Malcolm John “Mac” Rebennack Jr., better known as rock hall inductee Dr. John, has been a constant in the pop world for much of his 50-plus-year career. His biggest hit, the funky Top 20 hit Right Place, Wrong Time, was released in 1973 but he’s been consistently cranking out an album every few years since 1968.
Since the ’80s, his catalog has been a solid if familiar mix of authentic New Orleans music, jazz, blues and classic R&B. A few have been standouts, such as his tribute to Duke Ellington Duke Elegant, and the star-studded post-Katrina City That Care Forgot.
It’s 2012 and the good Doctor, 71, was due for one of those retro-contemporary (I know that seems like an oxymoron, but follow me) career jump-starts, often the result of working with younger, trendy admirers — Jack White and Loretta Lynn’s collaboration on Van Lear Rose, Rick Rubin’s work with Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, or Buddy Guy’s hazy electric-delta blues record Sweet Tea.
For his late-career hipness injection, Dr. John has teamed up with the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach and a handpicked band of young and talented musicians. They reach back to Dr. John’s earliest and underappreciated albums Gris-Gris (1968), Babylon (1969), Remedies (1970) and The Sun, Moon & Herbs (1971), and add some interesting elements to create Locked Down, which is simply Dr. John’s most vital album in a few decades.
Those early albums, recorded under the “Dr. John the Night Tripper” guise, are freaky, acid-tinged, bayou funkfests, drenched in N’awlins music and lore with the Night Tripper doing his growling, stoner beat poet/Juju Man thing on top. For Locked Down, Dr. John revives some of that sound and feel, plus the beat poetry and the trademark growl.
But producer/guitarist Auerbach and his crew of young musicians, who all share composer credits, reference rather than try to re-create those records. They add elements of African and Afro-Cuban grooves and incorporate heavy influences of the rhythmic and horn arrangements from veteran Ethiopian composer/pianist/jazz artist Mulatu Astatke and ’90s hip-hop instrumentals by folks such as The RZA.
The musicians include keyboardist Leon Michels and bassist Nick Movshon Brooklyn of retro-soul outfit El Michels Affair and part of the house band of Truth & Soul Records; in-the-pocket drummer and the album’s secondary star Max Weissenfeldt of the retro-funk group the Poets of Rhythm; and Northeast Ohio multi-instrumentalist Brian Olive.
None of the disc’s 10 cuts is skippable, beginning with the opening title track with a taut, funk groove and John singing in his signature style, “Lived reckless so long / Justice system bust me wrong / Future’s stretched out like a rubber check / Don’t be jeffin’ out the side of yo neck / Dealin’ from the bottom of the deck / Might make it home to the projects / Don’t point no finger at me like you do / Know three of them is pointing back at you.”
The album’s single, Revolution, features a punchy Astatke-style bottom-heavy horn arrangement, tasty Farfisa licks and Dr. John pondering “Economy connin’ me out of my sanity / Rebellious revolution, is this the final solution?”
Much of the lyrics credited to Dr. John deal with inequity, government and social corruption, but it’s some of the funkiest righteous indignation ever committed to tape (the album was recorded at Auerbach’s home-based Easy Eye Studio so there was definitely tape involved).
Big Shot, featuring veteran background singing group the McCrary Sisters, rolls on a thick baritone riff and a classic New Orleans groove. On Ice Age, over a tension-filled syncopated African groove and Auerbach and Olive’s lockstep guitar licks, the doctor declares in the chorus “Ain’t no age of innocence / Ladies and gents it don’t make sense / Seen and the unseen, KKK, CIA all playing in the same cage.”
It’s not all politics. John gets lovelorn on Getaway featuring a searing solo from Auerbach, and opens up emotionally on the Fender Rhodes-driven My Children, My Angels, written for his kids, and the plainspoken and rousing waltz-time album closer God Is Good.
Locked Down, released on April 2, is already a success, debuting at No. 33 on the Billboard 200, making it the highest-charting album of his five-decade career and deservedly so. It’s a toe-tapping, head-nodding reminder that the septuagenarian New Orleans icon still has open ears and plenty to say.
Malcolm X Abram can be reached at mabram@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3758. Read his blog, Sound Check Online, at www.ohio.com/blogs/sound-check, or follow him on Twitter @malcolmxabram.
