© Jay Blakesberg

Dr. John

By Dave Marsh

(Originally Published: 07/01/1972, Creem)

GUMBO is Dr. John's fifth album, but it seems like his first. For once, the record and the recording both feel right, as though they were being done by people truly in touch with each other and with what was being attempted; there are no shreds of the "voodoo boogie" left, not even a stray comment.

The cover says this powerfully: Dr. John's Gumbo, reads the sign projected above an empty, slightly slummy urban street. It doesn't reek of New Orleans, even though that is what the music on Gumbo is about, but it does capture completely what Dr. John calls "fonk."

Everything on the inside is a thorough departure, both from anything Dr. John has attempted before, and from anything anyone else has tried in nearly a dozen years. Gumbo consists entirely of New Orleans R&B, which is the home, I guess, of what Dr. John calls "fonk" and which others less colorfully accented simply denote as rock 'n' roll.

Gumbo's tunes come out of the era in which the music of Southern Louisiana --which has New Orleans as its cultural center reached its fullest: the Fats Domino R&B of the '50's. That isn't to say that this album sounds like Fats Domino, though if you are familiar at all with Fats' music you will notice his influence. (Much as you might have on any of the earlier Dr. John albums, in fact, if you were tuned into what they were supposed to sound like, as opposed to the way they came off.)

For the most part, however, the music stems from that of the virtually undiscovered, or perhaps more often forgotten, peers and antecedents of the Domino sound, the people who played with him and inspired him. If early rock was based in regionalism the region which produced the most consistently enjoyable, exciting loose and free music --what was to be defined by Shirley & Lee as "Good Times" --was unquestionably New Orleans, Gumbo is a conscious attempt to recapture the spirit and sound of the era, and it's success is what makes it so immensely amazing.

"I got basically the whole New Orleans studio band cats. Like I got Lee Allen, Melvin Lastie, David Lastie, Alvin Robinson, plus my band that I have wit' me now," Dr. John explained in a voice like a bullfrog on belladonna; a croak somewhere between street growl and pure 19th Century Cajun roughneck. "This is the studio band that used to do everybody's records out of New Orleans; the same guys that used to do Shirley and Lee, Little Richard, Fats Domino and all the records that was cut in New Orleans. It was all the same band. But it was just maybe one or two guys would be dif'rent t'roughout the whole deal.

"Like Lee Allen, the guy that played all the saxophone solos, is playing all the saxophone solos on this album. Plus, I got --basically --the same type of grooves, I cut the same, you know, I don't wanna go into too much detail on one point, someone else may come out wit' this album befo' me."

We were sitting in a hotel room in December, while Mac Rebennack, (which is Dr. John's, real name) explained the concept of Gumbo to us, almost six months before its debut. It was hard to conceive of just what he was trying to explain, but even though we hadn't heard the record yet, there was an entirely different attitude about the man.

Part of this, we agreed later, had to do with the changes in management and production that had occurred in the proceeding few months. Rebennack's career was now in different hands, he was working with Jerry Wexler as a producer and he seemed more comfortable altogether in the garb of bizarro rock star.

Yet, even though he dressed the same, and played a set consisting essentially of music that was still the R&B derived but darker, neo-voodoo-oriented music he had always played in his role as Dr. John, there was another element that had changed too.

I'm usually bored stiff by the idea of a return to the roots, but in this case, it has worked without question. Not only is Gumbo a return to the roots, not of Dr. John but of Mac Rebennack, but it's a return to and even amplification of the very essentials of the rock and roll spirit. It is a loose, jazz-tinged but powerful recollection of that New Orleans music that Rebennack had been making in isolated studios throughout the southwest from the mid-fifties until he left several years ago for Los Angeles.

"I feel real good about this album, because I got not only Jerry Wexler but Harold Battiste (who produced the first three Dr. John lps) back on this one wit' me. Like bringin' all my ol' crew back together.

"And I got a real strong choir on this one --I got Shirley Goodman, from Shirley and Lee, I got Robbie Montgomery, who's an ex-Ikette, she did that 'Gone Gone' song wit' Tina, an' this chick, Jessie, who used to be wit' the Ikettes, too."

Rebennack grew more pensive as he explained the musicians' flight from New Orleans to the west coast. "They've all moved from New Orleans, moved to L.A. so in one sense, it's very authentic to the true music of New Orleans. I mean, Mardi Gras and Indian stuff. It's in all that kind of traditional thing. It's the real thing --my drummer and my bassplayer (Freddie Staley and Jimmy Calhoun) really got the pots on for this date. It ain't no makin' concessions to nobody because they ain't up to par. Everybody's just burnin'.

"This is the music that the people of New Orleans listen at when they dancin' down there, rather than the music that people associate with New Orleans music."

The idea evolves directly from the music made on the previous Dr. John records, in fact, which were extensions of New Orleans music, filtered not through drugs, as many had supposed (Dr. John has essentially the same vantage point on drugs as Capt. Beefheart; "Somebody gave me some acid when we first came out t' L.A.," he told me a couple years ago, "and we took it and was just a mess. It set me back about two years.") but from the exile of so many New Orleans musicians to the wild, weird world of the Southern California desert.

"We just came out here with this deal and it's startin' to woik. The band is poppin'. I mean, I really got some qualified people out here this time. Like, I got no LA pickup band with ex-Canned Heat or somethin' like that. This is all New Orleans guys."

Apparently --and sometimes it's hard to tell, because Mac Rebennack is a little...well, exotic ain't the word for it, if you see what I mean. He's...uh, he's weird, at least personally. --but apparently the third Dr. John album, Remedies was supposed to have this effect. It didn't work, and as a result it is probably the least successful record of his previous four.

"Like, for Remedies, I felt there was a lot of...even though that was a Baton Rouge band, it's still close to New Orleans (which is really pronounced, by Dr. John at least, New Aw-lens), for somebody that's not from there, but New Aw-lens music don't have not'in' to do wit' Baton Rouge music or Shreveport or anywhere else in the state of Louisiana. New Orleans is a little set of its own. Their music is different. It ain't no zydeco music like Clifton Chenier, it ain't no Faraday music like Jerry Lee Lewis, it ain't no whatever the other music that came out of Louisiana, the music of Fats Domino and Professor Longhair is strictly New Aw-lens music as opposed to these other types of music. And I think this album is most representative of the true New Orleans music of all that."

He should know. He didn't found it, he isn't even black --though he is of that exotic ethnic blend they call Cajun, of which Doug Kershaw is a torn variety --but Mac Rebennack played a large part in building the tunes, the scene, the ethos which enveloped New Orleans and its music during the fifties and sixties.

"It's the originator of that fonk, man, what they call fonk. The fonky beat which is syncopated. That's what makes New Orleans music have a different flow to it. And, while a lot of drummers is gettin' aware of how to do that, they don't know how to do the New Orleans second line groove, which is like what we play comin' back home from funerals or goin' to the parades, that's the beat that's like a parade beat."

In another way, Gumbo is an odd tribute to some of the men Rebennack associated with in his New Orleans days. I remember showing him a recording by Professor Longhair that Mercury had tossed out on a d.j.'s sampler-single two or three years ago, and he was incredulous that anyone was aware that the man existed. He raved for the next two hours about Prof. Longhair, how the man had virtually invented Fats Domino's piano sound, and what a founding genius of the music Longhair had been.

There is a song on Gumbo which Longhair wrote, called 'Big Chief' and Rebennack explained it as "a dedication not only to Prof. Longhair but also to the tribe of Indians, the White Magnolia tribe, who asked me to cut somethin' on this album for 'em.

"Prof. Longhair is the guy that's livin' in a house with 30 children and a bunch of old ladies and stuff and it's him that I'm trying to get up outta that."

The story Dr. John tells of his own involvement with New Orleans R&B and recording it, sets the pattern for the tragedy of not just an era, but an entire fertile genre lost to history.

"I went to work for Ace records at the age of about 14 years old. I was what they call the A&R man, now they call it the record producer," he began to explain. As he did, he grew more and more involved with what he was saying, until it became clear that this was not just his tale, it was the tale of everyone he had been associated with in the New Orleans music scene. "At the time it was my job to get the artist and the material together for the date, hire the musicians, put the date together, if I needed to hire an arranger, which was very rare, but that was also my end --to make sure they had good product.

"I did some of the Chris Kenner recordings, I did some of the Huey Smit' and the Clowns things, Jimmy Clanton and Frankie Ford, I did a bunch of unknown artists outta there that was never heard of: Guitar Ray, Al Reed, Luther Reeves, Chuck Carbo, that was the Spiders group.

"From workin' for Ace, who had a bunch o' them people I just mentioned I got the knowledge to work wit' the studio band on like a real tight basis, where like I could work wit' a bunch of dynamite artists, it got me interested in like workin' from different angles of this business --lookin' at it from writin' material for artists, or to gettin' material for the artists, gettin' the right material for the right artists, or tailor-making the material for artists, or making records for certain markets, which is what I had at that time. I was strickly down to makin' records for certain markets. 'N' I musta been good 'cause I kept my job for a long time.

"The labels existed by havin' a hit record in that part of the country, where the artist never seen no money, but the label kept in business. Which now those labels is out of existence, which is...But, you know, at that time, that was the goin' thing.

"But then, as I was gettin' burnt for later when I was trying' to collect, royalties and stuff, when it came down to tryin' to collect the money that was due me, besides my little salary, that's when we fell out wit' the company.

"An' that's when I changed companies. These kind of things, all the extra monies, got burnt out, from the royalties or whatever, and I never would see that money. I got the #19 song in the nation, 'Ship on the Stormy Sea', when Jimmy Clanton was in a movie, I had money comin'. I went to get my royalty statement and the man tol' me that I owed THEM $475!

"He claimed that I owed Ace records this amount of money due to the fact that my salary went against my royalties, and any other monies that I collected was goin' against my royalty statements. So any session money was goin' against my royalties statement. So it really made me feel mad, that's when I quit and I went to work with Ric Records."

Out of the frying pan

"Johnny Vincent, and Joe Corona," Rebennack continued, "who owned Ace Records, was in partnership with Joe Rafina, who owned Ric. But we did make some good records, when I got to Ric: I got to do Professor Longhair, that's when I first got to produce people like that. I actually made his latest, second latest hit he made, called 'Mardi Gras Day'. It's like the anthem of Mardi Gras.

"That is when I first started usin' my own bands on records a lot, too. Instead of usin' the one clique that made all the records; like, up until then Earl Palmer was the studio and Charley Williams. There was no other drummers played on records. Then I started usin' John Boudreaux, who later changed the style of the music into what they call fonk now. The drums on all those Minit records, that was John Boudreaux. He was softer, subtler drummer, than the others. That's what started the transition in New Orleans music. I credit that to Richard Payne, the bass player, Chuck Beatty, the bass player, John Boudreaux and Smokey Joe Johnson, the drummers, the guys who changed the direction of the fonk. It was just a lot freer flowin', more hipper. Until people got accustomed to it and it's almost expected of a drummer to be free and flowin' today."

Meantime, Rebennack's career continued apace: "I recorded an album in 1956, for Capitol records. This was as Mac Rebennack, I recorded all instrumental records under that name, I never recorded no vocal record until I recorded the Dr. John stuff. Then I recorded another album for Rex records in '57. Then I recorded some single records for Ace around '59, some of them was released. Then I recorded an album for AFO Records, that was Jimmy Battiste and Melvin Lastie's company, I was like the first white act on an all black company.

"At the time I was workin' with Battiste and Melvin and those guys, it was a part of their company. But by being an artist, I was tryin' to help them keep their company, their artists, which consisted of Barbara George --she had that 'I Know' record --Prince La-La, who had that 'She Put the Hurt On Me', and there was a few others. There was quite a few artists that they had you know, Tammi Lynn was one of them. Like she was one of the best artists they ever had that they could never get off the ground.

"Same with Willie Tee (who had a minor hit with 'Teasin' You'). Willie Tee still has a band in New Aw-lens. He had some good records but they never did get that action. He since then has cut a big band album with H.B.Barnum in L.A. but nothin' happened with it. But I mean, these are artists that just because they don't have a hit Top 40 record, that don't take nothin' away from 'em.

And that was it. In the mid-'60's, as Minit was bought out by L.A. based Imperial, as the Lasties and Battistes headed for Los Angeles, the era of New Orleans as a recording center had come to an end.

"Around that time, we was doin' all those records, there was a lot of problems goin' on with New Orleans as being a record center. Leon Chess was no longer comin' to New Orleans and cuttin' his records, Al Silver was no longer comin' to New Orleans, Lew Judd was still comin' in there, which I didn't work for anyway. Specialty was like the only company still comin' to New Orleans to make records.

"It was gettin' to the point where most work for musicians was gettin' down to bootleg work and it wasn't union work, it was all under-scale, under-the-table stuff, you know, I mean everything was like fallin' to pieces.

"At the time I talked to a couple of producers, like Huey Meaux and tried to get 'em to start hustlin' up a little work for the guys to try and keep the thing alive. And a few people that was trying to put somethin' together, we just couldn't do it. There was no work.

"At that time I was playin' at three clubs, I was playin' organ. I was band director --I worked at Papa Joe's, Madame Francine's and Poodle Patio alternately. I was playin' them three joints, seven nights a week, and I was like, not only the bandleader of the band, I was, indirectly, like straw boss for all the music. Myself, and James Booker --James Booker ran all the black musicians and I ran all the white musicians.

"And like, I didn't want to LEAVE there, man. I was still, at the time, myself and George Davis, who is now playing guitar with Dizzy Gillespie, a guy like myself who plays a lot of instruments and can make records because of that talent of playin' a lot of different instruments, can make records with less people and all of that...well, me and him was tryin' to put somethin' together. That last little stretch when me and George and Earl King was tryin' to form something, when that fell, that's when I hung it up and went out to L.A. cause J.W. Alexander and Harold Battiste had already moved out there.

"And at the time Sam Cooke was still alive, and they were tryin' to get him out there to work with them producin', so many other artists, less than Sam, because Sam was big. That was right before he got offed. By the time I did get out to L.A., Sam was dead, J.W. was in a trick bag with Allen Klein and everythin' was like...I fell into the picture about six months behind what they would have liked me to get there.

"But it was like bad times. Bad times --heh heh.

"As soon as I got to L.A., I was workin' on record dates, I was makin' Sonny and Cher kinda records and doin' all that kinda junk. I was a studio musician to survive, which is very borin' man, as an existence, but I mean, I didn't have much choice because the only other shot was, I was writin' songs for J.W. Alexander. At the time his main outlet was gettin' the Sam Cooke songs recorded by Beatle groups over in England. You know, like Herman's Hermits was coverin' Sam's hits. So, like he had no real hustle on my tunes. I had to really hustle my own tunes plus do whatever else I was doin'. J.W. was in very bad times, man."

Gumbo is something like a slap in the face to what happened to the New Orleans music scene. When a scene like that dies, the people who made it don't just disappear. None of the New Orleans musicians, save Fats Domino and now Dr. John, is exactly a famous rock and roll name. Yet we are familar with their songs, even rely on them. People from Rick Nelson to John Fogerty have been attempting to recapture the spirit of the great New Orleans R&B era, but it wasn't until Gumbo that anyone had really come close.

But Gumbo does even more than that. It takes tunes like the hit, 'Iko, Iko', which the Dixie Cups had done to what I had thought was generic perfection and, in several instances, it improves on them.

The version of 'Stack-o-lee', so lyrically removed from almost all of the other versions I have ever heard, is tremendous. "Stack-o-lee" himself becomes not so much a one-eyed monster gambler but just another New Orleans drunk, pushed to the limit.

As I said, authenticity often matters less than excitement. Well, 'Iko Iko' 's a hit, and there are other tracks as strong. 'Liza Jane', for instance, which is perhaps the definitive Huey Smith and the Clowns number. Or 'Let The Good Times Roll', with Shirley doing the female lead as well as she did fifteen years ago.

The tunes are laden with Dr. John's fonk, and they are a tribute to him, to producer Jerry Wexler and the musicians who have made them. In making Gumbo they haven't just recreated an era but have created a document that lives in our own.