Going back to New Orleans, and back to the Neville Brothers, here is Aaron’s brother Art, teaming up with Allen Toussaint.

This song was written in 1962 by Toussaint, another musical legend of the Crescent City, under the pseudonym Naomi Neville (his mother’s maiden name).

A slow romantic ballad, it sits somewhere stylistically between doo wop and gospel, soul and pop, Art’s lovelorn voice – with the same distinctive quavery timbre as Aaron’s – underscored by Allen’s piano, the muted trumpets adding a layer of longing, emphasised by those choral backing vocals.

It became a minor hit when it was re-recorded by The Uniques, a popular Louisiana band of the 1960s, and was redone a decade later by their singer Joe Stampley as an uptempo country tune, topping the country charts. It was also recorded separately by Art with his fantastic funk band The Meters, and also by his brother Aaron Neville.

I was introduced to it much later when I heard it by Elvis Costello (and Allen Toussaint), just as his album Almost Blue had introduced me to the music of Hank Williams, George Jones, Merle Haggard and Gram Parsons back in 1981 when I was a country music virgin.

This time it was in 2006 when I was lucky enough to attend a private concert at the Cobden Club by Allen Toussaint and Elvis Costello, promoting an album they had made together – The River In Reverse – following a series of performances at fund-raisers following Hurricane Katrina.

No disrespect to Costello and his best intentions, but I do prefer Art’s version. As someone says in the comments, it’s two minutes and 15 seconds of sheer heaven. And that’s where Allen and Art are now, having died four years apart in 2015 and 2019 respectively.