Malcolm John Rebennack Jr. obit

Remembering Dr. John, Who Changed the Sound of New Orleans

He was not on the list.



Dr. John left this world on June 6, 2019 as a paragon of American musical authenticity, but for a good portion of his 60-year career, purity seemed a secondary consideration. The pianist born Mac Rebennack wasn’t interested in merely keeping the old ways alive, he wanted them to grow and expand. Rebennack borrowed and built upon the work of other musicians, underscoring the rich, complicated musical heritage of his hometown of New Orleans but also slyly weaving new sounds into the Crescent City’s heady brew of jazz, blues, and rock’n’roll. His own innovations of incorporating psychedelia and slick funk into New Orleans music became part of the Big Easy tradition, which eventually gave him the air of an elder statesman—an ambassador, even. It was enough to convey an air of respectability for a musician who, like so many great American artists, came from disreputable beginnings.

The very creation of the Dr. John persona was a bit of a ruse. Rebennack thought up the hippie voodoo priest character alongside producer and pianist Harold Battiste, while the pair were playing high-profile session gigs in the late 1960s. Neither expected Rebennack to step into the role: Dr. John was made with Mac’s old high school pal Ronnie Barron in mind, but Barron couldn’t free himself from a record contract. For once, Rebennack and Barron found a constraint they couldn’t conquer. Growing up in New Orleans, they treated laws and conventions as mere suggestions.

Barron and Rebennack cut their teeth in the greasy clubs and strip joints that littered New Orleans in the 1950s, releasing a few singles under a variety of names. One of those monikers, Ronnie & the Delinquents, summed up the duo’s degenerate ways—a lifestyle that led to Rebennack severely injuring his left ring finger in a pistol accident while protecting Ronnie in a 1961 fight. Undaunted, Mac swapped his guitar for the piano. He played recording sessions all day and bars all night, worked as a talent scout for the Mississippi label Ace Records, and nursed a heroin addiction all the while. His taste for dope led him to prison and once his time ended in 1965, he jetted out to Los Angeles, where he resumed playing sessions.

Among the records graced by Rebennack’s presence were several sides by Sonny & Cher. The Hollywood duo were hip enough to make Battiste their musical director—a sign of how even mainstream stars were seeking to broaden their horizons in the late ’60s—but the producer had his designs on more far out sounds. When it came time to record 1968’s Gris-Gris, Rebennack and Battiste drew upon the traditions and myths of New Orleans—the one American city where African, European, and Native North American cultures intermingle in a meaningful way—while also embracing the psychedelia emerging from the rock’n’roll underground. Billed to Dr. John, The Night Tripper (an extended appellation riffing on the slang for acid-assisted voyages), Gris-Gris sounds funky and free in a way that no other mind-bending LP of the era does. The album seems conjured as much as created.