Mac Rebennack

Dr. John, whose real name is Mac Rebennack, has sported an astonishing variety of public images, from the voodoo stick-rattling wild man of his 1968 debut (an image concocted to better market him to the psychedelia set) to the jive-spouting hipster of the '70s to his own cool self in the past decade.

Professor Longhair, pianist: "I think every one of us--whether it was Huey Smith, Allen Toussaint, James Booker or me--every piano player had his own version of playing Professor Longhair. That's how much he meant to all the cats. We all owe a deeper debt to his style of playing than to anyone else. The calypso, the mambo, the rhumba, the New Orleans fonk parade rhythms and everything else, he opened that door more than anybody."

In his earliest memory of the Mardi Gras, Malcolm (Mac) Rebennack, alias Dr. John, watched in amazement as a frightful but fascinating apparition rode toward him on horseback. His father, Malcolm Sr., had taken little Mac to see the annual Mardi Gras procession through their neighborhood, the Third Ward of New Orleans.

For more than 25 years, he's been the Big Chief of Gris-Gris Gumbo, the High Priest of Hoodoo, the Loop Garoo Shaman of New Orleans jazz, blues and fonk . He's Mac Rebennack, better known as Dr. John, the Night Tripper, one of the finest purveyors of Crescent City music tradition alive.

Singer-keyboardist Dr. John and the New Orleans music he treasures are gaining new audiences after their popularity waned since the 1970s. "It's doing great with the Neville Brothers, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Harry Connick Jr. and the Dirty Dozen Band," Dr. John said. New Orleans is "still its own original place." Although he had two hits in the early 1970s--"Right Place, Wrong Time" and "Such a Night"--he decided to lay low after being dropped by two record companies. Dr.

For more than 25 years, he's been the Big Chief of Gris-Gris Gumbo, the High Priest of Hoodoo, the Loop Garoo Shaman of New Orleans jazz, blues and fonk . He's Mac Rebennack, better known as Dr. John, the Night Tripper, one of the finest purveyors of Crescent City music tradition alive.

Professor Longhair, pianist: "I think every one of us--whether it was Huey Smith, Allen Toussaint, James Booker or me--every piano player had his own version of playing Professor Longhair. That's how much he meant to all the cats. We all owe a deeper debt to his style of playing than to anyone else. The calypso, the mambo, the rhumba, the New Orleans fonk parade rhythms and everything else, he opened that door more than anybody."

While Mac (Dr. John) Rebennack has always been on a roll when it came to motivating his fingers across a piano keyboard, his career has recently also begun to roll anew. After a decade without a major label contract, his 1989 "In a Sentimental Mood" album for Warner Bros. (including a duet of "Makin' Whoopie" with Rickie Lee Jones) put him back on the charts, and now he's preparing another set for the label.

The music called the blues can express emotions with unmistakable clarity, but some of the words, whether sung by 1930s Mississippi Delta sharecroppers or big-city electric-guitar heroes, can be pretty obscure. Hunting down the origins and meanings of those words was the mission of New Jersey rock musician and journalist Debra DeSalvo. The result, "The Language of the Blues," is a witty, bawdy and fascinating dictionary.

Exhibit A for the defense of the the struggling blues piano tradition: Dr. John's dazzling two-hour set Wednesday at the Mayfair Theatre in Santa Monica. Using the eclectic legacy of his native New Orleans as a jumping-off point, the veteran musician imbued the second of his two sold-out shows with such an informal ambiance that you almost felt you were eavesdropping on a talented musician performing for himself. The solo piano format is an elastic one in the right pair of hands, and Dr.

Dr. John, whose real name is Mac Rebennack, has sported an astonishing variety of public images, from the voodoo stick-rattling wild man of his 1968 debut (an image concocted to better market him to the psychedelia set) to the jive-spouting hipster of the '70s to his own cool self in the past decade.

In his earliest memory of the Mardi Gras, Malcolm (Mac) Rebennack, alias Dr. John, watched in amazement as a frightful but fascinating apparition rode toward him on horseback. His father, Malcolm Sr., had taken little Mac to see the annual Mardi Gras procession through their neighborhood, the Third Ward of New Orleans.

Singer-keyboardist Dr. John and the New Orleans music he treasures are gaining new audiences after their popularity waned since the 1970s. "It's doing great with the Neville Brothers, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Harry Connick Jr. and the Dirty Dozen Band," Dr. John said. New Orleans is "still its own original place." Although he had two hits in the early 1970s--"Right Place, Wrong Time" and "Such a Night"--he decided to lay low after being dropped by two record companies. Dr.

While Mac (Dr. John) Rebennack has always been on a roll when it came to motivating his fingers across a piano keyboard, his career has recently also begun to roll anew. After a decade without a major label contract, his 1989 "In a Sentimental Mood" album for Warner Bros. (including a duet of "Makin' Whoopie" with Rickie Lee Jones) put him back on the charts, and now he's preparing another set for the label.

The premise of "The Real Thing," Wednesday night's Lexus Jazz at the Bowl program, was a good one. "A celebration of the birthplace of jazz, New Orleans" is how the event was described by John Clayton, one of the co-leaders of the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and artistic director of jazz for the L.A. Philharmonic. Somewhere between the concept and the concert, however, something went awry.

POP MUSIC An Evening With Dr. John A fixture in the New Orleans music scene since the late 1950s, Mac Rebennack, a.k.a. Dr. John, will discuss his storied career and the importance of preserving the music and culture of the Crescent City. A question-and-answer session and a performance with his band, the Lower 911, will follow. Grammy Museum, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. $25. (213) 765-6800. http://www.grammymuseum.org Chief Santa Monica's not the indie rock hotbed that more easterly climes in L.A. have become, but this quartet's brand of woozy canyon rock could change that.