Dr. John
Onhwy61, here are some songs from that album; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRenPt9yFjw&list=PLTOrvx7SLrnkZP-JkmbBEi_nQE2d5OEHV&index=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCBdO4w6jAs&list=PLTOrvx7SLrnkZP-JkmbBEi_nQE2d5OEHV&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djlBe8DcNbM&list=PLTOrvx7SLrnkZP-JkmbBEi_nQE2d5OEHV&index=5 |
Dr. John loved N'Orleans and N'Orleans loved Dr. John. When I was in basic training at Lackland AFB, I came to be good friends with a guy named Petry who was about as N'Orleans as any one could get, and that was the way he pronounced it. Evidently no one here is a fan of N'Orleans music, but what others don't know is that if you're a fan of Blues, or R&B, then you are a fan of N'Orleans music; it's just that the musicians in the Crescent City didn't bother to get their music copyrighted, and it spread from one honky tonk juke joint to another, all the way to Chicago without being attributed to N'Orleans. At an early age, Malcolm John Rebennack was exposed to the music of King Oliver and Louis Armstrong who inspired Ske-Dat-De-Dat: The Spirit of Satch. As a young man, Rebennack was interested in New Orleans voodoo, and in Los Angeles, he developed the idea of the Dr. John persona for his old friend Ronnie Barron, based on the life of Dr. John, a Senegalese prince, conjure man, herb doctor, and spiritual healer who came to New Orleans from Haiti. This free man of color lived on Bayou Road and claimed to have 15 wives and over 50 children. He kept an assortment of snakes and lizards, along with embalmed scorpions and animal and human skulls, and sold gris-gris, voodoo amulets which supposedly protect the wearer from harm. Rebennack decided to produce a record and a stage show based on this concept, with Dr. John serving as an emblem of New Orleans heritage. Although initially, the plan was for Barron to front the act assuming the identity of "Dr. John", while Rebennack worked behind the scenes as Dr. John's writer, musician, and producer, this did not come to pass. Barron dropped out of the project, and Rebennack took over the role (and identity) of Dr. John. Gris-Gris became the name of Dr. John's debut album, released in January 1968, representing his own form of "voodoo medicine". Although I wasn't exposed to Dr. John's music until very late in my life, I immediately identified with some of it, because I lived the the life of "Wine woman and song" as long as I could. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRazR0ZSgSc Tell me about it; always clean and pressed, acting real cool, but it was One 2 A. M. too many. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cliguXSUvt8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzuWKyZYxcE |
