Allen Toussaint

Allen Toussaint was an American musician, songwriter, arranger and record producer, who was an influential figure in New Orleans RampB from the 1950s to the end of the century, described as one of popular musics great backroom figures. Many musicians recorded Toussaints compositions, including Java, MotherinLaw, I Like It Like That, Fortune Teller, Ride Your Pony, Get Out of My Life, Woman, Working in the Coal Mine, Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky, Here Come the Girls, Yes We Can Can, Play Something Sweet, and Southern Nights. He was a producer for hundreds of recordings, among the best known of which are Right Place, Wrong Time by Dr. John and Lady Marmalade by Labelle.

One of three children, Toussaint was born in 1938 in New Orleans and grew up in a shotgun house in the Gert Town neighborhood, where his mother, Naomi Neville , welcomed and fed all manner of musicians as they practiced and recorded with her son. His father, Clarence, worked on the railway and played trumpet. Allen Toussaint learned piano as a child and took informal music lessons from an elderly neighbor, Ernest Pinn. In his teens he played in a band, the Flamingos, with guitarist Snooks Eaglin, before dropping out of school. A significant early influence on Toussaint was the syncopated secondline piano style of Professor Longhair.

Source: Wikipedia