We continue our look back at the music of 5o years ago…..
The sound of some music can immediately take you to a certain place. The Dead and the Airplane send you tripping to Haight-Asbury……listen to the Beach Boys and you’re surfing on Hermosa Beach….early ZZ Top and the tumble weeds are blowing through West Texas. Such is the case with today’s album, “The Sun, Moon & Herbs” by Dr. John.
One of the things that I’m loving about this mission to revisit all of this great old music is the fact that I never visited some of it in the first place. This album never got played on the radio up here and it was never on my radar screen until earlier this week when I cued it up and took a trip to the bayous of southern Louisiana. It is a revelation.
When most folks visit New Orleans, they rarely venture away from the tourist areas and even less seldom into the swamps outside of the city. Read the novels of James Lee Burke if you want to know what I’m talking about…or listen to this record
The Night Tripper…aka Dr John…aka Mac Rebbenack…growls the lyrics in a Cajun patois so thick you can’t even understand what he’s talking about in tunes like Black John The Conqueror, Craney Crow and Where Ya At Mule…but it’s side 2 that really gets in your blood.
The songs are great. “Familiar Reality”, “Pots On Fiyo (Fil’e Gumbo)” and especially “Zu Zu Mamou” take you to places you’ve never been before. You can almost feel the snakes hanging from the live oaks and the gators ready to strike…and you can smell the pot where some voodoo mama is whipping up her potions. Its a heady stew.
The supporting cast shines including some tasty slide from Clapton, horns from Graham Bond, Bobby Keys and Jim Price along with an appearance by the ubiquitous Memphis Horns…but the so-called background singers make the record. You should probably call them “foreground” singers as their voices are brought up in the mix and drive the groove. And what a group they are…Doris Troy, P.P Arnold, Tami Lynn, Shirley Goodman and Joni Jonz bring it…and Bobby Whitlock and Mick Jagger are in there somewhere too.
A critic suggested that “this is best listened to on a hot, muggy night with the sound of thunder rumbling off in the distance like jungle drums”. This is a record that will get under your skin and it will certainly not take another 50 years before I listen to it again. Enjoy!
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