Allen Toussaint: soft-pedal star

On Saturday, Allen Toussaint performed on two different stages at the Bonnaroo music festival in rural Tennessee, which typically draws 80,000 people. His next gig is Friday at the Twin Cities Jazz Festival in downtown St. Paul, where maybe a few thousand people will congregate.

"It's all the same to me -- if it's five people or 5,000, there they are," said the soft-spoken Toussaint, the legendary New Orleans pianist, producer and songwriter who last appeared in the Twin Cities in front of about 300 people at the Dakota Jazz Club.

Like his Bonnaroo gigs, Toussaint's set in St. Paul will focus on material from his excellent new album, "The Bright Mississippi," his first true jazz album, released this spring.

The project was the brainchild of Los Angeles producer/singer Joe Henry, who has worked with Bettye LaVette, Loudon Wainwright and Aimee Mann.

"I'm so glad Joe did it," Toussaint said last weekend from New Orleans. "As much as I enjoyed this, I didn't see myself getting to this kind of album."

Henry had produced "Our New Orleans," a 2005 benefit album for Habitat for Humanity's post-Katrina rebuilding efforts. While making the CD, the producer heard pianist Toussaint noodling around in all kinds of different styles and hatched the idea for a jazz album.

"I'm so glad he heard that kind of dignity in all of it, because the songs are very classic with a whole lot of beauty and dignity in them," Toussaint said.

The repertoire includes Django Reinhardt's "Blue Drag," Thelonious Monk's "Bright Mississippi" and Duke Ellington's "Solitude" and "Day Dream." The album is not a showcase for Toussaint's estimable piano artistry, but rather a celebration of these classic songs interpreted by top-shelf players who work in various genres.

Toussaint, 71, didn't even know any of his big-name collaborators, including saxophonist Joshua Redman, guitarist Marc Ribot and clarinetist Don Byron. He vaguely knew New Orleans trumpeter Nicholas Payton, whose father, Walter Payton, had played bass on many sessions with Toussaint, including Lee Dorsey's hit "Workin' in a Coal Mine."

Jazz pianist Brad Mehldau hopped off a plane from Europe and headed directly to a New York studio, where producer Henry and Toussaint were waiting. Without any discussion, the two pianists dove into Jelly Roll Morton's "Winin' Boy Blues."

"I had no idea what to expect," Toussaint recalled. "When we sat down and began to play, the beauty in it all was the difference in him and myself. It was so much better than if we were from the same garden and playing the same things. What a superb pianist he is -- great velvet touch and unhurried. In fact, while we were playing, there were moments where I felt like stopping and just listening to him go through a chorus or so."

There is only one song on the album with vocals -- Leonard Feather's "Long, Long Journey." Again, that was Henry's idea.

"I was well satisfied with only one vocal," Toussaint said. "I would have been satisfied with no vocals because I feel like an instrumentalist first and many other things -- producer, arranger, songwriter -- and the last thing on my totem pole is the vocalist."

Material from "The Bright Mississippi" will make up about half of Toussaint's repertoire on Friday, and the rest will focus on songs that helped land this behind-the-scenes superstar in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a songwriter ("Mother in Law," "Working in a Coal Mine," "Java," "Southern Nights"), producer (LaBelle's "Lady Marmalade," Dr. John's "Right Place, Wrong Time") and arranger (the Band, Paul Simon).

Whatever Toussaint plays, there are always hometown sounds in his piano phrasings.

"I take for granted that New Orleans is in me at all times without thinking at all," said the piano man, who also manages to squeeze in classical, boogie-woogie and show-tune riffs into his instrumental passages.

Back to New Orleans

Having left New Orleans after his home and studio were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, he finally moved back to the Crescent City a year ago. He's been living in a rehabbed home, but is still looking for a permanent one. He hasn't built a new studio to replace Sea-Saint (which he opened in 1973), though he has a small studio in his house.

If there is a silver lining to Katrina, it is that Toussaint has gigged more regularly since being displaced to New York City, where he still keeps an apartment. His New York residency led to his widely acclaimed 2006 album with Elvis Costello, "The River in Reverse," produced by Henry, and a hugely successful tour with Costello.

Wherever Toussaint gigs in whatever season, the nattily dressed pianist always wears sandals with white socks. More than 40 years ago, his feet would blister whenever he wore shoes, he recalled. He'd have to use medication and soak his feet.

"So I began cutting the tops out of certain kind of shoes so my feet could breathe," he explained. "Then I decided to just wear sandals. Of course, that solved it. Not only sandals but white socks. If I wear colored socks even with the sandals, my feet would blister. I just never went back. I haven't tried shoes enough to know if that would be the case now. Sandals it is and sandals it will be. Sandals are forever."

Like Toussaint's tunes.

Jon Bream • 612-673-1719