OBBIE ROBERTSON has seen a lot in six decades of rock & roll, but nothing quite
like what happened at the Toronto Pop Festival in 1969. He and the Band were on
a bill that included the New Orleans studio musician and songwriter Mac Reben-
nack, newly reinvented as Dr. John, the Night Tripper. “This guy I’m talking to, he
has strands of beads and shit coming off his head and powders coming out of his
ears and rags hanging down,” recalls Robertson. “He’s got a walking stick that looks like some-
thing you perform magic tricks with.” When rain began to pour down on the grounds, Robert-
son watched as Dr. John, playing an incantatory style of swamp pop dubbed “voodoo rock” by
a baffled media, raised the stick to the sky, and held it for a moment. Just then, the rain stopped.
As Robertson remembers, “We’re like, ‘Man, the doctor is really a doctor!’ ” ¶ Dr. John was al-
ways modest about his place in the history of New Orleans music. “Everything I’m about, the
old-timers showed me,” he once said. “Nothing I got is nothing original.” He’d be the first to
admit that he picked up his spry, rolling-river piano-playing from predecessors like Professor
66 | Rolling Stone | August 2019
The
Joy and
Mystery
of a New
Orleans
Saint
Dr. John
By DAVID BROWNE
R