Dr. John

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Dr. John at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (2007)

Dr. John , actually Malcolm "Mac" John Rebennack Jr. (born November 20, 1941 in New Orleans , Louisiana - †  June 6, 2019 ), was an American musician ( piano and guitar ), singer , six-time Grammy award winner and record producer . His musical work included rock 'n' roll , blues and jazz . Rebennack was strongly influenced by the folklore of his hometown New Orleans and was considered the most important and almost the only representative of " Voodoo Rock". In 2011, Dr. John inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame .

biography

Dr. John at the TFF.Rudolstadt 2011

Rebennack was already interested in the music of rhythm and blues (R&B) as a teenager . With The Spades he formed a high school band with Jerry Byrne ( Lights Out ) as a singer. As one of the first white musicians, Rabenack played regularly at R&B sessions in New Orleans and became a permanent studio musician with the legendary Ace Records . One of his main influences was Professor Longhair ; Rebennack described the guitarist Walter "Papoose" Nelson as his most important teacher . He made his first recordings for ACE with Huey "Piano" Smith (Rockin 'Pneumonia) and Frankie Ford ( Sea Cruise , 1957). They are nowadays traded as rarities by record collectors. Until 1962 he was active in New Orleans, then in Los Angeles in various bands and in many productions by other musicians such as Frank Zappa , the Rolling Stones ( Exile on Main St. ) , Phil Spector , Sam Cooke , Aretha Franklin , Canned Heat ( Living the Blues ) or Sonny and Cher . In 1977 he worked with Van Morrison on his comeback album A Period of Transition . As part of this album he worked as an arranger and musician. In the same year, the two completed a series of joint appearances, which culminated in a television special.

Dr. John 1968 with Gris-Gris , a rather eerie sounding mixture of voodoo spells, rhythm and blues and Creole soul music. Since his childhood he was surrounded by magic amulets and his own necromantic fantasies, which he says were animated by his family. His grandmother is said to have mastered telekinesis , for example , and at times floated in space herself . With colorful, picturesque stage appearances, he stylized himself as Dr. John (Creaux) the Night Tripper became an icon of psychedelic rock . Some of his rock liturgies received a particularly hypnotic tension, as he deliberately used his voice hoarse and with whispering and croaking sequences (e.g. I Walk on Guilded Splinters ). With Babylon, Remedies and The Sun, Moon and Herbs , he continued to revive and update the musical influences of his hometown. Some stylistic elements of the stage character Dr. John go back to the musician Prince La La , who died in 1963 . The next album, Gumbo , heralded Rebennack's departure from his extravagant lifestyle, which continued with In the Right Place and Desitively Bonnaroo . After this first peak of his success and many creative and hectic years, Dr. John's productivity, qualitatively and quantitatively, depends on it. The following albums, released in a less frenetic cadence, did not find many buyers. All of his attempts to legally defend himself against unauthorized recordings (Anytime, Anyplace or The Nashville Sessions) failed.

Dr. John at the Jazz à Vienne Festival (2006)

The creative break ended in 1981 with the release of the record Dr. John Plays Mac Rebennack , a collection of tracks which the musician recorded alone with his piano and which he expanded in The Brightest Smile in Town . Since then he has released other albums at irregular intervals, almost all of which he composed himself. In addition, he has worked with numerous blues musicians such as Charles Brown , The Simpsons , Willy DeVille , but also with jazz musicians ( Maria Muldaur , Lillian Boutté , Bennie Wallace and Chris Barber ) and with rock musicians such as Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton . He appeared in Martin Scorsese's film The Last Waltz , a film adaptation of the 1977 farewell concert of the legendary rock band Bob Dylans , The Band , as well as in the film Blues Brothers 2000 . He also composed music for commercials and clips ( jingles ) and sang the theme song for the television series Blossom . With the 1995 album Afterglow his love for jazz became clear; Jazz standards from the 1930s and 1940s shape the album.

He sang the song Cruella DeVille for the Disney film One Hundred and One Dalmatians . In 2009 there was another collaboration with Disney: The opening song Down in New Orleans from the animated film Kiss the Frog is performed by Dr. John interprets.

The music group Emerson, Lake and Palmer took from the text by Dr. John's song Right Place, Wrong Time the word creation "Brain Salad Surgery" for their album of the same name from 1973.

In 2007 Dr. John inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame and in 2011 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame , in the same year he received the Blues Music Award for best piano player. The legendary debut album Gris Gris (1968) was included in the Wire list The Wire's "100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)" . It also ranks 143 in the list of 500 best albums of all time of " Rolling Stone " and was designed by Pitchfork Media selected the 1960 ranked 162 of the 200 best albums. His album Locked Down won the 2013 Grammy Award for Best Blues Album .

Dr. John died on June 6, 2019 of complications from a heart attack .

Discography

Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Dr. John, the Night Tripper (The Sun, Moon & Herbs)
  US 184 10/09/1971 (5 weeks)
Dr. John's gumbo
  US 112 05/13/1972 (11 weeks)
In the right place
  US 24 March 24, 1973 (33 weeks)
Triumvirate (with Mike Bloomfield & John P. Hammond )
  US 105 06/16/1973 (12 weeks)
Desitively Bonnaroo
  US 105 05/04/1974 (8 weeks)
In a sentimental mood
  US 142 05/27/1989 (11 weeks)
Locked down
  US 33 04/21/2012 (6 weeks)
Ske-Dat-De-Dat: The Spirit of Satch
  US 84 09/06/2014 (1 week)
  • 1968 Gris-Gris ( 143rd place in the Rolling Stone 500 )
  • 1969 Babylon
  • 1970 remedies
  • 1971 The Sun, Moon and Herbs
  • 1972 Dr. John's Gumbo ( 402th place on Rolling Stone 500 )
  • 1973 In the Right Place
  • 1973 Triumvirate (with Mike Bloomfield and John Hammond)
  • 1974 Desitively Bonnaroo
  • 1976 Hollywood Be Thy Name
  • 1978 City Lights
  • 1979 Tango Palace
  • 1981 Dr. John Plays Mac Rebennack Vol. 1
  • 1983 The Brightest Smile in Town
  • 1984 Such a Night (Recorded November 4th 1983 at the Albany Empire Theater, London)
  • 1984 Jet Set (single)
  • 1989 To To Man
  • 1989 In a Sentimental Mood
  • 1991 Funky New Orleans (With The Donald Harrison Band)
  • 1992 Goin 'Back to New Orleans ( Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album ) (DE: Gold in Jazz Award)
  • 1993 The Dr. John Anthology (Mos' Scocious)
  • 1994 television
  • 1995 Live at Montreux
  • 1995 Afterglow
  • 1997 Trippin 'Live
  • 1998 Anutha Zone
  • 2000 Duke Elegant
  • 2001 Creole Moon
  • 2003 All by Hisself: Live at the Lonestar
  • 2004 N'Awlinz Dis Dat Or D'Udda
  • 2005 Live at Montreux (CD / DVD)
  • 2006 Dr. John Plays Mac Rebennack - The Legendary Sessions Vol.2
  • 2006 Sippiana Hericane
  • 2006 Mercernary
  • 2008 City That Care Forgot ( Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album )
  • 2010 Tribal
  • 2011 To To Soirée
  • 2012 Locked Down ( Grammy for Best Blues Album )
  • 2014 Ske-Dat-De-Dat ... Spirit Of Satch

literature

  • Mac Rebennack, Jack Rummel: Under A Hoodoo Moon. 1994, reprint 1995 (St. Martin's Griffin).
  • Martin C. Strong: The Great Rock Discography, “Dr. John". 6th ed. 2002, Edinburgh (Cannongate Books Ltd.).

Web links

Commons : Dr. John  - collection of pictures
Obituaries

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Barry Graves; Siegfried Schmidt-Joos; Bernward Halbscheffel: Rock Lexicon . One-time special edition: Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2003, Volume 1, p. 275 f.
  2. ↑ 2011 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on rockhall.com, accessed November 23, 2017
  3. ↑ Paul Gambaccini: The Doctor Is In: A Talk With Dr. John , Rolling Stone Magazine, September 1973.
  4. ^ Karen Ann Krieger: Learn From the Legends: Blues Keyboard, Great Licks and Interviews with the Stars , Alfred Music Publishing, 2000, ISBN 978-0-7390-0961-1 , p. 59.
  5. ^ Rüdiger Bloemeke: Live in Germany. Voodoo Verlag, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-00-023781-2 .
  6. ↑ deltabohemian.com
  7. ↑ The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s on pitchfork.com, accessed November 23, 2017
  8. ↑ Musician Dr. John is dead . Spiegel Online , June 7, 2019, accessed on the same day.
  9. ↑ US chart history
  10. ↑ US singles: Joel Whitburn : Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles 1955-2006 . Billboard Books, New York 2007, ISBN 0-89820-172-1 . / US albums: Joel Whitburn : Joel Whitburn presents the Billboard Albums . 6th edition. Billboard Books, New York 2006, ISBN 0-89820-166-7 .
  11. ↑ Gold / platinum database of the Federal Association of the Music Industry, accessed on July 3, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Dr. John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rebennack Jr., Malcolm John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American musician and producer
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH New Orleans , Louisiana, USA
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 2019