Remembering Dr. John (November 20, 1941 – June 6, 2019)

 

Mac Rebennack was nearing 30 when he transformed himself into Dr John and released Gris Gris: he had already packed a lifetime’s worth of musical experience and incident into his 27 years. His father’s connections as a record store owner in New Orleans’ Third Ward enabled him to sneak into local recording sessions: by 13, he was a professional musician, playing organ in strip clubs in the Third Quarter and performing with Professor Longhair, a local pioneer whose blend of blues, boogie-woogie and Afro-Cuban rhythms, Rebennack would later claim, “put the funk into music”.

 

   

Dr John - The Midnight Special - Right Place Wrong Time 

By 16, he was a session guitarist and occasional producer, working out of Cosimo Studios and playing in a succession of bands. He even had a local solo hit in 1959, a brooding Bo Diddley knock-off called Storm Warning, but Rebennack was also trouble: his career as a guitarist was ended when his finger was injured by a gunshot at a gig in Jackson in 1960; he became a heroin addict and dealer; he was involved in running a brothel. In 1963, he was sentenced to two years for drug offences, and on release shifted operations to Los Angeles, where a contingent of exiled New Orleans musicians – led by arranger Harold Battiste – were making headway as session players.

Rebennack became a member of the most revered Hollywood session group of all, the Wrecking Crew, playing with everyone from Sonny and Cher to Frank Zappa, but professed himself dissatisfied and homesick. Pining for New Orleans, he created the character of Dr John, loosely based on the legend of a 19th-century Senegalese freed slave turned New Orleans voodoo king, the music inspired by the disparate sounds Rebennack had heard at a spiritualist church in the Lower Ninth Ward. Here, he claimed, “Hindus and Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Masons, even voodoos” all worshipped together. He initially developed the idea for singer and actor Ronnie Barron, but when Barron balked, Rebennack took on the role, surrounding himself with fellow New Orleans expats and recording Gris Gris in late 1967.

Alexis Petridis / The Guardian

Don's Tunes reminds us . . . . . 

So whatcha gonna do if someone shoots you in the finger? Why drop the guitar and take up piano of course!

From the good doctor’s how to play boogie woogie video!

Dr John (Mac Rebennack ) - Swannee River Boogie