Dr. John, Mac Rebennack and Me…

I know my family is supposed to be from the Bas region of France. They arrived in New Orleans in 1813 or 1830. They had a place on Bayou Road which is now Governor Nicholas Street. My great, great, great aunt Pauline Rebennack was involved with a guy who had my name, Dr. John. He was a Banbera cat and they had a whorehouse out by what they call Little Woods in New Orleans. Bayou Road was an historical street in
what they call the Treme area of New Orleans today. Jelly Roll Morton grew up on that street. The one thing the Third Ward was famous for was that Louis Armstrong was born there. Unfortunately, the politicians in New Orleans decided not to keep his pad a tourista spot and tore it down. It's a movie equipment store now, that's typical political stuff.
Mac Rebennack aka Dr. John

I was really young, but I didn't really get to know him. My father was going to fix a PA at the Caledonia Club, and I was standing by the car. I remember meeting him. Later, I met him outside of a joint called The Cephapod in Parda, Louisiana, and I really got to rap with him. He was sittin' on a stump and rubbin' his rump, disgusted. He and his vibe were so hip that I was just magnetized to the cat, you know? I asked him, 'Wow, what are you doin' when you're doin' all the stuff like that?' And he said, "That's double note crossovers." And I said, Well, what is that stuff when I see your hands going all over?' And he says, "Over and unders." He had names for everything. He'd say things to his band guys, like, this oola-mala-walla stuff, and I thought, Wow, this guy's speakin' in tongues. I was also fascinated that he was sitting out there in a turtleneck shirt with a beautiful gold chain with a watch hangin' on it, and an Army fatigue cp on his head. And I thought, Wow, I never seen nobody dressed like this guy. Just everything about the man was totally hip, and he had gloves on him too, beautiful silk gloves. I'll never forget this.
Dr. John meeting Professor Longhair

***Dr. John Plays Mac Rebennack (1981) signed by Dr. John***

Well, I tell you what: he taught us all something. He would play a bit more fonky but the thing that 'Fess always said was to "frollock." He wanted the whole band to "frollock" behind the guy's solo. That was his word. He had a million words that he used how he used them and meant what he meant by them. Once you got that, he was wonderful to
work for, he was special. There was a million things he had names for on the piano like "oh that's double note crossover" or "Over and unders." That's not musical terminology, so I love that. I wish I was him.
Dr. John on his idol Professor Longhair
I watched a lot of people doin' it all the time, throwin' their lives away. I didn't respect them, but somewhere along the line I decided to try it. I don't know what happened between one and the other or how it transpired, but I looked at guys who did something stupid and ignorant and then, all of a sudden, I'm doing the very same thing they did. I
was a pretty young man, you know? I'm grateful for the twenty years I've been away from it all. I'm blessed. I survived a lot of things. Gettin' shot in my finger was one thing, gettin' shot in my ass was another thing, so was gettin' shanked in my back. You get stabbed enough times, that's not healthy either.
Mac Rebennack 2010, gratitude for his twenty years of sobriety

***Desitively Bonnaroo (1974) signed by Dr. John The Nite Tripper***

Malcolm John Michael Rebennack Jr., aka Dr. John, is one of the most celebrated and recorded artists in the rich history of New Orleans music. Winner of six Grammys and an inductee into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, Dr. John led a remarkable life. From his early recordings in the late 1950s to countless sessions with Gregg Allman, The Band, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Beth Orton, The Rolling Stones, Sonny and Cher, and Frank Zappa, to his more than thirty-five solo albums, Dr. John sprinkled and spread his love and talent with his singularly mesmerizing piano and gruff vocals. As Aaron Neville once said, "He wasn't just New Orleans, he was worldwide. He brought New Orleans everywhere." He was truly one of a kind, and his music and songs still resound and resonate.

Born in New Orleans, Mac grew up in the Third Ward where his father ran an appliance store. Mac remembered, "He fixed radios, televisions, PA systems. I guess that's how I first met a lot of musicians. He would sometimes take me and sister around with him when he'd be going in these clubs to fix something, and bein' a nosy little kid, I'd go check it all out. But he also sold records, and this was my favorite part of him, because he used to supply all these hotels on South Rampart Street with 'race records." This was before they called 'em rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll and blues and stuff, and I would get all the used ones when the hotels' got a little too scratchy. I had this hellfire collection." Nothing beats crate digging from your dad's business and personal collection, but Mac was just getting started with his musical exposures and experiences.

Surrounded by a musical family, his aunts, uncles and cousins were all musicians of varying skill and success, Mac started playing guitar and piano, and gigging around the fertile New Orleans music scene, "Well, we used to play gigs in the Rue Dominguez, but it wasn't just a gig in a whorehouse. It was for a party they were having for clients and girls, and some of 'em was pretty swanky deals. I was about thirteen or fourteen when I first started playing gigs around New Orleans. This guy Leonard James, he would take me to work gigs - strip joints, shake dances, whorehouses, grocery stores, department stores - anywhere - most places you wouldn't never think nobody would want to have music, but this guy was a great hustler." Within this decadent and expansive milieu, Mac flourished, not a surprising result, given his colorful lineage and bloodline. After all, nothing screams New Orleans nobility louder than a fourth-generation (removed) whorehouse operator and musician.

***In A Sentimental Mood (1989) signed by Dr. John***

As his skills improved, Mac reached a turning point when he met the redoubtable piano legend Professor Longhair. Mac recalled, "I was working a gig at Lincoln Beach with Roy Brown, and Longhair came by one night and said he needed a band. And we all quit, we didn't even give Roy Brown extra notice, we just went along with the local hero. So we was leavin' like a six night a week gig and goin' to work maybe one night a week. Maybe. And that's what it was. Maybe we rehearsed a lot. He'd sit down and tell us, I don't want you guys to play this the same way. I'm gonna show you how it goes, but I want you to take that and run with it. I wish I had listened to him more. He used to tell me what you were doin', includin' messing with that other shit, so you wouldn't be a disaster, 'One thing you gotta learn is, if you smoke weed, it ain't so bad. But if you shoot dope, it's gonna fuck everything.' He was real aware of where some differences came that people wasn't in those days. He was aware if you played music for the money, you wasn't gonna be a good musician. But if you played music for lovin' the music, at least you cared about that. It was a major thing, because it connected with my livelihood..."

Soon, Mac was spending all his time at clubs and the Jesuits at his high school gave him an ultimatum: school or music. Fortunately, Mac picked music and we are all the richer for his prescient choice. Mac continued playing and recorded with Art Neville, Allen Toussaint and Joe Tex, then signed on with Ace Records as an A&R (Artist & Repertoire) man. Mac had a minor hit in 1959 with “Storm Warning," a tribute to Bo Diddley, and he produced other artists and mixed with other legendary New Orleans fixtures like James Booker and Earl King. Mac was not quite eighteen years old, working primarily as a guitarist while lying about his age so he could be admitted into clubs.

Mac's career as a guitarist came to an abrupt end when he got into a fight with a motel owner while on tour in Jacksonville, Florida. Mac was shot and his ring finger was nearly severed which made his guitar playing and subsequent recovery difficult. Mac recalled his rough and rowdy ways with his unique and inimitable diction, "I look at it like I probably wouldn't have got shot in my finger had I not been so nervous about (bandmate and pianist) Ronnie Barron getting beat to death with a guy's gun. Ronnie's mother said she would chop my cojones off with a butcher knife if anything happened to him, and he was strung when he was a kid, probably too young to be on the road. But the point was, we played a lot of dangerous joints, I'm surprised it didn't happen before that. I never thought I would get shot in my finger... I just thought I'd get killed or somethin' in one of them fights because there was a lot of shootin'." As he began his slow and painful convalescence from his gunshot injury, Mac began to concentrate on his piano skills.

***Indigo Blue (1983) signed by Dr. John, Hank Crawford, Howard Johnson, David Fathead Newman, Bernard Pretty Purdie, Melvin Sparks***

I'm sure the unprescribed drugs which he took helped Mac recover from his injury to a degree, but, unfortunately, he got enmeshed in the seedy drug underworld and got busted for heroin possession and served a two year sentence in federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas. When he was released in 1965, Mac headed west to Los Angeles and became an important session musician for many, including Phil Spector and his "Wall Of Sound" which graced the recordings of The Righteous Brothers, The Ronettes, and so many others.

Soon, Mac would introduce the Dr. John character to the world, a transformation that would endure for decades, "Well there was a guy, the name of Dr. John, a hoodoo guy in New Orleans. He was competition to Marie Laveau, he was like her opposite... I actually got a clipping from the Times Picayune newspaper about how my great-great-great-grandpa Wayne was busted with this guy for runnin' a voodoo operation in a whorehouse in 1860. I decided I would produce the record with this as a concept. I was gonna produce Ronnie Barron, I had no intention of bein' Dr. John. That was an album concept I had for somebody else, but it turned out we was doin' some session work for Sonny and Cher and Ronnie Barron's manager said it was a bad career move for Ronnie. He saw him doin' stuff like Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions or Staple Singers. He was probably right. I only did it out of bein' pissed off, and I had never thought of being a front man for anybody. The idea of that was always kind of repulsive to me, 'cause I hated front men. I liked doin' a gig, dry up and do another one." Undoubtedly, a bad career move for Ronnie Barron, but a home run for Mac Rebennack!

So the character of Dr. John was introduced to the world in 1968 on Gris-Gris, to which Atlantic Records founder and head Ahmet Ertegun said to Mac, "What is this record you gave me? Why didn't you give me a record we could sell?" Undaunted, Dr. John toured in full N'Awlins bacchanalia regalia, replete with feathers, elaborate headdresses, witch doctor robes and a walking stick festooned with skulls and other voodoo ephemera. His stage show, at one time, even featured Prince Klyama who bit the heads off of live chickens on stage, much to the horror of PETA advocates, who didn't even exist then! Certainly, there was nothing quite like a Dr. John concert, circa 1969!

***The Brightest Smile In Town (1983) signed by Dr. John***

I was blessed to see Dr. John many times over the years and he always put on a remarkable show. Beyond the spectacle of his towering stage presence, Mac had incredible piano chops, his musical brilliance always outshone his sometime outlandish wardrobe. A couple of shows standout.

In the mid 1980s, I saw the good Doctor perform a solo piano show at Blues Alley in Washington, DC, a small, intimate club in an old carriage house with seats for one hundred-twenty-five guests. Erin couldn't make it, so I went with my great friend Danny Callahan, a fellow music lover and fervent believer in "Laissez Les Bontemps Rouler!" Dr. John came out and sat down at the grand Steinway which was in the middle of the stage and played songs off his solo piano releases Dr. John Plays Mac Rebennack and The Brightest Smile In Town. After playing for thirty minutes or so, he took off his top hat, placed it on top of the piano, and said, "I don't got a set list or nothin' so if ya have any requests, just write 'em down, put 'em in the hat and I'll try and play 'em." That led to some folks dutifully filling out requests on scraps of paper and placing them in the hat, all the while Dr. John continued to play flawlessly. Despite Danny's exhortations, I did not place anything into the Doctor's magical hat. I've always believed that the artist should play whatever they want, and I'll save my grousing on what they did or didn't play for the drive home. After the show, I ambled upstairs to his dressing room, and Mac signed Dr John Plays Mac Rebennack which he inscribed with a piano and musical notes, possibly my favorite inscription of the thousands of records we have procured.

***Doug Sahm And Band (1973) signed by Dr. John, David Fathead Newman, David Bromberg***

Many years later, I saw him again at the Blue Note in New York City with a full band. After the show, I went for a visit in his dressing room. Mac loved seeing Doug Sahm and Band which had an illustrated cover of Bob Dylan, David Bromberg, David Newman and many others who participated on this fabled session, "Look, ya got Fathead on here, he's one of my main men. Yeah, I gotta sign this, and Hank Crawford on this album too! Yeah these some serious cats." Dr. John was as voluble signing these albums as he was singing songs onstage previously.

***Midnight Ramble (1983) signed by Dr. John, Hank Crawford, Howard Johnson, David Fathead Newman, Bernard Pretty Purdie***

The last time I saw him, Mac was performing at a tribute to his great friend, the producer and former DJ Joel Dorn {"The Masked Announcer") at Lincoln Center in New York in August 2008. Dorn, who had died suddenly in December 2007, was a gifted producer who had worked with Mose Allison, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Bette Midler, Max Roach and so many others. The concert was curated by the late Hal Willner and there was a tremendous outpouring of love and support from artists whom Joel had nurtured. Roberta Flack, Les McCann and Bette Midler were just a few of the performers who sang their biggest hits. Mac, however, gave the best performance by far, an earnest and heartfelt unaccompanied piano version of "April Showers." Though this song had been around since 1921 when Al Jolson recorded it, along with Judy Garland, Bing Crosby and so many others, Mac made it his own. As he said in his intro, "This is a song that Jo-el, he wanted me to record this song, and I didn't think I ever wanted to play this song again too much. But I'm gonna do it tonight in Jo-el's memory." Mac captured the pathos and world weary resignation that only he could conjure in this stunning performance. It was extraordinary. I only wish Mac had recorded it as Joel Dorn, always a man of exquisite taste, had suggested.

Dr. John was a genre unto himself, an intoxicating amalgam of blues, boogie woogie, gospel, jazz, rock, soul and voodoo. He was an original who left an incredible legacy, of this, there should be no "confusement," as Mac would say in his uniquely fractured English. As he once said, "I think it's the proper thing for a musician to keep playing until the last song is sung and you fall over and die. That way, the band don't have to play an encore and they will get paid for the gig. That's the correct thing... because they have no retirement plans for musicians anyway."
Thanks Mac, you were always in the right place at the right time with the right songs.