In all his long career, through his more than two dozen albums and endless session work, Malcolm John “Mac” Rebennack Jr., who died Thursday at 77, made his strongest public impression in the early ’70s as Dr. John the Night Tripper, a voodoo-inspired New Orleans pianist and singer (he took up piano after a bullet wounded a finger, making playing guitar impossible for a time) who brought NOLA’s musical gumbo into the world of rock and roll. He even reached the Billboard Top 10 with “Right Place, Wrong Time.” But my lasting impression of him has always come from a 1981 episode of SCTV, where he was central to one of the troupe’s greatest sketches, “Polynesiantown,” a loose — very loose — send-up of the noir classic “Chinatown.” Dr. John not only plays two songs for the crowd at Johnny LaRue’s new Polynesian restaurant, he has lines throughout the sketch, including the climactic, “Forget it, LaRue. This is Polynesiantown.” Then he has to explain irony to LaRue as they walk away in a crane shot that became a running gag on SCTV because NBC bitched about the cost.
If you want to skip straight to the music, “Iko Iko” begins at 5:40 and “Such a Night” at 10:07. That wasn’t his last acting job. Rebennack went on to play himself in a more dramatic role in “Treme.”
He was an all-around fascinating guy, but rather than more songs, here’s a 2010 “10 questions” interview with Dr. John by Time magazine. He’ll be missed.
