New Orleans musician laureate of a Grammy, Dr. John, died at age 77

Dr. John, a six-time Grammy Award winner, played as "Night Tripper", has thrilled New Orleans' voodoo scene on the American music scene and has become one of the most accomplished pianists. revered of the rich musical history of the city. 77.

A native of New Orleans, Malcolm John Rebennack, born into a family, amateur musicians, including an aunt who taught him to play the piano, died "about the time of day" from a heart attack, a announced his family on his official Twitter account.

Immersed in music from an early age, he was a passionate radio listener. His father, who sold records in his home appliance store, sometimes took his son to nightclubs when he was working on their sound systems.

In elementary school, he started hanging out in clubs and, when he was a teenager, Rebennack was playing in rough bars and strip clubs. Along the way, he absorbed a mix of rhythms and blues, cowboy songs, gospel and jazz, as well as Mardi Gras music from New Orleans, boogie, piano barilhouse and funk. – or "fonk", as he pronounced it.

At first he was mainly guitarist, but a wandering shooter in 1961 led him to change course. One of his fingers nearly fell when he intervened to help the singer of his group, who was being whipped by another man.

The finger did not heal enough so that the guitar playing was ok right now, but posed fewer piano problems, and Dr. John would eventually become an heir to Jelly Roll Morton's New Orleans Keyboard tradition, Professor Longhair, Huey "Piano" Smith and Domino Greases.

He was also a record producer, session player, and a well-known songwriter in New Orleans before dealing with drug addicts, prostitutes, and thieves as he worked as a pimp who caught up with him.

He had started smoking marijuana at the age of 12 and was a regular at heroin before being kicked out of high school and being sentenced to jail time. 1965 for drug indictment. He wrote in his autobiography "Under a Hoodoo Moon".

At the end of his prison sentence in Texas, the New Orleans attorney was trying to clean the city and he had been advised not to return.

That's how he went to Los Angeles, nearly 3,200 km from his hometown, creating the character of Dr. John the Night Tripper, a shamanic figure draped in furs and of feathers, pearls and Indian style Mardi Gras. headdresses that would enter a cloud of smoke.

He had concocted for another singer the character of theater based on a medical man of New Orleans in the nineteenth century, but took it to himself when this artist had refused to follow him.

After working as a studio musician for all, from Sonny and Cher to Monkees, Dr. John recorded his first album, "Gris-Gris", in 1968 with the help of several New Orleans natives.

The disc, which owes its name to an amulet of protection carried in the voodoo culture, is inspired by the music of the city with its own twists, making it dark and mysterious with a psychedelic hue. He was not a big seller, but a cult audience among rock fans.

In 1972, his album "Dr. John's Gumbo" contained more traditional songs from New Orleans, such as "Iko Iko", "Junko Partner", "Blow Wind Blow", "Big Chief" and " Let the Good Times Roll ".

This was followed in 1973 by "In the Right Place", which featured two personalities from 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 greatest commercial success, thanks to the hits "Right Place, Wrong Time" and "Such a Night".

"Music is the only thing that keeps me alive and happy.If it was not for music, I think I would have thrown in the sponge," he told the Times-Picayune newspaper in an interview for the year 2011.

A conversation with Dr. John almost asked a translator to understand his misplacements, his Creole patois, his hipster jargon and his invented words, all embellished with blasphemy.

"What goes around slips and slides," he told Times-Picayune in his typical speech by Dr. John. "As long as it slips and slips, we do not have to stumble into the shortcuts of life – we can take the long way to go – 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 has recorded about 35 albums, three of which have won Grammy awards – "Goin" Back to New Orleans "for Best Tradition Album in 1992; "City That Care Forgot Forgot" on the destruction and sorrow of Hurricane Katrina; and "Locked Down" in 2013, which dealt with his time in prison, drugs and his efforts to re-establish relationships with his children.

He also received Grammys for a 1989 duet with Rickie Lee Jones on "Makin & # 39; Whoopee" and his contributions on the songs "SRV Shuffle" in 1996 and "Are you or have not?" not (my baby) "in 2000.

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.

Dr. John has been married twice and told The New York Times that he had "many" children.