Dr. John died today.
He had only one hit, Such a Night, and wasn't famous much outside of New Orleans. But around New Orleans, he was a god. From his Night Tripper Hoodoo man persona in the 60's, through his blues sideman and producer role in the 70's to his personification of all that is New Orleans music in the 90's and 00's, he cut a path of originality that could never be matched.
He began his career as a guitar player, and was more gangsta than gangsta. He was a drug dealer, a pimp, a heroin addict, and the model for Dr Teeth, the Muppet bandleader.The guitar career was cut short when he was shot in the hand during a bar fight. He switched to piano and I've never heard anyone who can play New Orleans piano better, not even Professor Longhair.
For a long time, he was legendary for his solo piano skills, but he would never record as a soloist. He had a pathological fear of ending his life as a lounge act. But some time in the 1980's, someone talked him into doing a session that led to two solo piano albums: Dr. John Plays Mac Rebennack (that was his real name) and Brightest Smile In Town. These are two of my favorite albums of all time from one of my favorite artists of all time.
The Dr. John comes from Dr. John Creaux, a shadowy figure from New Orleans' voodoo past. His first album, Gris Gris, was a spooky synthesis of New Orleans music and psychedelic rock. Rolling Stone put it on the list of the 500 best albums of all time.
In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Dr. John fully embraced the voodoo trappings of his Night Tripper persona. Onstage, he wore elaborate headdresses and was sometimes accompanied by a live snake. He scattered glitter from a pouch, much to the chagrin of Gregg Allman, who once recalled having to clean the "magic dust" from his keyboards after sharing a bill with Dr. John.
On his landmark 1972 album “Dr. John’s Gumbo,” he demonstrated an affinity for New Orleans rhythm & blues classics. His 1973 album “In the Right Place,” produced by Allen Toussaint and featuring the Meters as his backing band, yielded two of his signature songs: “Right Place, Wrong Time” and “Such a Night.”
He wrote and recorded essential chapters in the New Orleans music canon. Over the years, he became one of the city's most enduring, respected and iconoclastic musicians and cultural figures. He was a prominent member of the pantheon of New Orleans piano legends, part of a direct lineage that included Fats Domino, Huey “Piano” Smith, Allen Toussaint, Professor Longhair, and Art Neville.
His band the Lower 9-11, especially when powered by the late drummer Herman Ernest, dealt in stone-cold New Orleans funk.
On his ambitious 1992 album “Goin’ Back to New Orleans,” he captured the breadth and depth of the city’s sound, from Mardi Gras Indian chants to funk to jazz to rhythm & blues. He enlisted a who’s who of local contributors for the recording, including the Neville Brothers, Pete Fountain, Al Hirt and Danny Barker.
Hurricane Katrina reawakened his sense of social responsibility. He vented his outrage at official ineptitude and negligence from the stage and on the Grammy-winning CD "City That Care Forgot." After the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010, he led protests and railed against BP.
In 2011, he was inducted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame alongside Alice Cooper, Tom Waits, and Leon Russel. There, he joined fellow New Orleanians Fats Domino, Dave Bartholomew, Allen Toussaint, Lloyd Price, Jelly Roll Morton, Professor Longhair, Louis Armstrong and Mahalia Jackson in rock’s official shrine.
The following year, he released “Locked Down,” one of the most acclaimed albums of his career. As the album's producer, Dan Auerbach of the rock duo The Black Keys sought to strip away layers of cliché and routine to unearth the real Mac Rebennack.
Recording in Auerbach's Nashville studio, he paired Rebennack with a band of young, invigorated musicians and encouraged him to take on unfamiliar songs and write new ones. Auerbach also persuaded Rebennack to play electric keyboard instead of piano, which altered the entire complexion of the music.
The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio, among many other media outlets, hailed “Locked Down” as a masterpiece. Rolling Stone awarded it four out of five stars. It won Rebennack his sixth Grammy Award.
“What goes around slides around, and what slides around slips around,” Rebennack said 2011, just before his Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction. “As long as it’s slippin’ and slidin’ around, we ain’t got to trip through the shortcuts of life. We can take the long way around. It’s the shortcuts that kill you.
“The best thing you can be ‘like’ in music is yourself.”
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