Dr John Creole Moon CD

CREOLE MOON was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album.

This is album by New Orleans piano professor Dr. John contains 15 tracks, including "Now That You Got Me" and the title track.

Following a string of albums that found Dr. John variously saluting Duke Ellington, tackling standards, and surrounding himself with British rock stars, the Crescent City king got back to home truths with CREOLE MOON. Throughout the album, Dr. John and his Big Easy compatriots serve up the kind of greasy, groove-heavy New Orleans-style R&B that first made the artist formerly known as Mac Rebbenack a success in the 1970s. Everyone from slide guitar hero Sonny Landreth to James Brown cohort Fred Wesley pops up to add bluesy grit and/or funky drive, but the steamy, percolating feel perpetuated throughout CREOLE MOON ultimately evokes the undiluted essence of Dr. John.

Between his various standards albums of the '90s and the heavily collaborational Anutha Zone from 1998, by the end of the millennium it'd been nearly a decade since Dr. John's last record of straight-ahead New Orleans R&B. Creole Moon rectifies that situation nicely -- it's "a personal interpretation of New Orleans" (as he says in the liner notes), and these 14 vignettes of New Orleans life are soaked in Crescent City soul. Creole Moon is also a return to the sound of his classic mid-'70s records (Dr. John's Gumbo, In the Right Place), right from the spidery electric piano and testifying back-up vocals on the opener "You Swore." Most of his band, the Lower 9-11 Musician Vocaleers, have been playing with him for close to 20 years, and provide solid accompaniment. Dr. John also invites some friends along, including David "Fathead" Newman, slide guitarist Sonny Landreth, fiddler Michael Doucet, and a tight horn section led by Fred Wesley. And there's few better than Wesley to knock out a tough James Brown groove, as he and the band do on "Food for Thot" while Dr. John vamps over the top. Most of the other songs are little more than those loose grooves, and the booklet's constant references to African-derived rhythms (or an included Creole dictionary, aka "Gumbo-izms") may be too much for most listeners, but Creole Moon shows Dr. John doing what he's done best for nearly 30 years. [A Japanese version added a bonus track.] ~ John Bush

Renard Poche (guitar, background vocals); Sonny Landreth (slide guitar); Michael Doucet (fiddle); Charley Miller (flute, trumpet); Theodore Arthur, Jr. (soprano & alto saxophone); Eric Traub (tenor saxophone); Alonzo Bowens (baritone saxophone); Kevin Louis (trumpet); David Barad (bass, background vocals); Herman "Roscoe" Ernest III (drums, percussion, background vocals).

This Japanese edition contains one additional song.

CD contains 1 bonus track.

Japanese version featuring a bonus track

Recorded at Dockside Studios, Maurice, Louisiana. Includes liner notes by Dr. John.

Personnel includes: Dr. John (vocals, piano, Hammond B-3 organ, programming);

Q (10/01, pp.118-9) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...The doctor's remedy still hits the spot..."
Uncut (11/01, p.106) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...The good Doctor returns to what he does best with an album of raw, unadulterated 'Nawlins fonk'....CREOLE MOON is quite simply his funkiest, most satisfying effort in perhaps two decades..."
JazzTimes (5/02, p.127) - "...The most colorful crash course in [New Orleans culture] you'd ever hope to find..."
Living Blues (3-4/02, p.72) - "...An impressive effort. Dr.John shares his immense musical knowledge with us in the most effective manner - he performs it."