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Finger Poppin' And Stompin' Feet: 20 Classic Allen Toussaint Productions For Minit Records
Like the opening line from doo-wop group The Showmen: “You take some music/sweet flowin’ music/some movin’ and groovin’…you see why it will stand,” these early Toussaint productions aren’t rocket science, but each of these twenty selections serves up the man’s deceptively simple formula for body-moving and party-starting, all serving to make the unpalatable parts of the human experience go down easy. There’s the timeless-as-“ya mama” joking of Ernie K-Doe’s “Mother-In-Law,” punctuated by crackling snare and Benny Spellman’s bullfrog backing vocal intoning the chorus. (And yes, Spellman’s iconic “Lipstick Traces (On A Cigarette)” b/w “Fortune Teller” is also here.) A svelte shuffle and smooth horns mask the simmering violence of Aaron Neville’s “Over You” and raindrops mask an ache as deep as a canyon on Irma Thomas’s “It’s Raining.”