Music: Consultations with the Doctor

• Share

Funk explained, second line defined, boogie-woogie exalted

Listen to Dr. John Plays Mac Rebennack and you hear one of the best albums of the year, solo piano at its funkiest and most soulful. Take in one of the Doctor's appearances on his summer concert tour and you get a brilliant initiation into one of the most enduring American musical traditions: rhythm and blues, New Orleans-style. Mac Rebennack—known since 1963 for his professional appearances as Dr. John—has been a first-class musician, a cabin-class superstar and a keyboard boogie man, keeping the tradition of his native city alive and treating it proud. He is also a garrulous archivist of local musical lore and a dexterous spinner of tales. In his sunny town house in Manhattan's Chelsea district, the Doctor, 40, is the man to consult on matters of great musical history and moment.

On Sound. "New Orleans music is Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Cuban and Mardi Gras Indian. Combine that with natural street rhythms like Bo Diddley or the hambone little spasm bands that play boxes and garbage-can covers in the streets and you have a piece of the thing. Add parade drums to that and you have a little more. The Mardi Gras Indians incorporated all this rhythmically. On Mardi Gras day the Indians would wear costumes—a lot of feathers—and come out in the morning to greet the sunrise and all move toward the center of the city. As they went, they'd challenge one another to see whose dancers were the best dressed and whose music was best. Then they'd all converge in this one area. That's the peak."

On Style. "A lot of the music I play is music the Mardi Gras Indians do. The guys that did this thing—Professor Longhair, Smiley Lewis, Guitar Slim—died off. There was nobody to keep it alive except the few guys who worked with them. Me, James Booker, Huey Piano Smith, Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint. I guess I would call my own style barrelhouse with blues and jazz mixtures. Rock 'n' roll too.

"I like music that's rhythmic and funky. Today that word's misused completely. Originally, funky meant 'stinky.' Like, 'Your mother is goin' to spank your funky butt if you don't clean up your act." Now funk means something that is sharp and looks nice or smells good. Funk to me means more what it was originally. We have what we call this second line. More bass drums involved in the rhythm. I'll play the low bass notes with my left hand to give the illusion of a bass drum, and I'll kind of pound the piano to get the feeling that the drums are there. As the rhythms become tense they become more nervous. As they relax themselves they become more laid back, and that's where the really funky side comes in."

On Youth. "My mother had twelve sisters or so and my father had four or five brothers, and almost all of them played music. My aunts and uncles would always come by and we'd just sit down and jam. At four or five I could play a boogie on the piano.