Plain and Fancy: Dr. John, The Night Tripper - Remedies (1970 us, awesome dixie jazz voodoo psych, 2017 remaster)

Managerial problems – Dr John has had a few. One adviser encouraged him to spend time in a mental hospital to get out of a drug conviction – the part-finished Remedies comes from this insane period. Contains the 17-minute prison reform polemic, “Angola Anthem”.

“My managers put me in a psych ward. These guys were very bad people – I had gotten busted on a deal, and they got me bonded out of jail, and so when they did I could have got a parole violation. All of this stuff was so unconnected to music that it’s hard to relate it. A friend of mine had just come out of doing 40-something years in Angola [the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary], he was just someone special in my heart – called Tangleye. And Tangleye says, ‘I’m gonna sell you this song. Got it in Angola, but ain’t nobody ever cut this song…’ Even now guys I know getting out of Angola know this song. It’s still a horrible place to be. They feed people every 10 days or whatever.

“And that’s why I cut this song: I got a friend doing 300 years in one of these satellite penitentiaries, he got high blood pressure, cirrhosis of the liver, he don’t get no medication. People have no idea what it’s like in a cell when it’s just you, and they feed you whenever they feel like it. One of these guys told me, ‘You can taste the food before you eat it.’ And they stretch it too with the rats and whatever other critters these guys have as pets.”

by Tom Pinnock, 15th June 2012