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The Thread of Music
What Dad’s passion for jazz taught me
First there was Dr John, AKA Mac Rebennack, high priest of funk and soul with creole pulsing through his veins, the definition of New Orleans whose key playing was a fixture of my childhood. The hallways of our clean, Christian, suburban house filled with the sounds of Mardi Gras and groove — rhythms from the heart of the bayou.
Mum liked classical. She would play Debussy and Rachmaninov, epic sweeping symphonies. But when Dad took over, it was always Dr John.
Dad adored him, pumping out his hits on the keyboard, his whole body rocking to the beat. On the days Mum told him to put his headphones on, you could hear him ‘ba-bap-bap’ ing along.
Dad would call me into the lounge room when he was learning a new song, ‘listen to this bit’, he’d play some jazzy, finger-fancy phrase. ‘See what I did there?’
Dr John’s cool gravelly croons popped up throughout my childhood, sometimes unexpectedly, once singing Cruella De Vil’s theme song in 101 Dalmatians, or touting the ‘Bare Necessities’ on the Jungle Book. I always knew it was him, his voice as familiar as my own thoughts.
One day, Dad took us out of school and sent us to the ABC studios where Dr John was playing a set. He couldn’t get out of work and wanted someone to go.
