Robbie Robertson: Well I’ve always thought that New Orleans, from all of those years of traveling around on the road, that there was more music per square inch in New Orleans than anywhere else in the world. I had never seen anything like it, and just when you’d be walking down the street, the music that would just come flying out of doorways and windows and clubs and, you know, and this was the tradition of the place. New Orleans always had its own spin on things. It was like part of the United States of America but yet a planet unto itself. If never ever followed. It always had its own thing, its own sound, and I had great admiration and fascination for the music of New Orleans. And all of the little crossroads that are there too, the different flavors of New Orleans music.
Nick Spitzer: In your initial sort of forays into actually, I guess, making records, you were working pretty closely with Allen Toussaint. What was it like working with Toussaint?
RR: Well Allen Toussaint was some kind of, just an extraordinary, brilliant–I mean from when he was very young. I think that when the Ernie K-Doe song “Mother-In-Law” came out, Allen Toussaint was like eighteen years old or something, and he was writing songs and producing records and working with, you know, Lee Dorsey and Jesse Hill and all the people that he had worked with over those years. He did it all, and even the sound of his background vocals on those–on the Lee Dorsey things especially–it’s just some of the best stuff ever.
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RR: You know, it was just an amazing package, and when I had written this song with the guys in the Band called “Life is a Carnival,” you know, and I wanted to do a horn chart on it, it was the opportunity to check in with Allen Toussaint and see if we couldn’t make this happen.
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RR: We had such a good time doing that, that when I was going to do this live album with the Band, Rock of Ages, I thought, “Well let’s get Allen to do some more horn charts for us, and you know we’ll take these songs to a different place.” And that was just a marvelous experience. So Allen’s had a very strong connection with the Band for years. Many, many times when I would go to New Orleans I would always see Allen, and we would hook up, and he’s just such a wonderful gentleman as well, just a real pleasure to work with.
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RR: Oh I inducted Allen into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame too.
NS: Oh he must’ve loved that.
RR: Yeah, so that was a real wonderful thing too.
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