New Orleans Swamp JuJu meets psycedelia!
Dr John – I walk on Guilded Splinters
Today’s music to keep me SANE in Isolation – Dr John
Straight out of New Orleans – Mac Rebennack – a performer of great skill and charisma – creating a fusion of New Orleans Boogie, Pop, Zydeco and Creole with psychedelia, Rock and R&B.
He first came to my attention back in the 60s with his fabulous album Gris Gris – Dr John The Night Tripper.
I hadn’t heard anything quite like it.
I only got to see him once – that was in a club in Hull with just him and his piano – He came on in all his shamanic costume – all cloaks, bags, scarves, beads and headdress with a crooked adorned stick. Magic.
My friend did a half hour interview with him. A great evening.
So today I’ll be playing Dr John at full volume!! That’ll drive the gloomy spirits away!!
So Long Dr John! – I’ll miss you!
I heard the sad news today that Dr John – The Night Tripper – has died at the tender age of seventy seven.
I first heard of Mac Rebennack back in the late sixties when he adopted his new persona of Dr John with his gowns, headdresses, juju, mojo bags and New Orleans accoutrements. He developed a psychedelic voodoo full of all the rhythms of New Orleans and psychedelic Rock which fitted right into the weirdness of the 60s Underground. That album Gris-gris, with its wonderful I Walk On Guilded Splinters, really made a splash in my head and on a large number of other people too.
Unbeknown to me I’d already heard him quite a lot. He’s been a session man in LA and New Orleans working with the likes of Sonny and Cher, Mothers of Invention and Canned Heat.
Mac had left quite a life – starting off as a kid playing with the great Professor Longhair and then recording with a lot of people in New Orleans and even having a minor hit with Storm Warning. He was involved with a lot of dodgy business – running a brothel and drug dealing.
I was lucky enough to get to see him up close in a small club in Hull. I sat in the front row while he regaled us with his magic for a whole evening.
He came on dressed like a shamanic voodoo god – all bright robes, beads, ribbons, scarves, mojo bags and a great gnarled stick. He sat at the piano and regaled us with a range of great classics – including a great version of Iko-Iko. What a night.
I’ll miss you Mac! Thanks for the music!
Dr John – Opher’s World pays tribute to genius.
I am presently working on a book of tributes to Rock geniuses. This is an extract:
Dr John
Straight out of the voodoo bayous of New Orleans, steeped in ju-ju, gris-gris and the mystical shamanism of Madame Leroux, ears ringing with the rhythms of Treme with its Professor Longhair and Huey ‘Piano’ Smith magic, transformed by ritual ceremony, Mac Rebennack, a session musician in New Orleans, was transformed into the supernatural being that was Dr John.
In the late 1960s he emerged on to the Acid Rock Scene as a weird shaman festooned with mojo bags, hats, beads, gowns, gnarled sticks, emblems, mystical signs and things gathered from the mists of the swamps of Louisiana. With his strange, elaborate, bizarre and uncommunicative persona he became Dr John the Night-tripper and fitted in perfectly. The mumbo-jumbo of New Orleans Creole sounded just fine. It did not seem the least odd. The music marinated in the swamp-blues and boogie-woogie rhythms of Ammons, Willie Hall and Longhair, hanging with the Spanish moss and mist of Cajun and dosed with the lysergic acid of psychedelia was esoteric and primeval. Superb stuff. I’d walk on gilded splinters to hear it any day.
Even when he’d left the big band behind and it was just Dr John doing his interpretations of New Orleans classics like ‘Iko Iko’ and ‘Baldhead’ he still had the mystique and was something to see and hear. Lee Scratch Perry is the nearest spectacle to Dr John. They could be twins.