This classic recording sees Dr John's transformation into the persona of the Night Tripper fully complete. Most notably it benefits from some really
fantastic production, sounding deeper and darker than ever before. His
status as a cult musician had risen to the extent that the album
featured numerous famous guests, with some guitar from one Eric Clapton. Other names that can be dredged up from deep within the smoky haze include Ronnie Barron, Graham Bond, Jim Price, Bobby Keys, Carl Radle, Jim Gordon, Bobby Whitlock and Fuzzy Samuels. Mick Jagger is also somewhere in the background.
On first listen the pace is so leisurely as to possibly seem uneventful,
but if you are patient and allow yourself to succumb to its odd charms
it will begin to draw you into a very strange headspace and worm its way
under your skin. It is certainly quirky...a kind of funky, gritty,
gumbo blues with a mind-bending undercurrent of light psychedelia mixed
with equal doses of voodoo and humour.
The Sun, Moon & Herbs is best listened to on a hot, muggy night with the sound of thunder rumbling off in the distance like jungle drums. A monumental recording!
One of the most unique and hard to classify artists of the 1970s, Exuma
was a singular talent. Mixing the infectious rhythms and folkloric
qualities of Bahamian music with rock, country, and other U.S.
influences and adding a sharply satiric element of social commentary,
Exuma's music aimed for the heart and the feet at the same time.
Exuma was born McFarlane Anthony McKay on Cat Island in the Bahamas
sometime in the early '40s (no one seems to know exactly when). Raised
on traditional Bahamian folk songs and the popular music known as
junkanoo, a West African-based Bahamian version of calypso or samba
named after a Boxing Day festival that's the local equivalent of Mardi
Gras or Carnival, McKay nevertheless planned a career as an architect
and fell into life as a performer almost by accident. Moving to New York
in the early '60s to attend architecture school, McKay soon found
himself living in the state of near-penury that's the urban college
student's life. Noting the popularity of Bahamian guitarist Joseph
Spence's records in the Greenwich Village folk scene, McKay began
playing venues like the Bitter End and Cafe Wha?, bringing traditional
Bahamian folk music to the city, first as a solo artist but quickly
forming a group called Tony McKay and the Islanders.
Tony McKay and the Islanders were a popular club band, opening for
artists like Richie Havens or Peter, Paul and Mary through the mid-'60s.
McKay began undergoing a personal transformation by the end of the
decade, absorbing political influences from the black power movement and
musical influences from acts like the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Sly
and the Family Stone. McKay translated this political and artistic
excitement through the traditions of his homeland and re-emerged by
decade's end as Exuma, the Obeah Man. (Exuma, besides being the name of
one of the Bahamas' largest islands, was a spirit balanced between the
worlds of the living and the dead; Obeah is an Afro-Caribbean tradition
of sorcery, like Santeria in Cuba or Vodun in Haiti.)
Signed to Mercury Records in 1969, Exuma quickly released two albums,
"Exuma the Obeah Man" and "Exuma II" (both 1970). Mixing powerful
Afro-Caribbean rhythms with Exuma's shamanistic exhortations and vividly
Obeah-inspired lyrics, these albums were conceptually similar to what
Nigeria's Fela Kuti was beginning to do around the same time. Like Fela,
however, Exuma was largely ignored by American press, radio, and
consumers, and Mercury quickly dropped him.
Exuma's debut album was a real odd piece of work, even by the standards
of the late '60s and early '70s, when major labels went further out on a
limb to throw weird stuff at the public to see what would stick than
they ever had before or have since. Roughly speaking, it's kind of like a
combination of the Bahamian folk of Joseph Spence with early Dr. John
at his most voodooed-out, though even that nutshell doesn't really do
justice to how unusual this record is. Often it seems more like
eavesdropping on a tribal ritual than listening to songs. Some of the
tracks, indeed, have little or less to do with conventional "songs" than
with tunes and lyrics; they're more akin to Mardi Gras street
percussion jams airlifted to the Caribbean islands. Exuma and his
accompanists make quite a spooky clamor with their various bells, foot
drums, chanting, gasps, sighs, shouts, and other percussive instruments,
creating a mood both celebratory and scary. He's not totally averse to
using more standard song forms, though, singing about "zombies walking
in the broad daylight" in "Mama Loi, Papa Loi"; devising a simple,
fairly singable soul melody for "You Don't Know What's Going On," his
most famous song due to its inclusion in the movie "Joe"; and setting
"The Vision" to an appealing, if again quite simple, folk melody.
Exuma's rough, unschooled vocals cut off any prospect of mainstream
accessibility, but they get the job done in getting both his uplifting
and ominous spirituality over.
When
Dr. John's Gris-Gris
hit the rock underground in 1968, it wasn't certain whether its master
of ceremonies had landed from outer space, or just been dredged out of
hibernation from the Louisiana swamps. The blend of druggy deep
blues,
incantational background vocals, exotic mandolin and banjo trills,
ritualistic
percussion, interjections of free jazz, and Dr. John's own
seductive-yet-menacing
growl was like a psychedelic voodoo ceremony invading your living
room.
You could be forgiven for suspecting it of having been surreptitiously
recorded in some afterhours den of black magic, the perpetuators of
this
misdeed risking life-threatening curses for having exposed these secret
soundtracks to the public at large. The most exploratory and psychedelic outing of Dr. John's
career, a one-of-a-kind fusion of New Orleans Mardi Gras R&B and
voodoo mysticism. Great rasping, bluesy vocals, soulful backup singers,
and eerie melodies on flute, sax, and clarinet, as well as odd Middle
Eastern-like chanting and mandolin runs. It's got the setting of a
strange religious ritual, but the mood is far more joyous than solemn.
