FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 27, 2015
CONTACT:
Rebecca Bailey, Publicity Coordinator/Writer
Hopkins Center for the Arts, Dartmouth College
rebecca.a.bailey@dartmouth.edu
603.646.3991
American musical icon, still “a force of nature and invention,” brings his
signature “swamp voodoo” to Hop July 30
Photo: Dr. John, photo by Bruce Weber.
HANOVER, NH— Six-time Grammy winner, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and undisputed American musical icon
Dr. John performs with his band the Nite Trippers in the Hop’s Spaulding Auditorium on Thursday, July 30, at
8 pm.
Six decades into a colorful, wide-ranging career, Dr. John is still going
strong, his latest recording Ske-Dat-de-Dat: The Spirit of Satch making it
onto 2014 year-end best album lists by MOJO Magazine, The Telegraph (UK)
and numerous others. States his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame biography:
“After a half century of creating music for others and himself, Dr. John
continues to write, arrange, produce and interpret with a passion that has
yet to wane.”
Live performance is no exception. Wrote Rolling Stone in March 2015, “At
74, Dr. John remains a formidable performer, a force of nature and
invention…[with] a voice pitted with life and trouble but also loaded with
the weathered assurance that there is still no place like his home. There was
plenty of piano too, everywhere…hearty demonstrations of Dr. John's
lifetime of study and departures in the jazz, blues, boogie and Latin tinge of
New Orleans piano culture.”
Dr. John comes with a peerless band whose credits include stints with gospel, jazz and blues greats: bassist
Dwight Bailey, organist Bobby Floyd, drummer Reggie Jackson, guitarist Dave Yoke and trombonist Sarah
Morrow, who also serves as Nite Tripper musical director.
Born in 1940 and raised in New Orleans’ ethnic and musical motherlode the Third Ward, Dr. John belongs to a
prestigious lineage of New Orleans keyboard greats that includes such names as Professor Longhair, Huey
“Piano” Smith and Fats Domino, according to his Hall of Fame biography. His music is stamped with the
rhythms and traditions of the Crescent City, and he has spent a career that now spans more than half a
century championing its music.
His best-known work includes his breakthrough 1968 album Gris-Gris, steeped in the otherworldly sounds of
Louisianan voodoo culture; the 1972 Gumbo, wherein he offered an authoritative overview of New Orleans’
finest music; and the 1973 In the Right Place, which gave him the Top Ten hit “Right Place, Wrong Time.” His
concerts are ritual invocations of New Orleans’ enduring musical spirit. More broadly, he’s helped bring the
sound of New Orleans into the national mainstream.
Born Malcolm John “Mac” Rebennack, he learned piano and guitar as a child. As a child growing up in the
1940s, he was steeped in the music of the city. “It was a special time in New Orleans,” he told USA Today. “The
radio stations played basically New Orleans music, and I thought that was what the whole world heard.” His
father ran an appliance store that carried records, and he also repaired P.A. systems for clubs around town, so
through him young Mac gained exposure to the world of music in New Orleans.
As a musician, he was schooled by local legends like Walter “Papoose” Nelson (Professor Longhair’s guitarist),
guitarist Roy Montrell, keyboardist James Booker and Cosimo Matassa (whose J&M Studio was the hub of the
city’s recording scene). Rebennack became one of the first white session men on the local scene. A fixture in
New Orleans’ clubs and studios, Rebennack found himself making music almost literally night and day. “We
used to work twelve hours a day, seven days a week, on Bourbon Street,” he told interviewer Robert Santelli.
“That was real easy to do because there were so many clubs.”
In short, Rebennack was a pure product of New Orleans. “The old-timers schooled me good,” Dr. John
reflected. “They brainwashed me to respect music, whether we were playing rockabilly or blues or rock and
roll.”
Rebennack began recording as far back in 1957 and released his first single in 1959—before moving to Los
Angeles in 1962 as part of an exodus of local musicians who left town after a new district attorney began
cracking down on clubs and nightlife in an effort to curb vice. Working in L.A. with producer Harold Battiste, a
fellow Crescent City expatriate, he created the character of Dr. John the Night Tripper, a voodoo sorcerer and
healer. His first album, Gris-Gris, masterfully evoked the mystical spirit of back-alley voodoo in a musical
setting of otherworldly “N’Awlins” swamp funk, and it meshed perfectly with the age of psychedelia in which it
was released. Gris-Gris was followed by three more albums in the same vein: Babylon, Remedies and The Sun,
Moon & Herbs.
In the first half of the 1970s, Dr. John’s career ascended to the next level with a series of albums that mixed
New Orleans classics with original material, all driven by his remarkable piano playing and superb bands:
Gumbo (co-produced and heavily influenced by Jerry Wexler, the renowned producer and talent scout for
Atlantic Records), In the Right Place and Desitively Bonnaroo (1974). In the late ‘70s, he moved to New York
and worked with producer Tommy LiPuma and lyricist Doc Pomus, resulting in the albums City Lights and
Tango Palace. In the early ‘80s he made his first solo piano recordings (Dr. John Plays Mac Rebennack and The
Brightest Smile in Town). He ended the decade with In a Sentimental Mood, an album of standards that
reunited him with LiPuma.
The ‘90s witnessed an artistic rebirth and rekindled connection with his New Orleans roots. In 1992, as
remarkable as it may seem, Dr. John actually recorded his first album in New Orleans. Entitled Goin’ Back to
New Orleans, it was “like a little history of New Orleans music–from way back in the 1850s to the 1950s,” Dr.
John explained. In 1998, he returned to the mystical aura of his Gris-Gris period on Anutha Zone, which
included cameos from such younger British admirers as Paul Weller and members of Spiritualized and
Supergrass. Creole Moon, released in 2001, assimilated the various aspects of New Orleans music into a tasty
gumbo. In 2004, Dr. John again saluted the Big Easy’s musical heritage on N’Awlinz: Dis, Dat or D’Udda, which
rounded up such New Orleans legends as Earl Palmer, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Willie Tee, Snooks Eaglin,
Eddie Bo, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and a member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
Beyond his vast discography as a recording artist, the list of sessions on which he’s played for others is lengthy
and impressive enough to merit his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a sideman, too. Dr. John’s
bottomless session credits include releases by Maria Muldaur, Johnny Winter, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells,
Van Morrison, the Band, Frank Zappa, Ringo Starr, Canned Heat, the Rolling Stones and countless others. He’s
even done well for himself as a jingle writer, tinkling the ivories on funky-sounding commercials for Levi and
Popeye’s Chicken.
For more than three decades Dr. John has been a perennial performer at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage
Festival. He has also become an unofficial spokesman and ambassador for the city and its musical history.
Meanwhile he continues to make creative, challenging records in the New Orleans style.
In 2008 Dr. John and his band, the Lower 911, released City That Care Forgot. The most topical and hardhitting album of his career, it addressed the toll taken on his beloved hometown by decades of neglect and its
near destruction by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. City That Care Forgot won Dr. John a Grammy for Best
Contemporary Blues Album – the fifth of his career. Meanwhile, he continues to keep the city’s musical
heritage and history alive.
“The most important thing to remember is this: New Orleans music was not invented,” Dr. John noted in 1992.
“It kind of grew up naturally...joyously...just for fun. That’s it. Just plain down-to-earth happy-times music.
When I was growing up in the Third Ward, I used to think, ‘Oh, man, this music makes me feel the best!”
RELEVANT LINKS
https://hop.dartmouth.edu/Online/drjohn
http://www.nitetripper.com/
http://www.dwightbaileymusic.com/
http://www.bobbyfloyd.com/no_flash.html
http://www.bobbyfloyd.com/reggiejacksonbio.html
http://www.sarahmorrow.com/about
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dave-Yoke-Appreciation-Page/244332855604116
https://rockhall.com/inductees/dr-john/
Download high-resolution photos:
https://hop.dartmouth.edu/Online/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&BOparam::WScont
ent::loadArticle::article_id=A14ACB33-679C-469F-9E075A08469894E7&sessionlanguage=&SessionSecurity::linkName=
CALENDAR LISTING:
Dr. John and the Nite Trippers
Nobody personifies the musical culture of New Orleans with more flair than Dr. John. At 74, this six-time
Grammy-winning pianist and vocalist “remains a formidable performer, a force of nature and invention”
(Rolling Stone) with his irresistibly funky mix of New Orleans R&B, boogie-woogie and rock’n’roll. He and his
band mix old favorites such as Right Place Wrong Time with recent material from his 2014 tribute to Louis
Armstrong and Grammy-winning 2012 album Locked Down, produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys.
Thursday, July 30, 8 pm
Spaulding Auditorium, Hopkins Center for the Arts, Hanover NH
$30/40/50, Dartmouth students $10
Information: hop.dartmouth.edu or 603.646.2422
* * *
Founded in 1962, the Hopkins Center for the Arts is a multi-disciplinary academic, visual and performing
arts center dedicated to uncovering insights, igniting passions, and nurturing talents to help Dartmouth and
the surrounding Upper Valley community engage imaginatively and contribute creatively to our world. Each
year the Hop presents more than 300 live events and films by visiting artists as well as Dartmouth students
and the Dartmouth community, and reaches more than 22,000 Upper Valley residents and students with
outreach and arts education programs. After a celebratory 50th-anniversary season in 2012-13, the Hop
enters its second half-century with renewed passion for mentoring young artists, supporting the
development of new work, and providing a laboratory for participation and experimentation in the arts.