Ooga booga on the Mississippi

Once upon a time -- in 1958, to be exact -- the great Allen Toussaint was just another young talent playing the "wild" music of New Orleans.

And the record-company folks in New York City just couldn't help themselves.

So the 20-year-old boy genius of the Crescent City, observed in his native habitat -- Cosimo Matassa's recording studio -- by an American anthropologist RCA Victor A&R guy became the subject of a ground-breaking academic field study LP, which brought the "Wild Sound of New Orleans" to the erudite cultural observers of the United States.

NO DOUBT, the folks who once showed 16-millimeter travelogues to curious folk in church basements all across white-bread America soon were setting up their record players to let the country's good, curious people hear the wild, exotic sounds of deepest, darkest Africa . . . uh, the equatorial rain forest . . . uh, the remote, dangerous jungle . . . uh, New Orleans.

I don't know how much money RCA Victor made on the album, but "Tousan" and Cosimo Matassa certainly had the last laugh as they -- along with a host of folk behind "the wild sound of New Orleans" changed the music America listened to . . . and America itself.

Want to hear some of the wild sounds of Tousan, straight from the exotic, dark continent of New Orleans? It's all on the latest edition of 3 Chords & the Truth, fresh on an outpost of the Internet near you.