|
 The New Orleans native, born Malcolm John Rebennack into a
family of amateur musicians, including an aunt who taught him to
play piano, died "toward the break of day" from a heart attack,
his family announced on his official Twitter account.
Immersed in music from a young age, he was an avid radio
listener, and his father, who sold records in his appliance
store, sometimes took his son along to nightclubs when he worked
on their sound systems.
In grade school he began hanging around clubs, and by the time
he was a teenager, Rebennack was playing in rough bars and strip
clubs. Along the way, he absorbed a blend of rhythm and blues,
cowboy songs, gospel and jazz, as well as New Orleans' Mardi
Gras music, boogie, barrelhouse piano and funk - or "fonk," as
he pronounced it.
Early on he was principally a guitarist, but errant gunplay in
1961 led him to change course. One of his fingers was nearly
blown off when he intervened to help the singer in his band, who
was being pistol-whipped by another man.
The finger did not heal sufficiently for proper guitar playing
right away, but was less troublesome on a piano, and eventually
Dr. John would become an heir to the New Orleans keyboard
tradition of Jelly Roll Morton, Professor Longhair, Huey "Piano"
Smith and Fats Domino.
OFF TO PRISON
He also was a successful record producer, session player and
songwriter in New Orleans before a lifestyle of hanging around
addicts, hustlers and thieves while working as a pimp caught up
with him.
He had started smoking marijuana at age 12, and was a regular
heroin user before being kicked out of high school and landing
in prison on drug charges in 1965, he wrote in his
autobiography, "Under a Hoodoo Moon."
By the time he had finished his prison sentence in Texas, the
local prosecutor in New Orleans was trying to clean up the city,
and he was advised not to return.
That was how he ended up in Los Angeles, nearly 2,000 miles
(3,200 km) from his hometown, creating the persona of Dr. John
the Night Tripper, a shaman-like figure draped in furs and
feathers, beads and Mardi Gras Indian-style headdresses who
would make his entrance in a cloud of smoke.
He had concocted the stage character, based on a 19th-century
New Orleans medicine man, for another singer but took it on
himself when that performer declined to go along.
After working as a studio musician for everyone from Sonny and
Cher to the Monkees, Dr. John recorded his first album, "Gris-Gris,"
in 1968 with the help of several New Orleans natives.
The record, named for a protective amulet worn in voodoo
culture, was inspired by the city's music with his own twists,
making it moody and mysterious with a tinge of psychedelia. It
was not a big seller but found a cult audience among rock fans.
[to top of second column] |
In 1972 his "Dr. John's Gumbo" album featured more traditional New
Orleans songs, such as "Iko Iko," "Junko Partner," "Blow Wind Blow,"
"Big Chief" and "Let the Good Times Roll."
BULLFROG WITH A HANGOVER
That was followed in 1973 by "In the Right Place," which featured
two standbys of the New Orleans music scene - producer Allen
Touissant and the band The Meters.
With a unique vocal style reminiscent of a bullfrog with a hangover,
the album would become Dr. John's biggest commercial success, thanks
to the hits "Right Place, Wrong Time" and "Such a Night."
"Music is the one thing that keeps me alive and happy. If it don't
be for music, I think I would have threw in the towel," he told the
Times-Picayune newspaper in a 2011 interview.
A conversation with Dr. John almost required a translator to
understand his malapropisms, Creole patois, hipster lingo and
fabricated words, all spiced with profanities.
"What goes around slides around, and what slides around slips
around," he once told the Times-Picayune in typical Dr. John-speak.
"As long as it’s slippin’ and slidin’ around, we ain’t got to trip
through the shortcuts of life. We can take the long way around. It’s
the shortcuts that kill you."
After Los Angeles, Dr. John moved to New York in the late 1970s, and
in 1989 he finally overcame his heroin problem. He returned to live
in the New Orleans area in 2009.
Dr. John recorded some 35 albums, and three of them won Grammys - "Goin'
Back to New Orleans" for best tradition album in 1992; "City That
Care Forgot" about the destruction and heartbreak of Hurricane
Katrina; and 2013's "Locked Down," which touched on his prison time,
drugs and efforts to repair his relationship with his children.
He also picked up Grammys for a 1989 duet with Rickie Lee Jones on "Makin'
Whoopee" and his contributions on the songs "SRV Shuffle" in 1996
and "Is You Is or Is You Ain't (My Baby)" in 2000.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.
Dr. John was married twice and told the New York Times he had "a
lot" of children.
(The story refiles to add dropped word "of" in 2nd paragraph.)
(Reporting and Writing by Bill Trott in Washington; additional
reporting by Jill Serjeant; editing by Diane Craft
[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |
