He s as kosher as pecan pie, way funkier than James Brown, and just about as laid back as anybody who s had the good fortune to be born south of the Mason Dixon line.
When Dr. John hits town the entire metropolis gains credits in cool. He lopes into his dressing-room and the temperature drops to a cosy 65. It s what you might call the Rebennack effect: he smoothes the wrinkliest of conversations. Truly, an hour in the man s company is worth a solid month of alternative therapies.
We jes try to have a good time, he smiles, a feeble attempt to explain the essence of the Night Tripper s appeal. The small fact that his birth place was New Orleans might have something to do with this incorrigible ability to let the good times roll wherever.
You know, we party for any excuse, he elaborates. We stole the Irish wakes and made jazz funerals out of them. We took a lot of stuff from different cultures just so s we could have an excuse to party. Somebody s dog dies, we have a party, you know what I mean? No matter what goes down, somebody marries, gets a divorce, we don care. It s just an excuse for a party! And it s a nice thing you know.
Dr. John certainly walks it like he talks it. His Creole genes have afforded him the mellowest, funkiest of vocal cords; his sartorial sensibilities ensure that he looks the part too. Lime green suede shoes, mauve braces over a French navy shirt, a simply spiffing hat and, of course, that trademark cane of his that s an essential accoutrement to his inimitable dance routine.
Fashion Television miss the point, slobbering over all those catwalks. They should take a trip down Bourbon St. with the good Doctor and they d know what real style is. But then again, this man takes his cues from one of the most stylish cities in the US. If you happen to be born in New Orleans, The Big Easy, you can t but be imbued with an innate sense of style and substance.
Dr. John bemoans the passing of the days when his home town coasted on the back of some, shall we say, mighty fine local colour.
You know, when they cleaned up so much of the junks in New Orleans, he offers mournfully, when they closed down the illegal gambling and they closed all the whorehouses, it kinda killed something for guys like me that was used to illegal gambling and so on. That s all gone now. What used to be Storyville (the infamous red light district of New Orleans SL) is right now the Harbourville (housing) Projects which is much more dangerous than Storyville ever war. It s like, everything that I liked, has been wiped and all that s left is Bourbon St. which is for the tourists. That s not right, but that s typical politician s stuff, you know.
The Night Tripper s home town is hardly a stranger to political corruption. Scandals abound, from the early days when Governor Earl Long flaunted his affair with stripper Blaze Starr in public (and got committed to an asylum for his trouble), to events following November 1963 when a New Orleans district attorney attempted to solve the mystery of the double shot on the grassy knoll in Dallas.
A.J. Liebling reckoned way back in the 1950s that Louisiana was the westernmost of the Arab States, and compared politics in New Orleans with those of Beirut. But more recent years have brought a certain sanitisation of the local colour, and it s not a development that Dr. John altogether welcomes.
I been watching television, and looking at all these politicians, he says, and everybody got their opinion, their reason for doing things, and all of it s got to do with politics. They got to get their votes next time, but my point is that that kind of thing in New Orleans just killed a lotta scenes. Sure, we got a few good politicians, like Russell Long, he s the nephew of Earl Long. But he s rare. I mean, I can count good politicians on the finger of one finger. But then I m prejudiced against politicians. That s just one of my personal hang-ups in life. I don t trust em!
Dr. John spends a lot of his time in New York these days, due mainly to the fact that most of his recording work is based there. The clubland of Manhattan strikes a few chords, but he misses the vitality of the southern fried music he grew up with.
It s just not the same kind of funky music, he avers. What people consider funky is maybe, James Brown or George Clinton or Sly Stone. But we in New Orleans know where they got it from and we just know the roots of it all. We play around with all of it and it s all funky! We just got our own concept of funk.
Growing up in New Orleans, Mac Rebennack, as he was known then, was schooled in the art of music, voodoo and his own particular brand of magic, gris gris (which subsequently became the title of his 1968 debut). The dark side of the city s something that Dr. John s never been afraid of. Fact is, with its penchant for psychedelic sorcery, he finds himself drawn to it still.
I grew up in the third ward, he recalls, smiling, and round the corner from my pad, there were guys who played the junkie blues all night. There was people all round who played all kinds of different stuff. My uncle John and aunt Dottie May used to have all these jazz musicians come jam at their pad, and with the joints around us, we d hear Latin music, bebop, traditional jazz, blues, whatever. In all of these strips, they had whatever the clubowners liked. The clubowners really didn t care what the people liked, but it made for better music. It s one of the sad things that when they cleaned parts of the city up, it spread crime throughout the city, and the other thing was that it diluted a lot of where the music had a place to exist and that was real sad.
One thing that hasn t been lost over the years though, is that Louisianian lust for mixing music and food. This is one aspect of home life that Dr. John can still relish as he did 40 years ago.
Music and food go hand in hand, he nods, but you got that here too, don t you? The food, the drink, the music, everything goes together. You know it s the lifestyle of New Orleans though. We re laid back. We take our time cooking, we take our time eating, we take our time living. We take our time with the music. And taking our time with the music leaves more space to make it funky and taking your time cooking leaves it simmer longer so s all the spices blend together. Then eatin it slower fits in with sitting back and getting funky with the music! It all goes together.
And all of that fits in with the attitude we got which is: we ll-fix-the-door-next-year attitude. And that s kinda nice, because if it ain t bothering nobody too much, let s leave it and we ll get to it when we get to it.
Faced with the prospect of picking his ultimate companions for a night on the town, the Doctor is momentarily perplexed.
That s a deep question, he laughs, it must have more tricks in it than I could take off. But where? I d like to be on the water somewhere, with some good fish to eat. I like to be hearing some nice funky or gut bucket sound, just music that connects, either from a Latin or a New Orleans vein. And really just hanging with some friends. And it don t matter which friends. We d just cap on each n other. And that s when I have the most fun.
I had a night like that recently with Ellis Marsalis and some of the Nevilles in New Orleans. It was just like we was hanging out at a gig, and we just started getting evil hearted. Now to anyone who didn t know us, they d have thought: these guys must hate each n other , but that s how we show that we dig each n other. It s New Orleans-ese, musicians-ese and other ese s mixed in, but it s a life of ease-style!
Dr. John, like his idol, the extraordinary Professor Longhair, and his compadres in the state of Louisiana, ponders the prospect of setting his home state adrift from the State of the Union. I wonder whether he d favour independence from the great unwashed who don t have the music, the colour or the sheer joie de vivre that New Orleans and its Cajun offshoots boast?
You re right, the place ain t like nowhere else, he nods in agreement. There is something way different bout Louisiana, alright. They did try not to fight in the civil war for either side, but that didn t work. At times Louisiana wanted to be part of Spain, then a part of France, but one thing s for sure, they didn t want to be a part of the US of A. But one city ain t gonna pull that off! We all nuts anyways. Everybody s a little bit nuts. Hey, if we don t have a little nut streak in us somewhere we don t stand for anything.
And one last question. Does The Night Tripper still come out to play these days, or is Dr. John sticking to just one mask on stage?
Well, whenever I m asked to sign anything, I sign it The Night Tripper , and that s cos I m a day stumbler and I trip through the shortcut in the daylight hours. I m useless. Like a vampire, I come to life after dark. I m just part of New Orleans, I guess. n
Dr. John releases a live album, Trippin Live on August 29th on Surefire Records.