revolved around the always bustling and R&B-alive New Orleans. Groups like the Spiders, the Showmen, Shirley and Lee, the Shaweez and Gene and Eunice also sprang out of this city as well as instrumentalists like Professor Longhair, Champion Jack Dupree, Fats Domino, Roy Byrd, Huey Smith, Mac Rebennack, Chris Kenner and James Booker–all of whom play piano. And it's the R&B piano that is perhaps the most intriguing thing about the New Orleans "sound"–to be sure other ingredients like the use of "nonsense" phraseology ("Ya Ya" by Lee Dorsey and "Ooh-Poo-Pah-Doo" by Jessie Hill), a variable jazz-imbued mellowness, a consistently rhythmical, combo-shuffle band sound and a persistently alert orbit of drums and horns around the, again basic, piano foundation are also vital. But, in the end, the catalyst is the keyboard.

All of which brings us down to two New Orleans based pianists/producers that are currently carrying the Crescent City R&B sounds into the Seventies with gusto. Both Allen Toussaint and Wardell Quezergue have musical roots deep in the New Orleans R&B scene–Quezergue played in and did arrangements for Dave Bartholo-mew's band as well as arranging and conducting discs by Professor Longhair. Benny Spellman and others, while Toussaint owned the influential Minit label and wrote/produced hits by Ernie K-Doe ("Mother-In-Law"), Irma Thomas, Betty Harris, Aaron Neville and Lee Dorsey ("Working In the Coal Mine"), to name but a few. Toussaint recorded an album for RCA in the Fifties (from which Al Hirt culled "Java"), played piano on many of the Minit and Fury sessions and recorded with his own New Orleans based band, the Stokes, in the early Sixties–but his new solo album, Toussaint, features this ultra-creative and R&B-ingenious man totally on his own. The result is one of the most convincing, engaging albums of the year. It's a nicely balanced disc as well–six cuts feature vocals by Allen while four are instrumentals–the latter offering a definitive sampling of Toussaint's Ray Charles/Huey Smith/Fats Domino influenced brew of piano-work: some seriousness, some clowning, some jauntiness.

The album opens with Toussaint's most recent single, "From A Whisper To A Scream," which is a tour de force by any standards. It employs all sorts of musical and vocal techniques that would be called "gimmickry" in the hands of anyone except Allen Toussaint. From