Dr. John: How Come My Dogs Don’t Bark (When You Come Around)

Birthday greetings to Dr. John, born Malcolm Rebennack, who celebrates No. 71 today.

Rebennack was a guitar player known by his given name until two events in the 1960s altered his course: a gun accident injured a finger and detoured him to the piano, and he changed his name to the identity that would soon make him famous. His namesake was John Montaigne, a 19th-century doctor, whose treatments apparently were more in line with voodoo than the American Medical Association. The first Dr. John was once arrested, according to Tom Aswell’s Louisiana Rocks: The True Genesis of Rock and Roll, for prostitution, with a woman named Pauline Rebennack. The modern-day Dr. John, according to Aswell, thought the surname too much of a coincidence to overlook.

Most casual music lovers know Dr. John for 1973′s Right Place Wrong Time, but he never lost touch with his roots as Malcolm Rebennack, or as a session player (on Rickie Lee Jones’ debut 1979 album, for example, Rebennack — not Dr. John, who was by then famous — is one of six listed keyboards players).

“Doc has been my name all my life, and John is my middle name. I’m proud of all my names — Malcolm John Michael Creaux Rebennack,” Dr. John said in an interview on npr.org. “I’m proud of them names.”

Dr. John once said, in a Rolling Stone interview with Andy Greene, he always liked Johnny Cash because Cash “remembered my real name. Not many people do.”

In the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he’s enshrined as Dr. John, although his bio pays homage to his given name. His 2011 induction was the right place at the right time.

“See, I don’t know nothing about singing,” he told npr. “I never wanted to be a frontman. Frontmen had big egos and was always crazy and aggravating. I just never thought that was a good idea.”

Ideas, Dr. John had, most of them provided by his native New Orleans, and many of them outlandish. But he attracted attention not just for the show, but for the substance of the music, too.

“. . . many are the coats,” wrote Ashley Kahn, in an essay that originally appeared in the program from the 2011 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induiction program, “he’s worn: riff-master, R&B guitarist and boogie-woogie piano professor. Psychedelic voodoo rock shaman and stately New Orleans musical ambassador. Bandleader of top-tier talent and A-list sessionman/producer. Player of downhome blues and singer of uptown jazz standards. ‘Ain’t no difference,’ Dr. John said of himself a few years back. ‘It’s all one sucka in there however you want to break it down . . . ‘ ”

Dr. John was music’s Dr. J long before Julius Erving became basketball’s. He’s still going, of course. Asked by Greene about retirement, Dr. John said: “I think it’s only proper that I play until the last note of a set, then fall over and die. The band won’t have to play an encore and they’ll still get paid for a gig.”

sources: npr.org, answers.com, nitetripper.com, rollingstone.com, rockhall.com

Youssou N’Dour: Set

Senegal's Youssou N'Dour and his 2000 album Joko (The Link)

Birthday greetings to Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour, who celebrates No. 52 today.

More than acknowledgement, N’Dour would probably prefer recognition or help for his current project: helping to ease the current famine in Somalia. Because if N’Dour is little known in North America, he is, as Rolling Stone called him in 2004, “perhaps the most famous singer alive,” in Africa. Though N’Dour’s native Senegal is Africa’s westernmost country and Somalia its easternmost, fame brings responsibility.

“From Dakar to Djibouti, the new Africa must unite as one, our people across the continent, and hold each other, our leaders and the international community accountable for inaction – and bring about urgent action,” N’Dour said late last month, according to the Guardian.co.uk.

N’Dour’s action will include a concert early next year in Kenya, with various African artists and Ireland’s Bono. At that venue, there’s no question who the No. 1 attraction will be.

N’Dour’s music includes many cultures, in part because so many were absorbed into Senegal by its location and history; it was a French colony immediately before gaining independence in 1960.

“Youssou N’Dour is the voice of modern Africa-poet, groove merchant and symbol of a young self-aware African generation,” read the liner notes, which seem almost prophetic today, to N’Dour’s 1990 album Set. “Youssou now reaches an audience other African performers could not. With this unprecedented exposure comes a big responsibility for this most charismatic of the new World Musicians — to strike in us all, better than any politician or conventional moralist, the chords of mutual recognition so essential to the future of the planet. Youssou’s music uncannily beckons us to think globally while we dance locally.”

Below a 2002 live version to the title track of N’Dour’s album Set:

sources: guardian.co.uk, wikipedia.org,

Carole King: Smackwater Jack

 

Carole King: Tapestry

It’s not too late to extend birthday greetings to singer/songwriter Carole King, born Carole Klein, who celebrates No. 69 today.

When it comes to No. 1, King reached the charts twice with songs she wrote and sang (It’s Too Late, I Feel the Earth Move), but she was a constant in the top 10 with songs she wrote and others sang. Whatever stage fright King might have endured as a performer early in her career, she suffered no corresponding bouts of writer’s block.

Her partner in lyrics and matrimony was Gerry Goffin, whom she met at Queens College, where her classmates included Paul Simon and Neil Sedaka — the latter wrote “Oh! Carol” for King.

King was 18 when she and Goffin wrote “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” which the Shirelles used in 1961 to become the first all-girl band to reach No. 1 (years later, King’s doorbell played it at her Los Angeles home). After that, King and Goffin produced hit songs in bulk, and became more of  a fixture on the charts than any of the groups they wrote for. Their clientele was as diverse and international as the pop scene itself. To wit, all of the following were King/Goffin songs:

• Up on The Roof, by the Drifters in 1962, reached No. 4 in the U.S.
• Don’t Bring Me Down, by the Animals in 1966, reached No. 12.
• One Fine Day, by the Chiffons in 1963, reached No. 5.
• I’m Into Something Good, by Herman’s Hermits in 1964, reached No. 13 (No. 1 in Great Britain).
• Take Good Care of My Baby, by Bobby Vee in 1961, reached No. 1.
• Chains, by the Cookies, reached No. 7.
• Pleasant Valley Sunday, by the Monkees in 1967, reached No. 3.
• Go Away Little Girl, by three different artists — Steve Lawrence in 1962, the Happenings in 1966 and Donny Osmond in 1971. Lawrence and Osmond each had No. 1 hits with the song.
• (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, by Aretha Franklin, in 1967, reached No. 8.
• Hi-de-Ho, by Blood Sweat & Tears in 1967.
• The Loco-Motion, which Little Eva, the couple’s babysitter, used to reach No. 1 in 1962. More than a decade later, Grand Funk Railroad re-recorded the song and reached No. 1; more than a decade after that, Kylie Minogue re-recorded it. By then, the song was so obviously overexposed it only reached No. 3.

King and Goffin split up in 1968, and King’s solo career soared in 1971 with Tapestry, her second album. It had her two No. 1 hits, and another in You’ve Got a Friend by her good friend James Taylor. The album was the top-selling solo album of all-time until supplanted by Michael Jackson in 1982.

In recent years, King has been active touring with Taylor, in theater and TV, supporting political causes and even writing a song for Celine Dion. Off the charts, perhaps, but not so far away.

A recent live version of Smackwater Jack, from Tapestry, below.