The Joy And Mystery Of A New Orleans Saint Dr. John

ROBBIE ROBERTSON has seen a lot in six decades of rock & roll, but nothing quite like what happened at the Toronto Pop Festival in 1969.

- David Browne

He and the Band were on a bill that included the New Orleans studio musician and songwriter Mac Rebennack, newly reinvented as Dr. John, the Night Tripper. “This guy I’m talking to, he has strands of beads and shit coming off his head and powders coming out of his ears and rags hanging down,” recalls Robertson. “He’s got a walking stick that looks like something you perform magic tricks with.” When rain began to pour down on the grounds, Robertson watched as Dr. John, playing an incantatory style of swamp pop dubbed “voodoo rock” by a baffled media, raised the stick to the sky, and held it for a moment. Just then, the rain stopped. As Robertson remembers, “We’re like, ‘Man, the doctor is really a doctor!’ ” ¶ Dr. John was always modest about his place in the history of New Orleans music. “Everything I’m about, the old-timers showed me,” he once said. “Nothing I got is nothing original.” He’d be the first to admit that he picked up his spry, rolling-river piano-playing from predecessors like Professor​ Longhair, Fats Domino, and Huey “Piano” Smith. But few embodied the spirit of New Orleans, or helped take it to strange new places, the way Dr. John did. Even though he scored just one pop hit, 1973’s “Right Place Wrong Time,” his impact on modern music was huge, beginning with murky swamplands masterpieces like 1968’s Gris-Gris and 1972’s Dr. John’s Gumbo (a tribute to New Orleans that helped introduce rock fans to standards like “Iko Iko”). Eighties kids know him from his theme song to the sitcom Blossom; Gen Z recognizes his voice from animated films like The Princess and the Frog; and anyone who remembers