," he told R&B World reporter Stuart Ginsburg (whose feature on Toussaint appeared in the issue of Dec. 26, 1968).

Several of the most memorable [pop] records of 1960-62 (and there weren't a great number) came from Minit, in-cluding Ernie K-Doe's 'Mother-in-Law', Jessie Hill's 'Ooh Poo Pah Doo', The Showmen's 'It Will Stand', Aaron Neville's 'Over You', and Irma Thomas's 'It's Raining' and 'Ruler of My Heart'. Toussaint wrote a lot of the songs himself, often using his mother's maiden name, Naomi Neville; many of them were written in twenty minutes in the studio, and some of them sound like it.

But if there are some records that don't need mentioning or listening to again, there are others which still hold their magic. If you sit down to write a song in twenty minutes, you don't expect to go far from what you already know, and from what the audience has already heard. Yet you know that if the record sounds too similar to something else, it won't get played. It's that tiny move, the little thing that makes this one different from the others, that constitutes the "progress" (but not necessarily the "progressiveness") of music. And it was these little things that Allen Toussaint looked for and found.

Quite often, the most distinctive feature of the records he produced for other people was his own piano playing, which could sound like any of the several famous New Orleans styles (Fats Domino, Huey 'Piano' Smith, Professor Longhair) but most often resembled the gospel chords Ray Charles used in 'What'd I Say'. The earliest record I've heard with Toussaint on piano is Lee Dorsey's 'Lottie Mo' (probably recorded in 1955) which resembles Ray Charles' 'I Got a Woman' and has a fine extended piano break.

Most of the records by Jessie Hill (which Hill wrote himself) are close to the Ray Charles gospel style records, and have some great pounding piano, and so did Chris Kenner's dance hits on Instant (also owned by Banashak), 'Land of 1000 Dances' (forget Pickett's gross cover, this was great), 'I Like It Like That,' and 'Something You Got' (although this last had a rather mundane a horn arrangement).

The worst feature of a few Toussaint productions in this period were the vocal chorus accompaniments, which were a blight on many other potentially good records. What is it about producers that makes them introduce irrelevant girl voices into arrangements that could easily do without them? It's happening again — every record you pick up seems to have Merry Clayton, Vanetta Fields and friends — why?
Irma Thomas's otherwise moving 'It's Raining' suffers from this kind of intrusion, but 'Ruler of My Heart' is free, and is beautiful. Otis Redding later changed it around a little, and sang it as 'Pain in My Heart,' but although he kept his mannerisms to a minimum and sounded sad, he couldn't match the tenderness of Irma Thomas. This was one of Toussaint's inspired compositions, exactly the right song for the singer's tone. Later, under a different producer for Imperial, Irma did a comparable performance on another Toussaint song, 'Wait, Wait, Wait',
but more often she sang tough, I-can-make-it-by-myself songs with other producers. Ever hear her 'Time Is on My Side'? It has everything that Jagger's copy has, plus a talking bit in the middle that not even he dared to try, brave (I mean presumptuous) as he was.

Ernie K-Doe's 'Mother-in-Law' was Minit's biggest hit, and although it has always sounded too obviously commercial to me, it does demonstrate Toussaint's flair for distinctive sounds: the record's hook was the chorus, where K-Doe sang the title in a high tenor, Benny Spellman echoed it in a bass voice, and Willie Harper sang it again in a falsetto. Spellman had his own hits with a couple of Toussaint songs, 'Lipstick Traces' and 'Fortune Teller,' the second of which was covered by The Stones.

Toussaint was less obviously apparent in the records of the Showmen, whose lead singer Norman Johnson wrote their material and sang in a more distinctive way than most of Minit's singers, high, intense, with a jerky catch in his voice, pretty much the same as he sounds now, singing lead with the Chairmen of the Board.

Sometime towards the end of 1962, Allen Toussaint was drafted, having arranged and played piano on hits by Clarence "Frogman" Henry ('But I Do'— Argo) and Lee Dorsey ('Ya Ya'— Fury). By the time he came out of the army, in late '64, the world was a different place. Those Minit hits, and Lee Dorsey's novelty songs, had been black pop music; now, black producers in the south were supposed to produce soul (it was assumed they had it).

While he was in the army, Allen had led a small band called the Stokes, who cut an LP in Houston; Toussaint wrote all the tracks, including 'Whipped Cream', which he thought Hirt might like as a follow-up to 'Java'. Hirt wasn't interested, but Herb Alpert took it.

In 1965, Toussaint got together again with Lee Dorsey. They were both managed by Marshall Sehorn, who formed a production company with Toussaint, and licensed their product to the Bell-distributed Amy label. The team put out a string of charming, relaxed dance songs, just acceptable as soul yet without any of the strained singing that characterized black singing at the time. The first hit, 'Ride Your Pony', was one of those songs that Richard Meltzer would tell you was about sex although you'd innocently thought it was about riding ponies. "Stay in the saddle and ride," Dorsey tells you, and then the drummer hits the rim three times, "Shoot, Shoot, Shoot." When Betty Harris takes the song and says the same things, you begin to think that Meltzer's kind of analysis might have something.

Dorsey's third Amy single, 'Get Out of My Life, Woman' was another of Toussaint's inspirations, a strong lyric with a marvellous (truly) funky rhythm, and Dorsey's held-back singing created an interesting atmosphere, his hesitancy contrasting with the apparent determination of the words.

The biggest hit came in '66, 'Working in the Coal Mine'. You believe Toussaint's account of how he writes songs: "They just hit me. They're not based on anything I've experienced. Like, I've never seen a real coal mine, but I could imagine what it was like when I wrote 'Working in the Coal Mine'." If you try to identify the song with your idea of reality, it sounds distasteful, corny, glib; I remember fighting it every time it came on the radio But treat it as a sound, a mood, and it has its own conviction and authenticity. When I heard Bob Dylan's Self-Portrait, I could only see it as his instruction to us all to go out and listen again to what we thought we had heard, to reassess both the good and the bad. Suddenly I'm thinking about Lee Dorsey, who never really reached me, except on 'Get Out of My Life'; and he had/has a style. I've seen ads proclaiming a new Lee Dorsey single, produced by Allen Toussaint. At the time I thought, oh, another; suddenly, I'm looking forward to it.


© Charlie Gillett, 1971

[johnfoyle]

With You In Mind
(Allen Toussaint)

With you in mind, things just ain't bad as they seem
With you in mind, I can fill my wildest dreams
With you in mind, I can do anything, I know I can
With you in mind
With you in mind
With you in mind, I went out looking for the best
With you in mind, cause you deserve nothing less
With you in mind, I've done so many things that love can bring
With you in mind
With you in mind
Like a flower drinking from the falling rain
Or the same rain that could wash it away
Gives it strength, gives it water
And before you know, another day
Like a flower drinking from the falling rain
Or the same rain that could wash it away
Gives it strength, gives it water
And before you know, another day
Like a flower drinking from the falling rain
The same rain that could wash it away
Gives it strength, gives it water
And before you know, another day

[Turquoise Pajamas Pt Deux]

If anyone like me is ignorant in all things Toussaint, here's a link to a live show of his from '87.
http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=84972

[johnfoyle]

My self-compiled 'River In Reverse - The Originals' compilation continues to grow ; right now I'm listening to this line-up -


1.On Your Way Down
2.Yes We Can Can
Elvis Costello , Allen Toussaint and band
3.The Monkey
Elvis Costello , The Dirty Dozen Brass Band , Dave Bartholemew
("From the Big Apple to the Big Easy," Madison Square Garden, N.Y. Sept.20‘05)
4. River In Reverse - Elvis Costello
(October 15 '05, Clowes Memorial Hall, Butler
University, Indianapolis)
5. River In Reverse - Elvis Costello
(Sydney 22 January 2006)
6. Freedom For The Stallion - Elvis Costello, Allen
Toussaint
(September 17 ‘05, Rose Theater, New York)
7. With You In Mind – Allen Toussaint ( 1978)
8. Fortune Teller - Benny Spellman (1962)
9. All These Things - Art Neville (1962)
10. The Greatest Love - Lee Dorsey (1965)
11. Wonder Woman - Lee Dorsey (1965)
12. Tears, Tears and More Tears - Lee Dorsey (1970)
13. Freedom For The Stallion - Lee Dorsey (1971)
14. Who's Gonna Help Brother Get Further? - Lee Dorsey
(1970)
15. On Your Way Down - Lee Dorsey (1973)
16. What Do You Want The Girl To Do? - Allen Toussaint
(1975)
17. Nearer To You - Bettye LaVette (1969)
18. Yes We Can Can - Lee Dorsey (1970)
19. What Do You Want The Girl To Do? - Lowell George
(1979)
20. On Your Way Down - Allen Toussaint (1972)
21. Fortune Teller - The Tony Jackson Group (1965)
22. Freedom For The Stallion – Three Dog Night (1972)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The comparisons between the versions of the title track are interesting. The January version is about a minute shorter than the October effort and is all the better for it. Clearly working in the studio with Allen Toussaint has focused Elvis' mind on increasing the pace of the song etc.

Of the older songs Tears, Tears and More Tears is the stongest. The Lee Dorsey recording is eloquently commented on here -

http://imbidimts.blogspot.com/2005/09/l ... e-can.html

“Tears, Tears, and More Tears” reminisces over the heartbreaking little things of a lost love. From thinking about her first thing in the morning, to the phone call that will never come, the thought of “It’s really over” rises up in his throat as he swallows to hold it back. No more holding hands or drinking wine or speaking sweet nothings, and that absence becomes more concrete as he calls upon the only thing he has, memories, which rends his heart even more. Yet somehow the song is upbeat, as if the continual outpouring of tears will be cathartic, alleviating the heartbreak, and the saddened Dorsey will rise again, cleansed, wiser.

While the heartbreaks have their upside, so do the good times have their troubles as well. With the drunken thuds of bass under him, Dorsey warbles about “hanging out all night long, hanging out till my money’s gone/ O Me O Mi O, what am I gonna do oh?” Despite the ever-present loneliness and dead-ends of night’s pleasurable oblivion of drink, Dorsey somehow sees through to the other side of the tunnel. It’s no blinding revelation or morning-after empty promise, just a simple parry to life’s painful cycles of brief joy and persistent despair: “Another failure, another try. Just keep on trying.” While the world surrounding hits him, floating like a butterfly, and then pounding down again, Kid Chocolate, even with blood on his teeth, just keeps smiling, swinging only as he must. He was undefeated after all.



It's an insanely catchy song ; I find myself absentmindly muttering the refrain at the oddest times , putting bread in the toaster, waiting in line in coffee shops etc.

What Do You Want The Girl To Do? is another cracker. At times I prefer Toussaint's more plaintive original but , come Lowell George's take, I find my dancing feet coming alive and it's a matter of 'Clear some space!'.


This whole scenario is similar to the months before The Delivery Man came out. I was listening to a compilation of live versions of that album's tracks from audience recordings of the Oxford/Memphis shows from the time. In the end the studio recordings were just as good - hopefully the same will apply with this album.

If the information had been available at the time I would probably have done the same for Almost Blue and Kojak Variety. How much notice was there of the tracklistings for those albums? Back in '81 I remember, with the exception of the Hank Williams track , all those country songs being brand new to me. Of course , 'Kojak circulated as a boot for a few years before it's release and I knew most of the tracks .

Roll on River In Reverse !

[johnfoyle]

http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/buzz.aspx?bid=37

06.06.2006

Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint - The River in Reverse - New Release - Verve Forecast

Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint - The River in Reverse (DVD Bonus) - New Release - Verve Forecast

[verbal gymnastics]

I wonder what the DVD will contain.

[sweetest punch]

Allen talks about the new album on KUT radio:

http://www.elviscostellofans.com/phpBB2 ... php?t=5187

He announces some kind of release after the album release ("an extra single or something like that") wich will include the song With You In Mind.
He announces also that the tour with EC will last about six weeks.

[johnfoyle]

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/art ... 1002234694

Costello, Toussaint Traverse New 'River'

March 22, 2006, 4:10 PM ET

Barry A. Jeckell, N.Y.

Verve has settled on a June 6 release date for the Elvis Costello/Allen Toussaint collaboration "River in Reverse." Recorded with producer Joe Henry over two weeks in Toussaint's native New Orleans and Hollywood, the set is split between new interpretations of classic Toussaint cuts and newly written songs.

Costello penned the title track Sept. 24, 2005, and performed it that night at the Hurricane Katrina relief concert Parting the Waters in New York. The song reaches out to Gulf Coast residents and demands answers for the U.S. government's mishandled response to the crisis: "How long does a promise last? / How long can a lie be told?" ... "I don't see how it can get much worse / What do we have to do to send the river in reverse?"

Five more songs -- "Ascension Day," "The Sharpest Thorn," "Broken Promise Land," "International Echo" and "Six-Fingered Man" -- were penned by Costello and Toussaint in New York last October. Costello selected the balance from Toussaint's catalog, cherry picking such gems as "Nearer To You," "Tears, Tears and More Tears" and "Who's Gonna Help Brother Get Further?"

Backing the veteran artists is Costello's band, the Imposters (Steve Nieve on Hammond B3, drummer Pete Thomas and bassist Davey Faragher) plus Toussaint's horn section (Amadee Castenell, Joe Smith, Sam Williams and Brian Cayolle) and guitarist (Anthony Brown). Costello played guitar and Toussaint led the sessions on piano.

The artists are planning to launch "an extensive tour" in June, according to a statement. Beforehand, Costello and Nieve have symphony dates beginning Monday (March 27) in San Francisco and continuing into May. An April 30 appearance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is part of that run.

[And No Coffee Table]

He announces some kind of release after the album release ("an extra single or something like that") wich will include the song With You In Mind.

A bonus track in certain markets, perhaps?

I wonder if the previously unreported "Six-Fingered Man" is the same song as "Where Is The Love," the Costello/Toussaint original not mentioned by Billboard.

[The Deliveryman]

from http://www.shorefire.com/artists/ecoste ... 22_06.html

'The River in Reverse' track listing:

1. On Your Way Down (Toussaint)
2. Nearer To You (Toussaint)
3. Tears, Tears and More Tears (Toussaint)
4. The Sharpest Thorn (Costello­Toussaint)
5. Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further? (Toussaint)
6. The River In Reverse (Costello)
7. Freedom For The Stallion (Toussaint)
8. Broken Promise Land (Costello­Toussaint)
9. Ascension Day (Bird­Costello­Toussaint)
10. International Echo (Costello­Toussaint)
11. All These Things (Toussaint)
12. Wonder Woman (Toussaint)
13. Six-Fingered Man (Costello­Toussaint)


"The River in Reverse"

How long does a promise last?
How long can a lie be told?
What would I take in exchange for my soul?
Would I notice when it was sold?

Wake me up
Wake me up with a slap or kiss
There must be something better than this
I don't see how it can get much worse
What do we have to do to send the river in reverse?

[bambooneedle]

That cover is perfect, they got it right - vintage class. And it's warm - love the typeface on "River In Reverse" and the '&' is a lot better than the stuffiness of the 'with' of PFM.

[Neil.]

That's a great sleeve - though I wish Elvis stopped insisting on wearing hats to give himself some sort of jazz man gravitas! I reckon it'll put younger listeners off!