Allen Toussaint: Deep Cuts

Allen Toussaint's blend of blues, jazz, soul and funk could be brewed into many forms. The New Orleans musician's spindly, expressive voice powers the ragtime tones and scratch-funk tempo of “Working in the Coal Mine”, and he lends a haunted air to the stutter-step rhythm and bluesy thump of “Victims of the Darkness”. “Holy Cow” finds him and his piano performing a soliloquy of loneliness, a jaunty melody flowing beneath his melancholy lyrics.