VA - The Allen Toussaint Touch (2000)

This is a good if rather scattershot compilation of early Allen Toussaint productions for various artists, focusing solely on his 1960-65 work, when he was at the helm of the best rock and soul recordings to come out of New Orleans. About half of the 22 tracks are devoted to the most well-known artists in his charge, including a few well-known cuts, like Benny Spellman's "Fortune Teller," Ernie K-Doe's "A Certain Girl," and Irma Thomas' "Ruler of My Heart." The rest of the names might be strange even to New Orleans experts, encompassing as they do the likes of Curly Moore, Willie West, and Zilla Mayes. So it's almost as though this can't make up its mind whether to be a best-of for his vintage years, or an overview mixing classics with rarities. Nonetheless, it's a good if slightly uneven patchwork, usually boasting Toussaint's inimitable blend of fine pop melodies, lazy bluesy funk, and a certain light production touch in which the music sounds both spontaneous and cleverly arranged. If you've already picked up the best early sides by Thomas, Aaron Neville, Spellman, K-Doe, and Hill, you're likely to be most intrigued by the dozen cuts by the no-names, some of them quite good, and most of them with a more modern soul sound, indicating that they were cut in the mid-1960s rather than the dawn of the decade. John Williams' "Blues Tears Sorrow" is a typically melancholy yet melodic Toussaint ballad, while Willie Harper's "Here Comes the Hurt Again" is exuberant southern pop-soul with an over-recorded lead vocal. Most of those secondary cuts are fetching combos of blues and pop-soul sass, even if some have an oddly unfinished feel. Overall it's a nice secondary pickup for the 1960s New Orleans soul fan.