Dr John The Night Tripper - Gris-gris | Don's Tunes

 (Albums bought when they came out! Yes those were different times . . . . . powerful influence on the early teenage me and what we were up to - it’s long story - we listening to this album over and over) so I will sign off the day with the Night Tripper. Sweet dreams . . . . !

Dr John began to develop a cult following with the release of his first major-label album, Gris-Gris (1968), a startling brew of voodoo funk and strange incantations, epitomised by the eerie eight-minute mantra I Walk on Guilded Splinters. Nobody had heard anything like it, including his label boss, Ahmet Ertegun. “Ahmet asked me: ‘What is this record you gave me … Why didn’t you give me a record that we could sell?’” Dr John recalled. He took the album on tour with a show resembling a bayou magic act, decking himself out in outlandish feathers, witch-doctor robes and headdresses. For a time the act also featured a man calling himself Prince Kiyama, who would bite the heads off live chickens onstage.

Two follow-up albums to Gris-Gris – Babylon (1969) and Remedies (1970) – began to make him influential friends, including Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger, who both appeared on The Sun, Moon & Herbs (1971), and in 1973 he released the biggest selling album of his career, In the Right Place. Produced by Allen Toussaint and with the Meters as backing band, it reached No 24 on the Billboard album chart and gave him a US Top 10 hit single with Right Place, Wrong Time. It also included Such a Night, which Dr John would perform at the Band’s 1976 farewell concert, filmed by Martin Scorsese as The Last Waltz. He failed to reach such sales heights again, but was widely acclaimed across the rest of his career, and won six Grammys for various albums and singles.

Adam Sweeting / The Guardian

Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Don's Tunes

Gris Gris Gumbo Ya Ya

2013 Official Americana Awards - Dr John "I Walk On Gilded Splinters”

Dr John performs "I Walk On Gilded Splinters" with Buddy Miller, Don Was, Larry Campbell, Marco Giovino, Jim Hoke, John Deaderick, Brady Blade, the McCrary Sisters and Dan Auerbach at the 2013 Americana Music Association