So there I am last night, sitting at Nacho Mama's, like I do every Thursday night, listening to Vincent and the guys jamming, and in walks Allan Toussaint, and nobody recognizes him. I blurt out, "there's Allain Toussaint." I can't believe that no one recognized him. It's Allen Toussaint for God's sake!!
Okay, so maybe not everyone knows him, but if you live in New Orleans, like I do, then you should. This is the guy that that wrote the song "Mother-in-Law" that Ernie K-Doe made famous. He also wrote "Working in a Coal Mine." And no one recognized him? I guess it just goes to show that fame is fickle.
Another illustration of this principle involves my own fame, which is admittedly very limited. I have a friend who owns an alternative newspaper in New Orleans called "Gambit." Like many graphics industries, they use Apple computers. Awhile back, when I was throwing in the towel and selling all of my Macintosh computers to switch over to IBM clones, I wound up selling the computers to Clancy and he used them at Gambit. Of course they had the software I had used and installed, so whenever one of the young graphics artists there would use one of those programs it would show up with the screen that said "This software is registered to Ernest Svenson." Needless to say, I have never met any of the people that work there. Ever.
One day, about two years ago, Clancy was in the Gambit production area and he was talking across the room to his wife (this is the room where the artists work) and he tells her "yeah, I'm going to meet Ernie Svenson..." One of the young artists stops what she is doing and and looks up at him like she's seen a Ghost: and says "do you really know Ernie Svenson?" Yep, fame is fickle....
