Put on Dr. John's 1968 debut, Gris-Gris, and no matter where you are, it becomes nighttime on a lonely bayou and you are the unwelcome, painfully out-of-place tourist. Every living thing is moving stealthily and slowly. Along comes a croaky old critter, snake-oil-selling the power of his gris-gris, talking about the way he gonna make somebody pay, the damage he can do with dust and potions and the mists of the swamp night. "Put gris-gris on your doorstep/Soon you'll be in the gutter," he sings. "Melt you like butter/I can make you stutter."

Gris-Gris is the New Orleans appropriation of California psychedelia, dressed up in Mardi Gras finery and spiced like a gut-busting gumbo. Pianist Mac Rebennack, who created the character Dr. John while working as a session keyboardist in Los Angeles, ran it down just right: Casting himself as an all-seeing brujo equipped with cures for common ailments and metaphysical quandaries, he became a Cajun Captain Trips, a flamboyant ringmaster who dispensed advice and cutthroat commentary with a pinch of French Quarter mumbo jumbo.

Gris-Gris, which was produced by the pianist Harold Battiste and features many of New Orleans' finest, is a spacey glass-bottom-boat tour of the myths and legends of the city's midnight realm. Though Dr. John later established himself as a persuasive interpreter of New Orleans R&B — the music of the Meters, Professor Longhair and James Booker — at this point he was more of a raconteur, calling out the local characters ("Mama Roux" is immortalized in an Afro-Cuban pulse) and those affiliated with the secret societies, unspooling fragmented tales over droning, repetitive, intoxicating vamps.

Of these, the album-closing "I Walk on Gilded Splinters" endures as a classic — a masterpiece of vibe that has retained its aura even after being sampled and covered every which way. An ambling processional framed by a simple pentatonic guitar melody, it's everything you want in voodoo music: a feast of pummeling drums, swirling ethereal voices and the patient, mumbled incantations of Dr. John, all coalescing into the sound of a solemn, revelatory ritual.

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."