'Gris Gris'

Mac Rebennack oozes New Orleans. It’s not easy a recording artist, who is known best as being some ambassador for a particular city. The Beatles and Liverpool come to mind, particularly because their early music mirrored the grind of the shipping port city.

Boston and Chicago don’t represent their city any more or less than Letters to Cleo or Kanye West.  Hip-hop artists tend to attach themselves with their city or region as more often than not they tend to live by the creed of the cold streets.

Rebennack is a different story. Before recording and releasing his debut album Gris Gris, Rebennack decided on the idea of going by a nom de plume. He decided on Dr. John thanks to a supposed voodoo holy man named Dr. John Montaine. Although he never intended to keep the moniker (instead attempting to get a bandmate to adopt it as his own) , it stuck and ever since you don’t think of Dr. John without thinking of New Orleans.

Certainly, there’s a lot of New Orleans in Gris Gris, which is actually a voodoo amulet often used as a contraceptive and brought over by the West African slaves and serving as an important item amid the New Orleans voodoo scene.

Oh, and tremendous album cover too.