(Nonesuch)

www.nonesuch.com

In The Bright Mississippi, New Orleans R&B composer and pianist Allen Toussaint revisits the classic jazz of his childhood, interpreting wonderful old-time cuts by Sidney Bechet, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington. Though Toussaint's band for this album includes avant garde heavyweights like Don Byron and Marc Ribot, the tone is quite traditional, the steady swagger of funeral march drums and percussion anchoring arabesque swoons and swoops of melodic improvisation.  Toussaint himself conjures lush, extravagant textures of ragtime piano, his playing now staccato and rhythmic, now flowering into rolls and cascades and fluid runs of notes. And the rhythm section - David Piltch on upright and Jay Bellerose on drums - imposes a stately, restrained dignity over the whole enterprise, with widely spaced thump of bass, clicks on rims and musing, dreamy swirls of brushes on snares.

Toussaint recorded The Bright Mississippi at the urging of producer Joe Henry, who, during sessions for a Gulf Coast tribute album Our New Orleans, heard Toussaint playing the Professor Longhair song, "Tipitina." Toussaint, most famous for composing R&B and rock songs including "Fortune Teller," "Sneaking Sally Through the Alley" and Otis Redding's "Pain in My Heart," had grown up with jazz and ragtime. Why not build an album out of these beloved songs? 

So, fittingly, Toussaint begins with "Egyptian Fantasy," composed by New Orleans' own Sidney Bechet with Byron blowing soft and old-style, in clarinet lines that seem to breathe and sigh.  With "Dear Old Southland," trumpeter Nicholas Payton takes the lead, in a whispery, slightly overblown meditation on "Summertime" that curls up like late night smoke and melancholy. Toussaint seems to like to highlight one band member per tune, and "Blue Drag," the Django Reinhardt piece, is Marc Ribot's turn, coaxing scratchy gypsy rhythms that are, at the same time, full of swing and sadness.

There are a couple of guests, as well, Brad Meldau duets with Toussaint on Jelly Roll Morton's "Winin' Boy Blues." It's another nod to New Orleans' dense history. Morton, as producer Joe Henry notes in his essay "I Cover the Waterfront", has as good a claim as anyone to inventing the blues. Joshua Redman sits in, too, on the lovely Ellington/Strayhorn piece "Day Dream."

The disc's first half is strongest, with just a whiff of schmaltz and sentimentality creeping into later songs, especially "Solitude," the second of two Ellington cuts and "Long, Long Journey" the only track where Toussaint sings. For the most part, though, Toussaint accomplishes the difficult job of maintaining emotional resonance without slipping into nostalgia and self-indulgence. The ensemble pieces - "St. James Infirmary" and "West End Blues" in particular - swagger with survivor's aplomb, careen with life's giddy celebration, while still allowing an underlying sadness to show through. New Orleans could hardly ask for a better tribute.   

Standout Tracks: "Egyptian Fantasy," "St. James Infirmary" "Solitude" JENNIFER KELLY