As it turns out, the first couple of weeks of this month are rather auspicious in music history:
- John Paul Jones’ birthday was on the third,
- Michael Stipe‘s birthday was on the fourth
- David Bowie‘s and Elvis were born on the eighth
- Jimmy Page‘s and Robby Krieger‘s birthdays were on the ninth
- Donald Fagen’s birthday was on the tenth
- Zack de la Rocha and Raekwon’s birthdays were on the twelfth
Today continues an impressive array of music birthdays: If you’ve been frequenting this site today, you’d recall that both LL Cool J, and Nirvana‘s and Foo Fighters‘ Dave Grohl share birthdays today. But I also learned that the legendary singer/songwriter, pianist, composer. producer and greatest son of New Orleans, Allen Toussaint was also born today. Sadly, we lost him six years ago but I wanted to post something to celebrate his birth and life.
From what I understand, New Orleans will finally rename Robert E. Lee Blvd. to Allen Toussaint Blvd. And it makes a lot of sense: Toussaint has actually contributed something useful and vital to the world, unlike that traitorous racist, old white guy.
To that end, Happy birthday, good sir. Happy birthday, wherever you may be!