Words matter. These are the best Dr. John Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
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.
It’s obvious some people don’t have an emotional thing for the music.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Right after Katrina, we did ‘Sippiana Hericane.’ I was real upset with everything.
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.
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.
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.
The locals are always going to want the traditions to stay alive. I just hope we can do something about them politicians.
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.
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.
It’s about knowing how to make a groove happen and keep it going so others can play off it.
Indigenous peoples was messed over. It was like a tradition here. We broke every treaty with them that ever was written. I think Andrew Jackson wanted to wipe them out.
The old-timers schooled me good. They brainwashed me to respect music, whether we were playing rockabilly or blues or rock and roll.
That this city has second lines – it’s something I’m proud of. When the bands come back from the cemetery, they’ll play something up – something like ‘I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead (You Rascal You)’ – that will bring the people back to life.
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.
