The Wild Tchoupitoulas and The Rest Of New Orleans

"Indians are the rulers on the holiday," sings George "Big Chief Jolly" Landry on the lone album from The Wild Tchoupitoulas. Formed as a group of Mardi Gras Indians—ceremonial African-American Carnival revelers—The Wild Tchoupitoulas recorded in 1976 what was considered the first rock record to capture the funky New Orleans sound. It helped that the band was backed by legendary funk group The Meters as well as Landry's nephews, the Neville Brothers, who were inspired to perform as a group after the experience. The record also featured production from Allen Toussaint, a musician plenty famous in his own right.

The Wild Tchoupitoulas - "Meet The Boys On The Waterfront" (from The Wild Tchoupitoulas)

Lost Classics: Allen Toussaint's Southern Nights

Southern Nights is an American classic in every way: endearingly soulful, genre-defyingly experimental and every bit as funky today as it was back in 1975. Allen Toussaint may have been more commercially successful when he worked with other musicians (see Labelle's "Lady Marmalade"), but with Southern Nights he put his own indelible stamp on popular music. It's a shame that Glen Campbell's cover of "Southern Nights" is what climbed to number one on the charts and not Toussaint's original—a song he wrote about evenings spent on his family's front porch in Louisiana. But while often overlooked, the record nevertheless still gets its due in certain circles. Most recently, My Morning Jacket's Jim James credited it as an inspiration for his band's record Evil Urges (see "Sec Walkin"). With the Meters as Toussaint's backing band, the record simply plays itself.

Allen Toussaint - "When The Party's Over" (from Southern Nights)