Dr. John
In The Right Place
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The greatness of Mac Rebennack, alias, Dr. John, also known as John Crieux, rests on his command of the musical use of idiomatic expression. Not a technically well-endowed singer, nor a great songwriter, he leaves his mark through the discipline and control he exerts over all that he touches. Every note seems in retrospect the product of a decision, the result of a selection based on an intuitive feeling for what works and what doesn't, what is right and what is wrong, what is finally the correct way to play the song. In the Right Place, possibly his best album, is an example of regional art. In the six years since he started recording under the name Dr. John, he has tried a lot
Read More of things once, confusing casual listeners (including me) in the process. I mistook all that early gris-gris-voodoo for L.A.-psychedelic exploitation, especially because the early albums bore the imprimatur of Charlie Greene, the man largely responsible for the early commercial success of Sonny and Cher. I didn't realize then that many of the most important people on the Sonny and Cher records (which I enjoyed) were refugees from the dying New Orleans studio scene, headed west in search of better pay and more work. Harold Battiste, Jr. was the most prominent of these. Famed as an arranger and keyboard man, he was rumored to be the driving force behind Sonny and Cher's string of successful singles. He eventually showed up as producer on some of John's albums but by then I was beginning to realize that although he recorded in L.A. and seemed crazy enough to have wandered right in off the Strip, everything he did was part of his New Orleans background. When the Doctor recently returned to straight-ahead rock & roll on Gumbo he wasn't renouncing his past and returning to his roots; rather, he was choosing to emphasize a different part of his past—the one that included musical encounters with Huey Smith, Amos Milburn, Professor Longhair and Allen Toussaint. Toussaint is perhaps the last of the New Orleans production heavies. He was the author and producer of all the great Lee Dorsey records (including "Get Out of My Life Woman") and the force behind the greatest R&B studio band since Booker T. and the MGs, the Meters. It is unsurprising that he finally turned up as John's producer on In the Right Place, and brought the Meters along for backup. The only thing that seems out of synch is the site of the recording, Miami, Florida. Not that Criteria isn't the finest studio in the South (it probably is), but it feels like the album should have been cut in New Orleans. It probably wasn't because there are no modern recording studios left in the most influential city in the country's musical history—a sad and sorry fact of life. I first saw the Doctor perform at the Boston Tea Party in the summer of 1968. His warmup act was the then unrecorded and untested Allman Brothers Band. They blasted their way through a lot of what
Right Place is probably the one Dr. John record people who are not devoted fans of either the Dr. himself or weirdo musicians in general (see John's earliest records) can get into. The title cut is a '70s staple (for good reason), and the Dr.'s freaked-out voodoo rock is reined in just a bit, then tightened up by incredibly precise backing from the Meters.
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