Talkin’ ‘Bout New Orleans? This Man Knows What It Means : Dr. John Takes His Lou’siana Swamp Music All Across the Country

Most music fans would number the Band’s Garth Hudson and Rick Danko among rock’s most august performers, as both were already weathered journeymen even when the Band surfaced in 1968. But Mac (Dr. John) Rebennack, who shares a bill with Hudson and Danko tonight at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, refers to them as “the kids.”

Though the 47-year-old pianist is only three years senior to the pair, Rebennack has earned his keep as a musician since the mid-’50s, when at 15 he persuaded his parents to sign a work permit. Before he was out of his teens, he had logged untold thousands of miles with road bands and chalked up a bullet wound as evidence of the severity of the touring musician’s lot in those times.

In the late ‘50s and the ‘60s, Rebennack’s sessions as a fixture of the active New Orleans and Los Angeles studio scenes included gigs with piano genius Professor Longhair, Sonny & Cher, and work on Phil Spector’s legendary “little symphonies for the kids.” In 1968 he carved out his own legend as Dr. John Creaux, creating a psychedelicized swamp music that made him an underground radio favorite. That success moved above ground in 1973 with the Top 10 hits “Such a Night” and “Right Place Wrong Time.”

Even now, he seems a little perplexed over the commercial success so many years ago of his outlandish alter ego.

“I never thought it would be anything more than a one-(shot) deal,” Rebennack said by phone from Seattle this week. “I never imagined it would be popular. I just thought it would be fun.”

These days Rebennack isn’t so much under- or above-ground as he is airborne, having toured nearly nonstop this year. By his estimation he had only 19 days at home between Dec. 6 and Aug. 12.

Now he is out again on a tour that has found him leapfrogging from Ottawa, Canada, to Raleigh, N.C., to Seattle over three days, with an airline snafu on that last hop that gave him layovers in four other disparate burgs and caused him to lose his hotel reservation in Seattle.

Reached at a less-rigid Seattle hotel where he eventually did get a room, Rebennack seemed less miffed by the tour glitches than excited by his gig opening for Robert Cray the previous evening.

“The traveling can be a pain at times, but it’s a great feeling to be able to communicate with people like that. I really love playing and wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

These days Rebennack performs about half of his gigs solo at the piano and half with his bands. (He has two: one based in New York and one in New Orleans. He also maintains residences in both cities.) This tour is solo except for the few dates he is doing with Hudson and Danko, which will feature separate sets, then the two acts jamming together.

Rebennack has known the Band’s members for decades, having first met drummer Levon Helm on the road in the ‘50s. He appeared in Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Waltz” film of the Band’s final concert in 1976. Though he gets together with Danko and Hudson only rarely, their musical communication is such that they can “go with whatever seems appropriate at the time” instead of having a prepared repertoire.

Despite his busy touring schedule, Rebennack hasn’t had a major-label record out in more than a decade. (His more recent recordings, including the excellent solo piano album “The Brightest Smile in Town,” have been on independent labels.) But he will get a break from the road in October, when he goes into the studio to record an album for Warner Bros. with Joe Sample-Miles Davis producer Tommy LiPuma in the booth. The album will feature big-band arrangements of new Rebennack numbers as well as some standards, including a slated guest vocal by Rickie Lee Jones on “Makin’ Whoopee.”

Rebennack was born in New Orleans and got his first taste of show biz as a baby: His face appeared on Ivory Soap boxes. His interest in music was whetted by blues, hillbilly and be-bop records brought home by his father, who ran a record store. But, living in New Orleans, Rebennack scarcely needed a phonograph to hear music.

“Music and dancing is just something everybody does in New Orleans, and so many cultures mixed there that the music always seemed to come out as something new. Just about everybody in my family played. When I was a little kid, people used to get around the piano, maybe somebody would bring a bass, or horns, and there’d be a jam session. It seemed people did that all through my neighborhood,” Rebennack said.

By age 13 he was playing guitar and keyboards in bands at sock hops, moving on after a few years to studio and road bands with such seminal rock and R&B; stars as Roy Brown, Longhair, Huey (Piano) Smith and Shirley & Lee.

His guitar playing was temporarily curtailed when he was shot in the hand in a barroom fracas in 1960. In a deadpan tone that made the event sound like an everyday occurrence, Rebennack explained: “It was in Jacksonville, Fla., and a guy was pistol-whipping the singer with our band. I was trying to get the gun out of his hand, and I was grabbing for the handle but got the barrel. It went off in my hand. I had to relearn how to play the guitar, and up to today I still play it differently.”

When there was a lull in the New Orleans’ recording scene in 1964, Rebennack headed for Los Angeles. Among the artists Rebennack regularly worked with were Sonny & Cher, and Sonny Bono let Rebennack use the duo’s leftover studio time to record his own project.

What the now-mayor of Palm Springs helped finance turned out to be one weird record, even by 1968’s exploded standards. What Rebennack and fellow New Orleans expatriate musical conspirator Harold Battiste foisted on the psychedelic audience was 360 degrees of pure swampy murk: rumbling jungle drums, hypnotic choruses, snaking bottleneck guitars and firefly mandolins. The vocals sounded as if Rebennack phoned them in from a bayou cemetery and seemed laden with voodoo menace until one realized that half the mumbled terms were drawn from Creole cookbooks.

The disc (recently reissued on Alligator Records) was titled “Gris-Gris,” and amid the swirling smoke and red haze of the cover shot, Rebennack’s alter ego was introduced: Dr. John, eyes vacant, crucifix and snakeskins hanging from his bearded neck and looking, more or less, like something recently spewed forth from hell.

That image of freaked-out voodoo priest was to become Rebennack’s professional identity for the next half a decade, and his stage shows became legend for their blend of mock-voodoo ritual and Mardi gras festoonery. (The shows became something of a less-cherished legend for stagehands and equipment men, some who claim to still be cleaning feathers and glitter out of keyboards and stage monitors.)

It wasn’t exactly how Rebennack had planned on spending his life. Initially he had envisioned a friend, pianist Ronnie Barron, as Dr. John, and only fronted the project himself when Barron became unavailable.

Eventually, though, Rebennack tired of the costumes and flash.

“It had its drawbacks, but it had its good side too,” he said. “Some people told me it got in the way of the music, but I don’t think so. What we were presenting was like a traditional New Orleans show in many ways. Even though we were caught up in the psychedelic moment, I think we were able through that to turn a lot of people on to New Orleans music.”

Today his performances typically feature an unadorned blast of the real thing, with the singular styles of such departed New Orleans masters as Professor Longhair, Huey Smith and James Booker echoing through his own piano style. (He also cites Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson and Ray Charles as major influences.)

Though steeped in tradition, Rebennack doesn’t choose to offer up the music as museum pieces. “The thing I try to do is make people feel good and feel like dancing. I like to get people into an upswing. I believe in the healing powers of music. That’s one reason why I feel the Dr. John name is real appropriate. Music can doctorate (sic) the soul better than anything else.”

Dr. John, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko will perform tonight at 8 and 10:30 at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. Tickets: $16.50. Information: (714) 496-8930.