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| In a phrase, mad genius. |
The Hit
Whether by classic radio, or a commercial for a beer, a car, a brand of “man” deodorant…maybe Axe Body Spray(but also, probably not), you’ve almost certainly heard Dr. John’s “Right Place Wrong Time.” You might not have connected the tune to Dr. John - God knows I didn’t - even if you have a dim understanding of who Dr. John was.
Unlike some recent selections in this series, “Right Place Wrong Time” doesn’t have a good story, never mind a great one. Still, it’s a solid tune that gets better if you can disconnect it in your mind from some awful visual that’s lurking in the back of your head from some goddamn commercial. The pulsing buzz that starts it doesn’t promise much, but the funk rhythm line rescues it before too long; the horns that come in next give it a nice lift and the jangling funk guitar accents it just so. That pile of instruments leaves a surprising amount of space, which gives the whole thing a loose, lean feel.
Unlike that cocky, goddamn beer ad I only half remember, an under-current of danger bubbles under Dr. John’s biggest hit - something that tracks all the way with his early years. But, again, I haven’t seen or read anything that suggests a particular inspiration or even a back-story. In fact, the most interesting thing I can pass on comes with his thoughts on commercial music, which he gave to Rolling Stone in a 1973 interview:
“The only thing that make a record commercial is if people buys it. Originally I felt to go commercial would prostitute myself and bastardize the music. On reflecting, I thought that if without messin’ up the music and keeping the roots and elements of what I want to do musically, I could still make a commercial record I would not feel ashamed from, I’m proud of, and still have a feel for, then it’s not a bad thing but it even serve a good purpose.”
I’m not entirely sure what to make of the broken English - especially after watching a short clip of him talking to Time magazine in 2010. At any rate, there’s more. Like, a lot more…
The Rest of the Story
Dr. John came into the world in 1941 as Malcolm John Rebennack, Jr. - a name he reclaimed for the 10th of his 30+ albums. The number of albums alone gives away how well the “one-hit wonder” label applies to Dr. John. Long story short, the man’s a combination of a fixture and legend in the 1970s firmament. The crazy thing is how much further back his career goes.
Rebennack grew up around music, if at a remove. His father ran an appliance shop in his native New Orleans - 3rd Ward, thank you very much -and he turned his son on to the Big Easy’s musical traditions by recalling names big and small, like Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver as well as the 3rd Ward’s most famous son, Louis Armstrong (not there yet). Rebennack got into the business crazy early: apart from getting hired as an A&R man at Ace Records by Johnny Vincent by age 16, he had his own band (Mac Rebennack and the Skyliners), and had already written a regional hit for Jerry Byrne and the Loafers titled “Lights Out.” Rebennack spent the years after working as a session musician and gigging all over the regional circuit and both his day and night jobs afforded him bump into and learn from some of that era’s most famous names - e.g., Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley and Fats Domino. One mentor, however, came up in just about everything I read, a local legend named Professor Longhair, who he fondly recalled to an outlet called Quietusin a 2010 interview:
“There were a million things he had names for on the piano like, ‘Oh, that’s a double-note crossover’ or ‘Overs and unders.’ That’s not musical terminology! That’s Professor Longhair terminology, so I love that. I wish I was him.”
About that, Rebennack didn’t start on the piano. In fact, he backed into it courtesy of a temporary separation from the ring finger on his left hand. He had a young player in his band, a kid named Ronny Barron, who’s mother ordered Rebennack to look out for on pain of getting after his balls with a cleaver. And so, one night, when one thing lead to another lead to a near-fatal pistol-whipping of the young man, Rebennack stepped in and got his finger shot off while trying to disarm the guy with the pistol. The unusual nature of the incident stuck with him:
“But the point was we played a lot of dangerous joints; I’m surprised it didn’t happen before that. I never thought I would get shot in my finger… I just thought I’d get killed or somethin’ in one of them fights because there was a lot of shootin’.”
Then again, and this gets to the whole “right place wrong time” theme, Rebennack took a lot of chances in his youth. He both trafficked and used heroin, forged drug prescriptions, ran a brothel, and (related occupational hazard) “[disposed] of foetuses for a backstreet abortionist.” More from that Quietus interview - and this was specific to heroin addiction, but expanded to some general themes:
“I’m grateful for the 20 years I’ve been away from it all. I’m blessed. I survived a lot of things. Gettin’ shot in my finger was one thing; gettin’ shot in my knee was another thing; gettin’ shot in my ass was another thing; so was gettin’ shanked in my back. You get stabbed enough times, that’s not healthy either.”
Something else that took him “away from it all”: a two-year stretch in federal prison. On getting out, Rebennack relocated to Los Angeles…which is where the whole “Dr. John” thing took off. He’d originally planned to continue working on the session/producing side and tried to pitch…Ronnie Baron (it’s bizarrely unclear if this is the same guy) to adopt the Dr. John persona, something Rebennack based on (from Wikipedia) “a Senegalese prince, conjure man, herb doctor, and spiritual healer who came to New Orleans from Haiti.” When Baron bowed out, Rebennack picked it up and ran with it.
Dr. John put out four albums under the Dr. John/Night Tripper persona, starting with 1968’s Gris-Gris, an album Rolling Stone would later include as #143 of their 500 Greatest Albums. That album and the three that followed - Bablyon (1969), Remedies (1970) and The Sun, Moon & Herbs (1971) - played in the same vein, where R&B met psychedelic rock and offered to audiences in “elaborate stage shows that bordered on voodoo religious ceremonies, including elaborate costumes and headdress.” “Right Place Wrong Time” did not come from this era…
Dr. John pivoted to a more funk influenced sound starting with 1972’s Dr. John’s Gumbo and continued that over his next two releases, 1973’s In the Right Place and 1974’s Desitively Bonnaroo. To describe the shift and the reason for it, Wikipedia quoted Dr. John’s autobiography, Under a Hoodoo Moon:
“In 1972, I recorded Gumbo, an album that was both a tribute to and my interpretation of the music I had grown up with in New Orleans in the late 1940s and 1950s. I tried to keep a lot of little changes that were characteristic of New Orleans, while working my own funknology on piano and guitar.”
I basically wrapped up the research there, knowing I’d go on forever otherwise. In a life filled with crazy shit, nothing quite blows me away than the fact that Dr. John held down a “first-call” position with the Wrecking Crew, the legendary session musicians of the era. Listing all the people he collaborated with and wrote for would take even more time, but that fact that he’d already worked with Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton before “Right Place Wrong Time” came out gives a solid sense of his reputation in the music community. He continued to collaborate and write like a maniac for years after that and with a junk habit that stuck with him until 1989. And Dr. John broke into the top 100 enough times - e.g., “Iko Iko” from Dr. John’s Gumbo climbed to #71 and “Such a Night” hit #42 (that clip's from The Last Waltz, btw) and “(Everybody Wanna Get Rich) Rite Away" made #92 (both from In the Right Place; the single topped out at #9, btw) - that calling him a “one-hit wonder” just makes no damn sense. His decades at the upper reaches of the business alone make it freakin’ stupid.
Dr. John passed in 2019, but he returned to New Orleans and remained a major part of the community. He’s…just fucking fascinating, honestly, and full of wisdom and fresh-perspective - e.g., the (good) stuff about the “flesh-world” and the spirit world and his thoughts on life generally. With that in mind, I wanted to close with the interview he did with the Please Kill Me blog(?) in 2012, which showed him trying to (for lack of a better word) exorcise all the evil shit that followed from the BP Horizon eruption. He sounded loose and open in that one, perhaps even more so than he did with Quietus, and certainly more than he did with Time. If nothing else, Dr. John made it worth reviving this project.
About the Sampler
Because I went a little nuts on this one - I included 20 songs from Dr. John’s first seven albums, plus some of his collaborations - I’ve decided to hit some representative highlights instead of listing every song on the 25-track compilation. To rep his “Night Tripper/voodoo” era (which is pretty thin on the sampler, honestly), I included “Black Widow Spider” and “Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya” (and…fine, “I Walk on Guilded Splinters,” but that sucker’s long). Because I’ve already flagged several tracks from his “New Orleans funk” period up above, I’ll throw out “Qualified” (personal favorite), “Familiar Reality (Opening)” and…why not, the fairly poppy, “Let’s Make a Better World” - a song that recalls another, earlier tune, “Wash, Mama, Wash.”
I buried several of Dr. John’s collaborations toward the bottom of the sampler (to showcase the main act, of course), and these don’t include any writing credits (I don’t think). Still, he contributed both his presence and playing to The Rolling Stones “Let It Loose,” Carly Simon’s “More and More,” to the Carly Simon/James Taylor duet, “Mockingbird,” and, all the way at the bottom of the sampler, Spiritualized’s “Cop Shoot Cop.”
And…yeah, that’s everything. And how much fun was that?
Whether by classic radio, or a commercial for a beer, a car, a brand of “man” deodorant…maybe Axe Body Spray(but also, probably not), you’ve almost certainly heard Dr. John’s “Right Place Wrong Time.” You might not have connected the tune to Dr. John - God knows I didn’t - even if you have a dim understanding of who Dr. John was.
Unlike some recent selections in this series, “Right Place Wrong Time” doesn’t have a good story, never mind a great one. Still, it’s a solid tune that gets better if you can disconnect it in your mind from some awful visual that’s lurking in the back of your head from some goddamn commercial. The pulsing buzz that starts it doesn’t promise much, but the funk rhythm line rescues it before too long; the horns that come in next give it a nice lift and the jangling funk guitar accents it just so. That pile of instruments leaves a surprising amount of space, which gives the whole thing a loose, lean feel.
Unlike that cocky, goddamn beer ad I only half remember, an under-current of danger bubbles under Dr. John’s biggest hit - something that tracks all the way with his early years. But, again, I haven’t seen or read anything that suggests a particular inspiration or even a back-story. In fact, the most interesting thing I can pass on comes with his thoughts on commercial music, which he gave to Rolling Stone in a 1973 interview:
“The only thing that make a record commercial is if people buys it. Originally I felt to go commercial would prostitute myself and bastardize the music. On reflecting, I thought that if without messin’ up the music and keeping the roots and elements of what I want to do musically, I could still make a commercial record I would not feel ashamed from, I’m proud of, and still have a feel for, then it’s not a bad thing but it even serve a good purpose.”
I’m not entirely sure what to make of the broken English - especially after watching a short clip of him talking to Time magazine in 2010. At any rate, there’s more. Like, a lot more…
The Rest of the Story
Dr. John came into the world in 1941 as Malcolm John Rebennack, Jr. - a name he reclaimed for the 10th of his 30+ albums. The number of albums alone gives away how well the “one-hit wonder” label applies to Dr. John. Long story short, the man’s a combination of a fixture and legend in the 1970s firmament. The crazy thing is how much further back his career goes.
Rebennack grew up around music, if at a remove. His father ran an appliance shop in his native New Orleans - 3rd Ward, thank you very much -and he turned his son on to the Big Easy’s musical traditions by recalling names big and small, like Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver as well as the 3rd Ward’s most famous son, Louis Armstrong (not there yet). Rebennack got into the business crazy early: apart from getting hired as an A&R man at Ace Records by Johnny Vincent by age 16, he had his own band (Mac Rebennack and the Skyliners), and had already written a regional hit for Jerry Byrne and the Loafers titled “Lights Out.” Rebennack spent the years after working as a session musician and gigging all over the regional circuit and both his day and night jobs afforded him bump into and learn from some of that era’s most famous names - e.g., Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley and Fats Domino. One mentor, however, came up in just about everything I read, a local legend named Professor Longhair, who he fondly recalled to an outlet called Quietusin a 2010 interview:
“There were a million things he had names for on the piano like, ‘Oh, that’s a double-note crossover’ or ‘Overs and unders.’ That’s not musical terminology! That’s Professor Longhair terminology, so I love that. I wish I was him.”
About that, Rebennack didn’t start on the piano. In fact, he backed into it courtesy of a temporary separation from the ring finger on his left hand. He had a young player in his band, a kid named Ronny Barron, who’s mother ordered Rebennack to look out for on pain of getting after his balls with a cleaver. And so, one night, when one thing lead to another lead to a near-fatal pistol-whipping of the young man, Rebennack stepped in and got his finger shot off while trying to disarm the guy with the pistol. The unusual nature of the incident stuck with him:
“But the point was we played a lot of dangerous joints; I’m surprised it didn’t happen before that. I never thought I would get shot in my finger… I just thought I’d get killed or somethin’ in one of them fights because there was a lot of shootin’.”
Then again, and this gets to the whole “right place wrong time” theme, Rebennack took a lot of chances in his youth. He both trafficked and used heroin, forged drug prescriptions, ran a brothel, and (related occupational hazard) “[disposed] of foetuses for a backstreet abortionist.” More from that Quietus interview - and this was specific to heroin addiction, but expanded to some general themes:
“I’m grateful for the 20 years I’ve been away from it all. I’m blessed. I survived a lot of things. Gettin’ shot in my finger was one thing; gettin’ shot in my knee was another thing; gettin’ shot in my ass was another thing; so was gettin’ shanked in my back. You get stabbed enough times, that’s not healthy either.”
Something else that took him “away from it all”: a two-year stretch in federal prison. On getting out, Rebennack relocated to Los Angeles…which is where the whole “Dr. John” thing took off. He’d originally planned to continue working on the session/producing side and tried to pitch…Ronnie Baron (it’s bizarrely unclear if this is the same guy) to adopt the Dr. John persona, something Rebennack based on (from Wikipedia) “a Senegalese prince, conjure man, herb doctor, and spiritual healer who came to New Orleans from Haiti.” When Baron bowed out, Rebennack picked it up and ran with it.
Dr. John put out four albums under the Dr. John/Night Tripper persona, starting with 1968’s Gris-Gris, an album Rolling Stone would later include as #143 of their 500 Greatest Albums. That album and the three that followed - Bablyon (1969), Remedies (1970) and The Sun, Moon & Herbs (1971) - played in the same vein, where R&B met psychedelic rock and offered to audiences in “elaborate stage shows that bordered on voodoo religious ceremonies, including elaborate costumes and headdress.” “Right Place Wrong Time” did not come from this era…
Dr. John pivoted to a more funk influenced sound starting with 1972’s Dr. John’s Gumbo and continued that over his next two releases, 1973’s In the Right Place and 1974’s Desitively Bonnaroo. To describe the shift and the reason for it, Wikipedia quoted Dr. John’s autobiography, Under a Hoodoo Moon:
“In 1972, I recorded Gumbo, an album that was both a tribute to and my interpretation of the music I had grown up with in New Orleans in the late 1940s and 1950s. I tried to keep a lot of little changes that were characteristic of New Orleans, while working my own funknology on piano and guitar.”
I basically wrapped up the research there, knowing I’d go on forever otherwise. In a life filled with crazy shit, nothing quite blows me away than the fact that Dr. John held down a “first-call” position with the Wrecking Crew, the legendary session musicians of the era. Listing all the people he collaborated with and wrote for would take even more time, but that fact that he’d already worked with Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton before “Right Place Wrong Time” came out gives a solid sense of his reputation in the music community. He continued to collaborate and write like a maniac for years after that and with a junk habit that stuck with him until 1989. And Dr. John broke into the top 100 enough times - e.g., “Iko Iko” from Dr. John’s Gumbo climbed to #71 and “Such a Night” hit #42 (that clip's from The Last Waltz, btw) and “(Everybody Wanna Get Rich) Rite Away" made #92 (both from In the Right Place; the single topped out at #9, btw) - that calling him a “one-hit wonder” just makes no damn sense. His decades at the upper reaches of the business alone make it freakin’ stupid.
Dr. John passed in 2019, but he returned to New Orleans and remained a major part of the community. He’s…just fucking fascinating, honestly, and full of wisdom and fresh-perspective - e.g., the (good) stuff about the “flesh-world” and the spirit world and his thoughts on life generally. With that in mind, I wanted to close with the interview he did with the Please Kill Me blog(?) in 2012, which showed him trying to (for lack of a better word) exorcise all the evil shit that followed from the BP Horizon eruption. He sounded loose and open in that one, perhaps even more so than he did with Quietus, and certainly more than he did with Time. If nothing else, Dr. John made it worth reviving this project.
About the Sampler
Because I went a little nuts on this one - I included 20 songs from Dr. John’s first seven albums, plus some of his collaborations - I’ve decided to hit some representative highlights instead of listing every song on the 25-track compilation. To rep his “Night Tripper/voodoo” era (which is pretty thin on the sampler, honestly), I included “Black Widow Spider” and “Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya” (and…fine, “I Walk on Guilded Splinters,” but that sucker’s long). Because I’ve already flagged several tracks from his “New Orleans funk” period up above, I’ll throw out “Qualified” (personal favorite), “Familiar Reality (Opening)” and…why not, the fairly poppy, “Let’s Make a Better World” - a song that recalls another, earlier tune, “Wash, Mama, Wash.”
I buried several of Dr. John’s collaborations toward the bottom of the sampler (to showcase the main act, of course), and these don’t include any writing credits (I don’t think). Still, he contributed both his presence and playing to The Rolling Stones “Let It Loose,” Carly Simon’s “More and More,” to the Carly Simon/James Taylor duet, “Mockingbird,” and, all the way at the bottom of the sampler, Spiritualized’s “Cop Shoot Cop.”
And…yeah, that’s everything. And how much fun was that?
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