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Malcolm John Rebennack Jr., better known as Dr. John, initially aspired to be a professional songwriter, producer, studio musician and sideman, like the utilities of New Orleanians who have forged his creative vision of the world in the 1950s. He wanted to work behind the scenes, not at the front.
But after assuming the character of Dr. John the Night Tripper in the late 1960s, Rebennack was no longer behind the scenes. His idiosyncratic style and sound – the gritty rumble, sneaky and misleading phrasing, the hipster patois, the Big Easy hybrid piano – embody both New Orleans and his music.
Rebennack, an icon of the city who remained an active creative force and a voice for his hometown until his sudden disappearance from the public 18 months ago, died Thursday of a heart attack after years of deteriorating health, confirmed a member of his family. He would have been 77 years old.
Holiness is not required for the immortality of rock. The young Mac Rebennack was a gangsta likely to shock Lil Wayne.
But over a lifetime and a remarkable career, he has evolved. From dependence to decades of sobriety. Sordid getaways as a croupier and pimp to Disney soundtracks and the model of the sleepy-eyed and talkative Muppet musician, Dr. Teeth. From his own place of residence to one of his most virulent supporters.
Hurricane Katrina has awakened his sense of social responsibility. He expressed his indignation at the official inaptitude and negligence of the Grammy award-winning disc "City That Care Forgot". After the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, he organized demonstrations and lashed out against BP.
And he had a remarkable resurgence at the end of his career thanks to a collaboration that took him out of his comfort zone in New Orleans and allowed him to tap into the old-fashioned Night Tripper aesthetic.
Rebennack grew up in the third room of New Orleans. By the time he was a student at the Jesuit High School, he was already busy recording as a budding guitarist and composer.
Even though he's carved out a formidable musician reputation, he has fallen into a spiral of addiction and petty crime. A shot during a fight in a nightclub damaged one of his fingers. As a result, his interest shifted from the guitar to the piano.
In the mid-1960s, he was incarcerated in a Texas prison for drug trafficking. After his release in 1965, he joined a community of expatriate musicians from New Orleans to Los Angeles.
Among these musicians was Harold Battiste, renowned producer and arranger, who was the musical director of Sonny & Cher. Battiste gave Rebennack a job and also helped him develop a musical project that would bear the name of Dr. John, a voodoo figure from New Orleans.
Initially, Rebennack was to be the backstage leader; a singer named Ronnie Barron was the wanted leader for this new project. But Barron gave up and Rebennack, with a little reluctance, came to the fore.
In January 1968, Atco Records released his first album, "Gris-Gris". On the cover of the album, Rebennack is presented as "Dr. John the Night Tripper "; his songwriter credits identified him as "John Creaux. Recorded in Los Angeles with Battiste's production, "Gris-Gris" is a phantasmagorical synthesis of New Orleans music and psychedelic rock. It ended with "I Walk on Guilded Splinters," one of his most prominent songs. Decades later, Rolling Stone magazine named Gray Gray one of the top 500 albums of all time.
In the late sixties and early seventies, Rebennack fully embraced the voodoo attributes of his character 'Night Tripper'. On stage, he wore sophisticated headdresses and distributed sequins in a pocket (much to the chagrin of Gregg Allman, who remembered having already cleaned the glitter of his keyboards after sharing a bill with Dr. John).
On his 1972 flagship album, "Dr. John's Gumbo, "he revisited a program of Rhythm & Blues classics in New Orleans.
His 1973 album "In the Right Place", produced by Allen Toussaint and featuring the Meters as a band from Rebennack, gives two of his iconic songs: "Right Place, Wrong Time" and "Such a Night".
Over the decades that followed, he published several essential albums to the canon of music in New Orleans, even though he became one of the most enduring, respected and respected musicians and cultural personalities. iconoclasts of the city. His work is inextricably linked to the city that raised him, which almost ruined him and finally brought him back.
On his ambitious 1992 album "Goin 'Back to New Orleans", he captured the breadth and depth of the city's sound, from Indian Mardi Gras songs to funk, to jazz and rhythm & blues. He recruited a group of local contributors for the recording, including the Neville Brothers, Pete Fountain, Al Hirt and Danny Barker.
He was a prominent member of the pantheon of piano legend in New Orleans, belonging to a direct lineage including Fats Domino, Huey "Piano" Smith, Allen Toussaint and Art Neville. His band, the Lower 9-11, especially when it's powered by drummer Herman Ernest, is the focus of traffic in the funky funk of New Orleans.
In his later years, he has lent his distinctive voice to a wide variety of projects. He sang "Down in New Orleans" on the soundtrack of Disney's animated film "The Princess and the Frog." Rebennack's film and television credits also included the theme of an animated TV show "Curious George" and a version of "The Bare Necessities." "For the remake of Disney's 2016" The Jungle Book ". He performed a popular jingle "Love Dat Chicken" for Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits.
In 2011, he was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame alongside Neil Diamond, Alice Cooper, Tom Waits, Leon Russell and the 60's singer Darlene Love. He joined his fellow New Orleans Fats Domino, Dave Bartholomew, Allen Toussaint, Lloyd Price, Jelly Roll Morton, Professor Longhair, Louis Armstrong and Mahalia Jackson in the official sanctuary of rock.
Dr. John, aka Mac Rebennack, and the Nite Trippers perform on the Acura Stage on the second Saturday of the Jazz Fest in New Orleans, Louisiana, Saturday, April 30, 2016.
The following year, he published "Locked Down," one of the most acclaimed albums of his career. Dan Auerbach of the rock duo The Black Keys was the producer of the project. He sought to eliminate layers of cliché and routine to discover the real Mac Rebennack.
He did this by extracting Rebennack from his Big Easy comfort zone, associating him with a set of invigorated young musicians, and encouraging him to play unfamiliar songs and write new ones. They recorded in Auerbach's studio in Nashville; he persuaded Rebennack to play the electric keyboard instead of the piano, which changed the whole complexion of the music.
The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio, among many other media, have hailed "Locked Down" as a masterpiece. Rolling Stone awarded four out of five stars to "Locked Down".
By 2017, Rebennack had already recorded nearly thirty performances across the country, including dates with the Avett brothers at the Red Rocks Amphitheater near Denver and at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. He has also played several times on a tour marking the 40th anniversary of the group's "Last Waltz" farewell concert (he was part of the original "Last Waltz"). In April 2017, he participated in "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" with the group of his compatriot, the New Orleans Jon Batiste.
At the 2017 jazz festival, he played on the main Acura stage on the first Sunday of the party, April 30th. The acts of the day had been swept away by storms, but Rebennack, resplendent in a green suit, had not been troubled by the turmoil.
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He presented his new version of Nite Trippers, a band made up of New Orleans drummer Herlin Riley, bassist Roland Guerin, guitarist Eric Struthers and guest saxophonist Charles Neville. They were closing their stage with an epic Big Chief and a salacious "One Night". Rebennack pushed his way out of the scene, smiling, surrounded by a trio of slightly dressed girls.
Rebennack and Charles Neville, who died of cancer the following spring, are finally at their last show.
In the fall of 2017, Rebennack's health was deteriorating. Over the years, he has struggled against a litany of health problems, including bone spurs in his neck – a result, he says, of years spent on methadone – arthritis and breast cancer syndrome. carpal tunnel.
On October 25, 2017, he recorded a tribute to Domino at the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame celebration in Texas. On stage with Elvis Costello, Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews and members of the Neville Brothers support group, Rebennack seemed to have trouble navigating his piano and vocal parts on Domino's "Is not That A Hme".
A week later, on November 2, 2017, he celebrated his birthday with a reception at lunch time at Napoleon House in the French Quarter. Later in the evening, he materialized on the front steps of the former home of Fats Domino, in the 9th lower hall, after a commemorative parade in his honor.
It was the last significant public appearance of Rebennack.
He would have spent a year and a half living quietly on the north coast, even though his team was keeping his Twitter account with a steady stream of photos, footage and milestones of the time.
"What goes around slips and slides," said Rebennack in 2011, just before his induction into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. "As long as it slides and slips, we must not stumble across the shortcuts of life. We can take the long way around. These are the shortcuts that kill you.
"The best thing you can" love "in music, is yourself."
And there was no one else like him.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
In New Orleans, Leah Chase has long been considered a leader, a source of inspiration, and even an emblem of the best self in her city.
Charles Malachias, who ran the restaurant of the French Quarter Cafe Maspero for 43 years, died Sunday in his home in New Orleans, Quebec.
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