Craft Recordings is bringing Allen Toussaint back into focus with an expanded reissue of Songbook that finally gives the Grammy nominated live album the vinyl treatment it always deserved. The new edition adds 20 previously unreleased performances and interview recordings, available across a 2 CD and digital release alongside a first ever 2 LP pressing.
Captured during two intimate New York performances in 2009, the album finds Toussaint alone at the piano, revisiting classics like “Lipstick Traces (On a Cigarette),” “Holy Cow,” and “Get Out of My Life, Woman” with the kind of authority that only comes from writing a significant chunk of American music himself.
If the name does not immediately register, that is part of the problem. Toussaint spent more than five decades shaping New Orleans R&B, soul, and pop from behind the curtain, writing and producing hits that others made famous while he stayed largely out of the spotlight. Born in 1938, he became one of the defining musical architects of New Orleans, only to see his world upended by Hurricane Katrina, which forced him to leave the city he helped define.
The displacement led directly to the intimate performances that became Songbook, capturing both reflection and resilience in real time. Toussaint passed away in 2015, but the depth of his catalog and influence, never left.
The backstory matters here. After relocating to New York in the aftermath of Katrina, Toussaint settled into a weekly residency at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan’s East Village. For someone who rarely leaned into solo performance, these shows became something of a quiet revelation. No band. No studio polish. Just a piano, a catalog that could bury most careers, and an audience smart enough to shut up and listen to some history being made.
That stretch didn’t just keep him active, it reframed him late in life as a performer worth seeing, not just a name buried in liner notes.
And those liner notes? They could fill the National Archives. Toussaint wrote “Fortune Teller,” “Working in a Coal Mine,” and “Get Out of My Life, Woman,” songs that bounced across generations and artists like pinballs. As a producer and arranger, he shaped records for Dr. John, Labelle, and a long list of others who walked into Sea-Saint Studio and walked out sounding better than they had any right to.
The May 29 release lands as a deluxe 2 CD set ($24.98) with original essay and track notes from Ashley Kahn, alongside updated liner notes from producer Paul Siegel. Digital options include both standard and hi res formats, while the original album finally arrives on vinyl as a 2 LP gatefold.
If the expanded reissue proves anything, it’s that Toussaint didn’t just contribute to American music. He quietly engineered it while everyone else took the credit.
So yes, you can go back to streaming Taylor Swift or Kendrick Lamar on repeat. Or you can spend an hour with Songbook and hear where a lot of that musical DNA actually came from. One of those choices comes with a history lesson. The other just thinks it invented one.
Where to pre-order: $37.99 at Amazon
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