Top Ten Reasons We Love Dr. John (11-20-41 to 06-16-19)
I was sixteen years old when I first saw Dr. John. He was already a Night Tripper and I wasn’t (yet). I was barely a musical adventurer and going to my first festival, Atlantic City Pop Festival, August 1,2,3,1969. It was the initial gathering of the tribes, two weeks before Woodstock happened a little further north. I went alone, slept in my car, and I believe my reasoning was that a sixteen-year-old driver license didn’t include after-hours cruising in New Jersey…whether that was true or not has not been verified. The bill was staggering; Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jefferson Airplane, Joni Mitchell, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Janis Joplin, Sir Douglas Quintet, The Byrds, Iron Butterfly, Johnny Winter, B.B. King, Canned Heat, Booker T & The M.G.’s, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (yep, set himself on fire), Joe Cocker, Mississippi Fred McDowell, The Chamber Brothers, and Santana, who played both days as a pay-for-play gig since they were then-unknown outside of San Francisco.
So, I wasn’t there to see Dr. John the Night Tripper but the memory of his set is so firmly embedded in my mind that I can’t recall any of the audience around me, nothing in back or front, just me and the band on stage. I now know that musically, Dr. John in 1969 was mostly percussion-driven trance, the natural sounds of New Orleans, Zulu rhythms and street parades, a mountain of feathers and silver. I was hooked, entranced way before I knew of the zone trance music offered as s safe space. I saw Dr. John many times after that, both solo and with a band. His message on stage, on record, and in conversation was consistent. Mac Rebennack aka Dr. John spoke of love in his words and in his music. His love for the music as a vehicle to bring change if only for a minute dancing to “Iko Iko” (the New Orleans National Anthem) or smiling at the logic behind the question of infidelity in “Such a Night (‘if I don’t do it you know somebody else will’).
His own influence from the Crescent City were local heroes….Professor Longhair and Allen Toussaint. Dr. John took the music of his personal past and married it to an intuitive sense of rhythm and melody. As much as New Orleans was in the heart of Mac Rebennack, the sound of the city was engrained in the music of Dr. John. His albums of covers and his output of original material all bore the same musical stamp, a hybrid of styles translated through the fingers of Dr. John. Beginning as a studio musician in the late 1950’s, Mac’s own career blossomed with his introduction of Dr. John the Night Tripper on his 1968 debut, Gris-Gris.
Dr. John is a major chord in the business of music and there are many stories about the man and his music. The real story of Dr. John will forever be told in the music he left with his work on over 20 studio albums.
Spotify EMBED code:
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I was sixteen years old when I first saw Dr. John. He was already a Night Tripper and I wasn’t (yet). I was barely a musical adventurer and going to my first festival, Atlantic City Pop Festival, August 1,2,3,1969. It was the initial gathering of the tribes, two weeks before Woodstock happened a little further north. I went alone, slept in my car, and I believe my reasoning was that a sixteen-year-old driver license didn’t include after-hours cruising in New Jersey…whether that was true or not has not been verified. The bill was staggering; Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jefferson Airplane, Joni Mitchell, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Janis Joplin, Sir Douglas Quintet, The Byrds, Iron Butterfly, Johnny Winter, B.B. King, Canned Heat, Booker T & The M.G.’s, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (yep, set himself on fire), Joe Cocker, Mississippi Fred McDowell, The Chamber Brothers, and Santana, who played both days as a pay-for-play gig since they were then-unknown outside of San Francisco.
So, I wasn’t there to see Dr. John the Night Tripper but the memory of his set is so firmly embedded in my mind that I can’t recall any of the audience around me, nothing in back or front, just me and the band on stage. I now know that musically, Dr. John in 1969 was mostly percussion-driven trance, the natural sounds of New Orleans, Zulu rhythms and street parades, a mountain of feathers and silver. I was hooked, entranced way before I knew of the zone trance music offered as s safe space. I saw Dr. John many times after that, both solo and with a band. His message on stage, on record, and in conversation was consistent. Mac Rebennack aka Dr. John spoke of love in his words and in his music. His love for the music as a vehicle to bring change if only for a minute dancing to “Iko Iko” (the New Orleans National Anthem) or smiling at the logic behind the question of infidelity in “Such a Night (‘if I don’t do it you know somebody else will’).
His own influence from the Crescent City were local heroes….Professor Longhair and Allen Toussaint. Dr. John took the music of his personal past and married it to an intuitive sense of rhythm and melody. As much as New Orleans was in the heart of Mac Rebennack, the sound of the city was engrained in the music of Dr. John. His albums of covers and his output of original material all bore the same musical stamp, a hybrid of styles translated through the fingers of Dr. John. Beginning as a studio musician in the late 1950’s, Mac’s own career blossomed with his introduction of Dr. John the Night Tripper on his 1968 debut, Gris-Gris.
Dr. John is a major chord in the business of music and there are many stories about the man and his music. The real story of Dr. John will forever be told in the music he left with his work on over 20 studio albums.
Spotify EMBED code:
<iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/3cgxfrRh8WHAVXYHTsSOAM" width="300" height="380" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe>
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