Like the great New Orleans singer-songwriter Allen Toussaint’s 2009 album The Bright Mississippi (a tribute to classics by jazz giants from Bechet to Monk), this set, completed just before its creator’s death last November, is a gently personal slice of Americana. You can hear it in the steady ragtime bounce of Fats Waller’s Viper’s Drag, Professor Longhair’s Hey Little Girl, Bill Evans’ Waltz for Debby (played as a conga-coaxed Latin shuffle) and the Paul Simon anthem behind the album title, with its segues of American history and personal struggle, sung with an awed resolve by Toussaint himself. It’s mostly instrumental (Toussaint’s keyboard style has a trilling, Jelly Roll Morton-like daintiness and debonair swagger), though guests including saxophonist Charles Lloyd and guitarist Bill Frisell add contemporary ambiguities to Billy Strayhorn’s Lotus Blossom and Ellington’s Come Sunday. Toussaint’s intimacy with classic R&B, soul and funk inflects all his jazz playing, even if American Tunes is for the most part a low-key (and perhaps faintly wistful) look back at a wonderful musical life.
