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Allen Toussaint Interview, part 1

Click on Title to start listening to the Podcast of the interview immediately. You can subscribe to this podcast too. See the FAQ's.

You may have heard of Allen Toussaint. He has been in the news somewhat this year. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the legendary New Orleans composer/singer/producer/pianist (along with Fats Domino) was listed as among the missing for a few days. Fortunately, he turned up and soon was headlining shows to raise money for the hurricane relief effort.

Earlier this year he was the featured performer on the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival Piano Night. A few years ago he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

But to me his main claim to fame was his association with New Orleans Piano Legends of the past such as James Booker and Professor Longhair. That was my main reason for wanting to interview him and learn from him. In December of 1987 I made a trip to New Orleans to interview him at his recording studio. But I did nothing with the tape. After all there wasn’t an Internet back then or such a thing as podcasting.

But now there is so I found the interview tape, cleaned it up a little (electronically) and now you have the first half of the interview, for the first time after 18 years. I may put up part two later if there is enough call for it.

Bear with me on the sound quality. I was pretty new at this at the time. Toussaint’s piano playing is great, however. You’re going to love that.

I realize that these podcasts are provided to you at no cost, but if you find that you really like this program, please consider making a small donation to the Red Cross Katrina Relief fund www.redcross.org. There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done there.

Allen Toussaint bio: http://www.nynorecords.com/allen.shtml

James Booker bio: http://www.cascadeblues.org/History/JamesBooker.htm

Professor Longhair bio: http://www.professorlonghair.com/

Learn thousands of new songs...today

In Podcast #2 you are going to learn to play the following songs: Rock Around the Clock, Kansas City, Oh Boy, Johnny B. Goode, The Twist, The Stroll, She's a Woman, Oh Darling, You Can't Do That, I Saw Her Standing There, Route 66, Wha'd I Say.

But those are just rock tunes. You're also going to learn some jazz tunes such as All Blues (Miles), One O'Clock Jump (Basie), C Jam Blues (Duke), Blue Monk (Thelonious), Straight No Chaser, Misterioso.

And how about some country? Try Milk Cow Blues, Corinna Corrina, Twin Guitar Boogie.

How are we going to cover all those tunes in one lesson? Easy. They are all more or less the same song. At least they have (again more or less) the same chord structure. They are all blues tunes, and there are about two billion other blues songs that I didn't mention by name. The memory isn't as good as it use to once was.

In this lesson we'll continue our coverage of the blues and put a right hand melody to it as well. Then we'll see a couple of cool chord substitutions you can use with the blues as well as with other songs. And they are very easy to play. And we'll add a little bit to our Hanon exercise, and actually start playing with a (gulp) metronome.

There's also a special offer for some additional courseware.

For some technical information on how to subscribe to the podcasts, click on the Podcast FAQ in the right column.

For information on the courseware offer, go to the product offer page.

And what are people saying about the first podcast? Unsolicited testimonials. Click on the Podcast Testimonials at the right.

Link to podcast.