NEW ORLEANS — Monday marks the debut of the new, combined The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate
Here is your first look at the front page of the Monday edition, which will be delivered to subscribers of both newspapers, and will be on newsstands in the morning.
It features a cover story by music writer Keith Spera about the late, great Dr. John. WWL-TV's Eric Paulsen sat down with him to talk about it.
Eric Paulsen: We have lost a couple of giants over the past few weeks, here in new orleans and in the music business. First, it was mac rebbenack— Dr. John — and then Dave Bartholomew. You're writing a special piece about Dr John and some of the troubles he went through over the years.
Keith Spera: It was by no means a foregone conclusion that he was going to end up as this icon of New Orleans music. You know, the first half of his adult life was spent as an addict. He was addicted to heroin for 34 years, so he kind of existed in this netherworld of drugs and crime and craziness, even as he was getting his career going. A lot of people, I think, don't realize the extent to which that was the case, so in the late 90s, in 1989, is when he finally got clean, and you can kind of divide his life neatly in half from before that moment and after that moment. After he got clean in late ‘89, he was on this creative tear. He did the Goin' back to New Orleans record, which is probably his best record. He one his first Grammys; he emerged as this beloved icon of the city, as he was up until the time of his death, but it was by no means guaranteed that that was going to happen based on the first half of his life.
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EP: A lot of people didn't realize this until he died, and they started reading more about him. He was a really talented studio musician before he ever became a star.
KS: He really was going to have a career like Dave Bartholomew or Allen Toussaint, where he was kind of a behind the scenes songwriter, producer, and session musician. That was, I think, his initial intent. He didn't want to be a star; he didn't want to be the guy out front, but his career took that turn once his career moves out to Los Angeles, after serving some time for a drug bust.
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EP: The thing that was so interesting about Dr. John, Mac Rebbenack— the first time I met him was back in 1978, and back then, he was playing at Rosy's down on Tchoupitoulas — and they almost had to carry him on to the stage, and when I talked to him the first thing that he said is "Oh, Eric, my brain's all wiped out." That was just kind of the way he was.
KS: That was part of his persona, but it was actually real. He was an addict, and you know he didn't make a big deal of it. In the later years of his life, it was like: That was then, and this was now, and he got beyond that. But so many musicians in that era, when he was coming up in the 50s, died early— faded into obscurity, including the guy that taught him the guitar: Walter "Papoose" Nelson, who was a member of fats domino's band and died of an overdose. So, drugs were all around the scene in the 50s when Mac was coming up; he got caught up in that culture, but unlike so many other people, he was able to escape it. That’s kind of what the story is centered on, and interestingly enough, the person who helped him make that transition was a woman named B.B. St. Roman, who folks here may know for the last 15 years. She's been running the NOPD’s Homeless Assistance Unit, the unit that goes out to help homeless folks, but prior to that she was with Dr. John for 10 years as his caretaker and assistant. She was the one that was there for those transition years, when he made his way out of addiction and into sobriety, so really, she deserves a lot of the credit for helping to revive his career and getting him back on his feet.
You can read Keith Spera's story in tomorrow morning's The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate, the first edition of that new, merged newspaper.