This is a question that no one should have to ask. Toots is the greatest songwriter and performer of the past 70 years, if not of all time; but also the unluckiest! Toots has been responsible for writing practically all the best and most successful songs ever known, but in his own words "they always got stole, though . . . " He is also the man that invented rock and roll, rhythm and blues, soul, cajun, country and western and almost any other style of music you care to name. Nobody, including himself, knows exactly when or where he was born, but some of the places he's been, some of the events he's witnessed and even participated in (according to him), make him perhaps the most experienced and widely travelled person living today, on this or any other planet.
In spite of these credentials, like many other true originators, Toots is practically an unknown entity. As the great man says: "You'd think after being around for two thousand years, you'd be able to make a name for yourself." However, he has little luck with material things, and is philosophical about the fame and fortune that should have, but haven't, come his way. Buffetings on such a mountainous sea of misfortune and perversity would have left lesser men extremely bitter; but despite his severe tossing, Toots said: "I like you Mike, gimme a drink an' I'll write a song on this beer mat that'll make you a fortune, jus' like everybody else has with my stuff." then after a short pause added: "but I caught up with most of them!"
I attempted to discuss the circumstamces which prompted this compilation of some of his finest work, and although Toots is a very articulate man, his speech had become more and more unintelligible as the interview progressed. Eventually he left, with the bottles I had bought him stuck firmly in his pockets. The last I saw of him, he was silhouetted against the sunlight intruding through the open door, pausing just long enough to mutter his farewell; "So long, Mike . . . . . . an' if anybody asks . . . . I was never here!"
Mike Oxlong, M.N.E. (Music News & Echo) October 2004
