Allen Toussaint has died aged 77. The versatile producer, songwriter, pianist and singer was a fixture of New Orleans R&B, died Monday after appearing in concert in Madrid.
According to the BBC, Toussaint suffered a heart attack shortly after coming off stage at Madrid’s Teatro Lara on Monday night. He was later found in his hotel and resuscitated but suffered a second heart attack en route to hospital.
Toussaint was born in 1938 in New Orleans, where he became involved in music from an early age. Artists in nearly every major genre recorded Toussaint’s songs or collaborated with him, including the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Herb Alpert, Glenn Campbell, Robert Palmer and Alison Kraus and Elvis Costello.
Questlove, founding member of the hip-hop group The Roots, wrote on Instagram about Toussaint. “I don’t want y’all thinkin’ ‘this is just some old legend that passed away’ naw, This dude wrote some of your favorite music & you just didn’t know it.”
