DR. JOHN

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.

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.

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.

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

The whole Lower Ninth Ward hasn't really recovered, but I feel a good spirit in my heart that something is going on - music is coming back slowly.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The locals are always going to want the traditions to stay alive. I just hope we can do something about them politicians.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's about knowing how to make a groove happen and keep it going so others can play off it.

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

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.

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.

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.