Customer Reviews

Dr. John Plays Mac Rebbenack

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As Bill Evans entrances you with his solo piano albums, as Art Tatum floors you with his mastery on his solo recordings.....Dr. John will slay you with the pianistic mastery of his genre. He is a treasure, an encyclopedic connection with Americas musical past.

I lived and breathed this record for almost 6 months transcribing almost all of it. My growth as a player took a quantum leap and I am indebted to the Doctor.

The joy of this recording are the wonderful new discoveries with each listen....the inner voices within his incredibly challenging chordal voicings, the bewildering time keeping in the left hand, the syncopation, the octave work, the emotional sensitivity....I could go on and on...

The Doctor takes no prisoners. Buy it, live it, love it and (for you players)learn it.

I discover this (mostly Ignored) CD after exhausting my professor Longhair and James Booker CD's, and if you like solo piano - this album cannot be recommended highly enough! True there are only a couple vocal tracks, but instrumentals like "Dorothy" have such strong melodies and heart that they make you wanna cry, they really do. I would give my left NUT to play with the soulful depth & playfulness this CD glows with. forget brightest smile in town - THIS is THE Dr. John solo piano CD! BUY IT - period.

No other piano album, with the possible exception of James Booker's "Spiders On The Keys", has ever captured the essence of modern New Orleans piano like this wonderful early 80s solo effort from Dr.John. The listener is taken along on a ride through every imaginable style of Nawlins music, dirges, boogies, marches, stride piano numbers; all in all: get fonkified...

This is my favorite Dr. John album of all. I can listen to the whole record with no problem. It's solid, front to back, top to bottom. I love boogie, blues and jazz piano, and this record has the goods. Right at the start, "Dorothy" makes me feel like I'm walking through the French Quarter on a humid spring evening. "Mac's Boogie" gets things really rolling - Dr' John's playing is so smooth and fluid, this song sounds like it must be easy to play - but go try it for yourself. He's a righteous piano professor!

Speaking of piano professors, Dr. John pays tribute to his old friend Henry Byrd on "Memories of Profesor Longhair" and it's a fitting tribute. "The Nearness of You" is one of the two vocals on the disc and it's an excellent vehicle for Mac's gravelly voice. Song after song rolls out of this disc, and I'm in a state of bliss: Delicado, another New Orleans classic, then "Silent Night" - I'd never expected to hear such an excellent interpretation. "Honey Dripper" is another can't miss boogie classic, as is the disc's finale: "Pinetop".

This disc is an essential chunk of Americana delivered by a national treasure: Dr. John, the Night Tripper himself.

the house, that is, the house of the pianna-forTE. this largely solo piano disc was a breakthrough moment for the former Night Tripper, whose mastery of the mystic journey had been played out past the logical conclusion, like the world at large then (aside from some re-percussions later on and on later albums). the culture was ready, as i was, in 1981, to hear it from the root. and raw roots it was and is to this day, unadorned and undulating, one of the best left hands in the business and a total command of the vernacular of Booker, Fess, et al (Al Hirt, that is)...what hipped me to the sound were the piano boogie tracks from the movie Cannery Row, where the erstwhile bum buddy of Nick Nolte's "Doc" character was...Mac! tho i never believed that M. Emmett Walsh could actually play, i went looking for the source of the sound...and found Doc playing Mac, and realized that the door was open to the past and the future of piano music in New Orleans.still trippin on that to this very 2001 day, and i just wanted to let the wide world of Amazon know. All hail the Doctor, may he be radiatin on the 88's for the next several millenia.

In my opinion, Dr. John Plays Mac Rebennack shows Dr. John strengths in his solo playing. None of the songs have another instument besides the piano, and all of the tracks are classic New Orleans piano playing. The music is always relaxing to listen to.