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Allen Toussaint (January 14, 1938 – November 10, 2015) touched so much of my favorite music. He wrote Aaron Neville’s “Tell It Like It Is,” Ernie K-Doe's “Mother-in-Law,” Irma Thomas” “Ruler of My Heart,” Chris Kenner’s “I Like It Like That,” Lee Dorsey’s “Holy Cow” and Solomon Burke’s “Get Out of My Life Woman.” He also penned two famous instrumentals: Al Hirt’s “Java” and Herb Alpert’s “Whipped Cream.” Beyond songwriting, Toussaint groomed one of the best bands of all time, the Meters, and produced artists like the Neville Brothers, Paul McCartney, Dr. John, Paul Simon, Joe Cocker, Glen Campbell, Labelle and Robert Palmer. Everything he DID was funky. To hear the late great pianist capture...

Henry Saint Clair Fredericks, better known as Taj Mahal, is an American music treasure. A self-taught singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Mahal has done more to stretch and redefine blues music than any other artist past or present. Over the course of his over 50 year career, he has taken the blues and fused it with the sounds of the Caribbean, Africa, the South Pacific and beyond. This diverse, melting-pot approach has puzzled some listeners while making Mahal a hero to lovers of eclectic roots music. “Here’s the thing, plain and simple,” music blogger Miles Mellough once wrote about the man, “Taj Mahal has always been a conundrum; a man who is capable of mirroring many t...