Native Son: Dr. John

As a teenager in the Fifties, Malcolm "Mac" Rebennack was one of New Orleans' busiest session musicians, writing songs, playing guitar and piano, and producing and arranging sessions. In 1965, Rebennack moved to Los Angeles and created the psychedelic alter ego Dr. John. But his music has never strayed from its roots. One of his best albums is 1972's Gumbo, a set of New Orleans R&B covers featuring many of the sidemen from the original versions.

You were born in the Third Ward of New Orleans. What was the neighborhood like?

I was blessed. The lady who lived next door to us -- she would be playing piano. My auntie would come over to my house and play piano. I remember jam sessions as a little bitty kid. There was a guy who played piano at Rappolo's Bar down at the corner -- he played his ass off.

My father sold records, and he'd fix PA systems around town. He'd take me to see the Mardi Gras Indians [African-American parade groups dressed in extravagant feathered costumes], and as a little kid, I met Danny Barker, Professor Longhair, so many musicians, through my father.

Did they seem like stars or neighbors?

Everybody I ever met in New Orleans, they were down-home people. There's not too many people from New Orleans who put on any kind of airs.

My father knew [Walter] "Papoose" Nelson, who played guitar with Fats Domino. He gave me lessons, then sent me out to sub on a recording session for him. I'm only fourteen years old. All of a sudden, I'm a studio musician.

When I got into doing sessions, I didn't know that much, just enough that I was able to work. But everybody showed me stuff, whether it was [saxophonist] Red Tyler or Allen Toussaint or [pianist] Huey Smith. That's the way it was, that thing of giving to people. New Orleans is a giving place. It's a town where if you don't eat a second plate of food, they figure you don't like the food.

Do you remember the first time you met Professor Longhair?

I was a little kid. It was at a joint called the Pepper Pot in Harvey, Louisiana, out in a field. The PA was broke, and the joint was packed. Professor Longhair was sitting on a tree stump, rolling a spliff, and he just started talking to me like he knew me.

I'd never met anybody like that before. He was wearing a turtleneck shirt with a watch hanging around his neck, an Army-fatigue hat and a tuxedo jacket. And he had his own way of talking, which was completely original. That's one of the things I miss about the old days. Adults talked to kids like they were adults. They didn't talk to them like they were kids. He was just saying whatever was on his mind.

I saw him play, some space and time later -- especially when him and Sugar Boy Crawford and Big Boy Myles used to have the Sha-Weez band. They were kickin'. Back then, a lot of Afro-Cuban music was all over New Orleans. They'd play a lot of mambos, and Longhair's thing had a lot of that.

From the beginning, you played gigs and made records with black musicians. How was that possible amid the racism all around you?

There were pockets of New Orleans where I'd go sub on gigs for my guitar teacher, Roy Montrell, with no problem: the Lower Ninth Ward, Chalmette, St. Bernard Parish. Then there were those areas where it wasn't cool. Also, there was a white musicians' union and a black musicians' union -- I was caught in-between. When I ran sessions, if there were more white guys, it was the white union. If there were more black guys, I ran it through the black union. Then everyone came to my pad to pick up their checks or cash money, depending on how fast they needed it.

New Orleans is a desperately poor town. I've told people for years: Poverty in New Orleans is more akin to Haiti than it is to any other place in the United States. And they never get it. One time, some guys wanted to see where I'd lived in the Ninth Ward. I said, "I ain't taking you out there." Finally, they talked me into it. I got a little ways toward it, so they could see a little bit of it, and all of a sudden, somebody started popping caps. The police was there, and we got blockaded in. I said, "You see why I didn't want you to come out here?"

What was it like growing up in a city that was under the constant threat of hurricanes and flooding?

My father always said the wetlands were disappearing. Anybody who fished, hunted or trapped knew there were problems. When the Army Corps of Engineers diverted the Mississippi River to blow straight into the gulf, they were blowing the bottom of the state away. It was an unnatural thing to do. Oyster beds and shrimping spots disappeared.

Do you remember evacuating the city because of a storm?

People didn't have a way to evacuate in those days. It was shell roads mostly. When you got past a certain place, there was no road. You toughed it out. I actually remember seeing an oak tree looking like it was walking down the street. People prayed a lot, held together as a family, because there was no escape route.

One of the remarkable things about the New Orleans funeral parades is the way mortality and immortality are inextricably linked. The brass bands play hymns on the way to the cemetery, then hit the second-line marches on the way out.

New Orleans has always connected the dead and the living. The spirit kingdom prevails in New Orleans, with the real world. I remember so many parades as a boy. Bands played these sad dirges, and when they got to the end, they turned around and broke into the second line.

The second line is part of the lifeblood of the people. It's in the Indians' music. I used to hear it in church -- everywhere, no matter where you went. It's a celebration of life. My grandmother would always say, "Don't send flowers to a funeral. Send some money to the children instead." All these old sayings have been coming back to me lately, because I've been thinking of so many things, so many people we're missing.

You created the voodoo-funk persona Dr. John after moving to L.A. in the Sixties. Was that your way of staying connected to the city?

At the time, there was a bunch of us from New Orleans hanging together in L.A. We were on each other's coattails, like maggots hanging on a corpse. We felt uprooted and lost. We didn't make the Gris-Gris record [1968] to make money. We were trying to keep our spirits up.

As you came back to New Orleans -- for shows and to make albums like In the Right Place (1973) -- could you see the city changing, for better and worse?

I remember the first time I saw the Claiborne Avenue overpass -- I had water in my eyes, it was so painful. How could they fuck up Claiborne Avenue? When I was a kid, I got to see mules comin' down there. It was so disturbing. And it's gotten worse. The politicians -- they always did something goofy that destroyed something, and somebody pocketed a lot of money off it.

Yet so much music, art and culture has survived.

The music is a spiritual thing. The Indians are a spiritual thing. Right now, some of the Mardi Gras Indians that survived the hurricane are being put up by Native Americans.

The people's spirit is strong. That's the thing about New Orleans, no matter what people see on TV. You always got a pocket of wacks out there. You got 'em everywhere: the crazies, the crackheads, the speed freaks. But the spirit of the people is strong. They're all in shock right now. I'm in shock.

But as far as rebuilding New Orleans back to what it could be, people will rebound -- whenever they're able to get to something. Maybe some of these oil and gas companies can contribute jobs and help these people rebuild their lives. People would love to get back, instead of being relocated where they don't know anybody and don't feel rooted.

One thing about "coonasses," or whatever you want to call us from Louisiana: There is a sense of deep roots. People say, "The acorn never falls far from the tree." In Louisiana, we say it the other way: "The oak tree don't fall too far from the acorn." I like it that way. Oak trees will fall, they will get rotted out. And when they do, that's a big loss. But the acorn will sprout again. It takes time.

Is there anything about the city -- the heart and character of it -- that has been lost forever?

There are so many bodies. They're not going to find out how many until the water has totally receded. That is going to reopen a lot of wounds for a lot of people. Not everyone stayed just to protect their homes. They were trapped. And a lot will turn out to be old people and children. I would hate to think that those people are skimmed over: "What did they do for society?"

Those people did what they could. And it might not seem like nothing big to the politicians, but it was something to the community. It's terrible, and it's going to kick up a lot more stuff, which is not gonna go away just because someone says it's cool to go home.