LHoC Music blog review

It’s hard to decide where you file this one. Under Allen Toussaint, on the basis that he appears on most of the tracks as a player, as well as picking up the majority of the writing credits and all the production credits? Or under Various Artists, because that’s basically, what this collection is.

Much of it, predictably, also turns up elsewhere, but this 2011 double-disc compilation does a reasonable job of covering the obvious bases and delving into the obscurities. It's not exhaustive, doesn't cover his solo recordings for Scepter and Reprise through the seventies, and there are a couple of notable omissions (Lee Dorsey’s “Ride Your Pony”) for one, but it's a decent overview and reveals a few connections I hadn't previously been aware of, most notably in the Whipped Cream (yes, the Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass number).  The obscurities tend to be clustered on the first disc (though there's the odd hidden gem on the second) but if you're after an R&B party record you could do a lot worse than the all-killer no filler second half of this compilation. 

Overall, a reasonably comprehensive, thoroughly entertaining history of one of the great, but often overlooked, figures of R&B. As a sampler of the man's ventures into  Crescent City jazz, blues and soul compressed into a single two disc 50-track compilation, this collection is hard to beat.

© Ian Hughes 2015