Allen Toussaint
New Orleans Nights At Koerner Hall in Toronto on Tuesday
Everybody knows that the biggest annual party in New Orleans is at Mardi Gras, but the city's biggest music party - the Jazz & Heritage Festival - falls a couple of months later. Jazz Fest, which is held on the grounds of a local race track, runs the gamut of New Orleans music, from jazz and blues to R&B and funk and beyond.
In a sense, the New Orleans Nights tour, which finished its North American run at Koerner Hall in Toronto Tuesday, is a sort of mini-Jazz Fest on wheels. Between Allen Toussaint, a singer, pianist and songwriter responsible for four decades of New Orleans hits, jazz trumpeter Nicholas Payton, and the rhythm section built around the Joe Krown Trio, the package touched on most of the festival's strengths while leaving the track behind.
So let's honour New Orleans's Fair Grounds Race Course and rate the show as if it were a trifecta.
FIRST: ALLEN TOUSSAINT
A generation older than the others, Toussaint is an industry legend, having written, produced and/or played on literally dozens of R&B and rock hits. But rather than show off his laurels with an evening of "and then I wrote…," he presented himself as a performer, a pianist who was more than happy to play off the rhythmic momentum of his younger bandmates.
Not that he needed the help. Several songs in, he performed a long, rhapsodic duet with Payton that not only redeemed the trumpeter's solo set but spun fresh variations on those hoary chestnuts St. James Infirmary Blues and Summertime. Then Payton left, and Toussaint delivered a dazzling stream-of-consciousness solo that ricocheted through various jazz, pop and classical tunes before depositing him on Steve Goodman's classic City of New Orleans.
That he closed the show with a full band version of Southern Nights was given; that it killed goes without saying.
SECOND: JOE KROWN TRIO
At its best, this organ trio sounds like a cross between the Funky Meters and the now-defunct R&B combo Stuff. They come by the resemblance naturally, seeing as drummer Russell Batiste Jr. is one of the Funky Meters, and that guitarist Walter (Wolfman) Washington works out of the same funky blues style as Stuff guitarist Cornell Dupree.
The weak link in the combo, sadly, is Krown himself. Although well versed in the Jimmy Smith school of Hammond B-3 flash, Krown's prolix solos lacked the rhythmic clarity of Smith's work, and ended up bogging down the groove. When he stuck to rhythm work, however, things moved along nicely.
Fortunately, Krown is nothing if not a generous bandleader, and the trio's show-opening set left plenty of room to allow other members to take the lead. Washington particularly shined, thanks to lithe solos and strong rendition of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On.
THIRD: NICHOLAS PAYTON
The son of Preservation Hall bassist Walter Payton and a student of Ellis Marsalis, Nicholas Payton is a classic example of the modern New Orleans jazz trumpeter. Like Terence Blanchard, he's drenched in tradition; like Wynton Marsalis, he's blessed with a virtuosic technique.
But unlike either, he wants to be a soul singer, and that's a problem. With the Krown Trio augmented by bassist Nori Naraoka and percussionist Reginald Toussaint, Payton had no trouble getting a funky rhythm feel going, but between his thin, nasal tone and shaky sense of pitch, that groove never took him anywhere.
He sounded better when he stuck to his trumpet, but not by much. There was some lovely playing on a poorly sung ballad, and it was hard not to chuckle as he capped his first solo with a quote from the Toussaint-penned oldie Java. But when he went for straight funk, he flunked.