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NEW ORLEANS (AP) – New Orleans musician John mixed black-and-white music styles with a hoodoo and groggy bayou scene character died on Thursday, his family said. He was 77 years old.
In a statement released through the intermediary of his publicist, the family said that Dr. John, born Mac Rebennack, had died "around the clock" of a heart attack. They did not indicate where he died or gave any other details. He has not been seen much in public since the end of 2017, when he canceled several concerts. Journalist Karen Beninato said last year in an interview that he was resting at home in the New Orleans area.
Memorial arrangements were being planned. "The family thanks everyone who has shared its unique musical journey and asks for confidentiality at that time," the statement said.
His spooky debut, "Gray-Gray," combines rhythmic blues and psychedelic rock and surprise listeners with his sinister implications of the magic of another world. He later had success in the Top 10 with "Right Place, Wrong Time", collaborated with many prominent rockers, won numerous Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
A white man who sought refuge with black New Orleans musicians, he entered the music scene when he accompanied his father, who ran a record shop and also repaired the PA systems in the bars of New Orleans. New Orleans.
As a teenager in the 1950s, he played guitar and keyboard in a string of musicians and made Cosimo Matassa's second legendary studio his home away from home, Rebennack said in his 1994 memoir, "Under a Hoodoo Moon." after dropping out of high school, became familiar with drugs and petty crime and lived a hectic life. His concerts ranged from strip clubs to auditoriums, truck stops and chicken shacks. The ring finger of Rebennack's left hand was torn off during a shooting in 1961 in Jacksonville, Florida.
He blamed Jim Garrison, conspiracy theorist JFK and attorney at the New Orleans Bar to fight crime, for driving him out of his beloved city in the early 1960s. prostitutes, bars and concert halls all night long.
The underworld swept Rebennack into jail. At that time, he was a respected session musician who had played on classical recordings of great musicians such as Professor Longhair and Irma Thomas, but he was also addicted to heroin. After being released from the federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, at the age of 24, Rebennack joined a friend and mentor, Harold Battiste, who had left New Orleans to make music in Los Angeles.
Rebennack, who had long been fascinated by occult mysticism and voodoo, told Battiste how to create a musical personality from Dr. John, a male version of Marie Laveau, the queen of voodoo.
In his memoirs, Rebennack said he was inspired by the folklore of New Orleans about a root physician who flourished in the mid-19th century.
Battiste, in a 2005 interview, recalled: "It was really kind of a chat."
But Dr. John was born and Rebennack made his first personal recordings in what became "Gray-Gray", a 1967 underground American classic.
In the years that followed, he played with The Grateful Dead, appeared with The Band in the documentary "The Last Waltz" by director Martin Scorsese, performed on the Rolling Stones album "Exile on Main Street" and collaborated with Countless others, including Earl King, Van Morrison and James Booker.
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