“Music is everything to me, short of breathing,” Allen Toussaint says in this inspiring, magically resonant documentary. Mr. Toussaint stopped breathing last week, felled by a heart attack while on tour doing what he loved. But the Toussaint music will never stop.
Beyond his own recordings, Toussaint wrote and produced songs recorded by everyone from Little Feat to the Rolling Stones to Cyndi Lauper. (The list is massive, touching on music in every genre — including Devo!) By all accounts, Allen Toussaint was a beautiful soul. Watch this if only to hear “Southern Nights” — the masterpiece he called a “movie of my Southern childhood.” This hour-long video is one you’ll never forget. Rest in peace, Allen Toussaint.
