Allen+toussaint

Without Allen Toussaint's herculean musical contributions, New Orleans' crucial musical heritage would be a footnote confined to '50s Rock & Roll. As a producer, songwriter and artist, Toussaint defined the seminal NOLA funk genre, giving hits not only to favorite sons like Ernie K. Doe and Lee Dorsey, but to Labelle, Robert Palmer, Rod Stewart and many others.

A talk show with Elvis Costello interviewing other musicians could have been unbearably precious, but Costello is such a formidable songwriter, and so obviously bright and quick, that he keeps his equilibrium even with three of rock’s biggest stars: Bruce Springsteen, and U2’s Bono and The Edge. The highlight of the second season of Spectacle: Elvis Costello with . . . is doubtless the two shows with Springsteen. In the first, Costello reaches back to the songwriter’s first two records, prompting the Boss to remember his early days, when he and his band hustled for work in bars along the Jersey shore. Nils Lofgren and Roy Bittan join Springsteen onstage for "Wild Billy’s Circus Story," a song from his second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.