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This weekend marks the 8th Anniversary of the SotW. Thank you for you continued support and feedback. It inspires me to keep on keepin’ on.

Back in November, shortly after Allen Toussaint died, music industry critic Bob Lefsetz dedicated one of his blog posts to his favorite Toussaint covers. It was a comprehensive list of great recordings.

A few weeks ago he posted this response by the great Al Kooper from his “mailbag.”

From: AL KOOPER
Subject: Re: Re-Allen Toussaint

I was kinda surprised that no one mentioned a rare WB album that Allen produced in the early 70’s self-titled it was called “Browning Bryant”. A young white kid who totally understood New Orleans musica. The opening track has always been one of my fave AT compositions. I told him so when we met at a concert in NYC where each act played just one Dylan song. It was about 8 years ago. I told him I loved that Browning Bryant track he wrote called “Cover Girl.” I wondered if he still recalled it. He started singing it to me and I joined in and we laughed. That was one of my favorite bump-into-somebody-you-cherish moments. Have a listen – Ya might like it.

Since I’d never heard of Browning Bryant I immediately did some research, besides listening to “Cover Girl.”

I learned that “Cover Girl” wasn’t the only Toussaint song Bryant recorded. I fact, his 1974 album had 11 cuts – 3 originals and 8 written by Toussaint! Further, the album was produced by Toussaint and used the New Orleans based R&B group The Meters as Bryant’s backing band.

Also of note, the 6’5” Bryant was only 15 years old when the recording began. I was shocked that I missed an album of this quality for all these years, so I’m presenting a second song this week – “You Might Say.”

If you liked Boz Scaggs’ Silk Degrees, this will be right up your alley.

Thanks to Al Kooper for exposing me (us) to this great, obscure artist and album. But this should come as no surprise since Koop has been doing this for a long time. In fact I’d recommend you check out his podcasts called New Music for Old People.

Enjoy… until next week.