Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The cloudy ambiguity suits a song that, even in the psychedelic fug of late-Sixties rock music, sounded like nothing else around. Rebennack was already an old hand when he recorded his Gris-Gris album in his mid-twenties. A school dropout who had been playing in local bars from the age of 14 and appearing on New Orleans rock and roll and R&B records since 1958, he had also spent two years in prison for drugs offences between 1963 and 1965, after which he moved to Los Angeles and worked there with Phil Spector’s prolific band of session musicians, the Wrecking Crew. His switch from playing mostly guitar to piano came about because his left ring finger was almost severed in a gunfight (before being surgically reattached).A colourful life, even before he began draping himself in feathers, beads and snakeskin and taking on the persona of Dr John. The original Doctor John was supposedly a spiritual healer with 15 wives, who set up shop in New Orleans in the 1800s after arriving from Haiti. He could help your ailments with chants and potions and make you a gris-gris, a cloth amulet worn around the neck to ward off evil. Rebennack wanted his singer friend Ronnie Barron to do the vocals for the project, but when Barron turned the job down, the pianist stepped up and found that his untrained growl was perfect for the creepy midnight magic he was concocting with his band.Surprisingly, for an album that summons the unsettling voodoo spirits of New Orleans, Gris-Gris was recorded in the commercial Hollywood studio Gold Star, during time borrowed from a Sonny and Cher session as a favour. The musicians, who included notable New Orleanians Harold Battiste, Jessie Hill, Tami Lynn and Shirley Goodman, transplanted the heady spirit of their home town by burning incense and candles and working into the night. Let us know your memories of ‘I Walk on Guilded Splinters’ in the comments section belowThe paperback edition of ‘The Life of a Song: The stories behind 100 of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by ChambersMusic credits: Atco; Warner; The Island Def Jam; Capitol/LLC/Grand Royal and Beastie Boys; Geffen; Big Brother; Go! Discs; Rounder
