Simply Lou: Such a Life

article by Lou Davenport

YOU CAME HERE WITH MY BEST FRIEND JIM,
AND I’M TRYING TO STEAL YOU FROM HIM

O ur BayouLife issue this month is the “Food Issue.” But “Dr. John” died June 6, 2019 and I knew what I wanted to write about. So, I thought about it until I came up with “Dr. John” was like gumbo. A really good one, too. His “roux” was strong and brown, cooked slowly and constantly stirred. Throw in a little of this and a little of that, some holy trinity, chicken, sausage and any kind of seafood you have. Don’t forget to sprinkle a little “file” on the top. So, using a “Mac-ism,” I’d say this is my “opinionation” of the good doctor.

He was born Jonathan Malcolm Rebennack in New Orleans on November 20, 1941. You most likely knew him as “Dr. John,” one of Louisisana’s true treasures and one who “used his immeasurable talent and eccentric vibe” to spread the New Orleans vibe world wide. Dr. John said, “the best thing you can be like in music is to be yourself.” He certainly was. Truly original, there isn’t anybody that can close to being like him.

“Mac” must have had nine lives and this past June 6th, the Good Doctor lost his last one to a heart attack. He had some health problems in the past few years, including getting a pacemaker, but he kept on going, or “rambulatin’” as he might say. He had a lot of “Mac-isms” that he used by just breaking up the English language to suit himself! “Yeah you right!”

Life for him was not always easy and it was a long time before he earned the recognition and respect he deserved. He started playing the guitar early at age 17. His dad owned a small engine repair shop and record store. Both his parents encouraged his love of music because to tell the truth, young “Mac” was a “handful.” His heroin addiction began when he was only 13. He skipped school all the time and then to everyone’s surprise he got into “Jesuit High School.” That didn’t last long, because he skipped so much he got kicked out. He was free to run the streets now being a part-time guitar player in some of the local bands that played a lot of school dances. He was learning from some of the best New Orleans musicians around and also writing songs. But, he was also taking herion, and selling it as well. He even acted as a pimp for a while and all kinds of sordid “trickerations.” The cops had his number even though he thought he was too smart to get caught. But, he was arrested and sent to a drug rehab in Fort Worth. He said he didn’t care, it was “three hots and a cot.” While there he earned a certificate in being a janitor and also earned his GED. He was there three years and when it neared his release date, a letter arrived from the State of Louisiana. It stated that he was not to return to Louisiana ever.They didn’t care what he did, just don’t come back to Louisiana. Those three years worked wonders since it helped him stay clean for the rest of his life, with a few slips along the way. He didn’t drink or smoke weed. He did like his little cigarillos though!

Two things that turned his life in a different and better direction happened before his arrest. He was trying to take up for a friend who had gotten into a bar room fight and was being “pistol whipped. Mac jumped in to try to wrestle the gun away and it went off. One of his fingers got shot off too! Luckily the finger was sewn back on but he never played the guitar the same so he swapped to piano. And not being able to go back to Louisiana kept him clean and sober and he credits Narcotics Anonymous, too. But, the best part of these trials was the real beginning of the “Dr. John” we all knew.

When he got to California he joined up with Harold Battiste, another New Orleans musician who was tired of the way DA Jim Garrison had shut down so many of the businesses that gave the musicians work. He took “Mac” in and got him session work with Phil Specter (Mac was not impressed with his “Wall of Sound”) or Sony Bono. He would take any session work he could get and was finally playing with the famous back up group, “The Wrecking Crew.”

“Mac worked with several different groups, Frank Zappa, Iron Butterfly, and several more but, their way of working wasn’t “Mac’s.” He had a bad time in California. After several more rough times trying to please writers, producers, arrangers and artists, even trying to start his own publishing company, he had had enough. He headed for Miami.

It was about this time 1968, he began to work on his stage personae and new stage act. He borrowed from the Mardi Gras Indian tribes (he considered them his “podnuhs”) and bought some of their old costumes, gathered up lots of Voodoo accountrements and got himself a cane which he adorned with more voodoo “gris gris.” They cut the album, “Gris Gris” and Ahmet Ertegan asked how he was gonna “sell this Cajun crap?” But he was fooled and Dr. John caught on and won his first Grammy for the album. There’s some really “creepy cool” songs on that album and especially, “Gris Gris.” The use of an oboe woven through that song was pure genius.

As “Mac” began to study about Voodoo, he read about a famous witch doctor and Voodoo priest who was revered by the older people of New Orleans. He used different names, “Voodoo John,” and sometimes “Dr, John.” He claimed to be a prince of Senegal but was captured in Cuba and left to be a sailor. And he married a woman named Pauline Rebenneck. Concidence? Maybe. They settled in New Orleans and he became a legend. But alas, he and Pauline were arrested for running a brothel and having a Voodoo operation. So, how could “Mac” turn down that famous name?

The “Dr. John Band and the Night Trippers” became their name and they used all the old time “show-biz”“funk-nology” they could think of. He even owned a real skull for awhile who he named “Prince.” He had it on stage with candles and all kinds of gris gris. He also threw glitter on the audience!

Fast forward a few years, “Mac” had made it back to New Orleans, the city he dearly loved and yearned for. The band members may change but they were still known as” Dr. John and the Night Trippers.” His record catalog is immeasurable just like his talent. It is said that he “changed the sound of New Orleans. “He’s been called the “high priest of funk and a lifelong ambassador of the gritty, glittery New Orleans groove.”

Here is just a sampling of some of his accomplishments:
• Honorory Doctrate of Music from Tulane University, given by the Dahli Llama
• He had a Muppet made in his image, “Dr. Teeth”
•The music fesitival named”Bonaroo” was named for his album “Desitively Bonaroo”
• He grew up in Louis Armstrong’s neighborhood
• He made a commercial for “Popeye’s” Fried Chicken…love that chicken from Popeyes!
• He wrote “Right Place, Wrong Time” with some help from friends. Bob Dyland gave him the first line, “I’m in the right trip, but the wrong car.” Bette Midler gave him “My head’s in a bad place. I don’t know what it’s there for.”
• He wrote the best and my favorite line from some old Ninth Ward slang.” I need a little bit of brain-salad surgery!”
• He was a 6 time Grammy winner
• He sang at the White House and one of the Super Bowls
• Although he got out of rehab for heroin addiction, he went back a few more times until he finally overcame his addiction
• He was a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

“Mac” left us with a lot of “Mac-isms” that was his own way of speaking the English language.

• GONNA TAKE YOU DOWN TO THE CREMATION STATION
• WHAT THAT IS?
• WHERE YAT?
  -CHARACTER
• CONFUSEMENT
• HER ICANE
• WHATSONEVER
• PODNUH
• OPINIONATION
• JOCKOMO (JESTER IN AN OLD MYTH)
• MARYGERANIUM (WEED)
• BUSINESSFIED
• REMEMBERATION
  
  

Needless to say, many loved Dr. John. It is said he was a humble man but also a very giving gentleman. His last Jazz Fest was in 2019 and thereafter he stayed close to his home in Mandeville until he died quietly in his sleep June 7th. I think the whole state mourned. He and his own idiosyncratic style and sound, the gravelly growl, the sly deceptively leisurely phrasing and the original hipster embodied New Orleans and it’s music. Definitely “What a Life!”

“If I ain’t havin’ fun with music, my life ain’t fun.” Mac Rebenneck aka Dr. John.

Want to know more? Read Under a Hoodoo Moon autobiography of Mac Rebennack.