Dr. John Quotes

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Dr. John

Profession : Musician

Birth : November 21, 1940

Doc has been my name all my life, and John is my middle name. I'm proud of all my names - Malcolm John Michael Creaux Rebennack. I'm proud of them names.

Dr. John

Like the tangled veins of cypress roots that meander this way and that in the swamp, everything in New Orleans is interrelated, wrapped around itself in ways that aren't always obvious.

Dr. John

New Orleans cats don't play a lot of solos unless they got something to say. It's not an ego thing like it is with some other musicians. You say what you gotta say and then shut up.

Dr. John

I strongly believe that Professor Longhair playing just instrumentals would be just as effective as stylized vocals; that's how much I believe in his music.

Dr. John

The old-timers schooled me good. They brainwashed me to respect music, whether we were playing rockabilly or blues or rock and roll.

Dr. John

It's obvious some people don't have an emotional thing for the music.

Dr. John

I been trying to clean up my act with my children for a long time. And I pretty much got them all talking to me now. And they accept me as a humanoid again.

Dr. John

See, I don't know nothing about singing. I never wanted to be a frontman. Frontmen had big egos and was always crazy and aggravating. I just never thought that was a good idea.

Dr. John

I was criticized by some people for my first album because they said I was taking sacred music. They knew nothing about what I was doing. That was no sacred music; that's music I wrote.

Dr. John

Where Charlie Christian left off, Papoose started a new thing; he was an innovator of the guitar. The things he did during his recording career with Fats Domino in the Fifties and Sixties until the day he died was as much a part of the music of New Orleans as anybody else has had to offer.

Dr. John

The less said about Inner Space Fungus the better. I've still got the tapes in my house, but I'm afraid to play them back for fear that bacterial growth will take over my house.

Dr. John

There was a lot of freedom, so bands in those days did not have to play for the public. They played for club owners that enjoyed music. You know, what happened - there was a lot of clubs that had bebop music or different forms of music. It was great for musicians.

Dr. John

There was segregated unions, which was a real problem for me because - especially as I was working in the recording scene, I had flack from the white union for hiring black musicians. I had flack from the black musician by hiring white musicians.

Dr. John

When I first started, I didn't know what I was doing. I was such a - like a kid that got into things before I was ready. I was like the original learning-on-the-job-experience guy. All I knew was, if I hired the best musicians, I got the best arranger, and got the right songs for the right singer, I had did my job correctly.

Dr. John

I hung at the studio. Myself and James Booker and several other musicians, as kids, we just literally hung at the studio, hoping somebody would get sick or get hurt and that we'd get to sub for them.

Dr. John

I had somebody call and make a joke about it: 'Oh, Buddy Guy won the Grammy - You should have won.' I said, 'No. Buddy should have won it.' He's a very talented cat. And don't forget, he's my homeboy, too.

Dr. John

That's one of the reason T-Bone Burnett calls me... he thinks I'm used to doing what I do in the studio for him.

Dr. John

My dad always pointed out Louis Armstrong's pad when we passed by there. And me and my dad were both proud Louis Armstrong was from New Orleans.

Dr. John

Right after Katrina, we did 'Sippiana Hericane.' I was real upset with everything.

Dr. John

It was the first time I was looking, really, right after the storm, that I saw maybe the amount of devastation that had happened in the Lower Ninth Ward. Where my friends lived, which was about six blocks from where the industrial canal was, houses was smashed into houses, and there were, like, four houses smashed together.

Dr. John