Dr. John - Walk On Gilded Splinters (1968)
5I first heard Dr. John four years before "Right Place Wrong Time" would catapult him to pop music stardom. Back then in 1969 he was Dr. John, The Night Tripper. The album was
"Gris-Gris" (actually released in 1968, but I didn't hear it for the first time until 1969), and the song, "Walk On Gilded Splinters," was definitely an underground FM event. Voodoo and hoodoo was the stuff of B-movie horror films for this 15-year-old New Yorker who never ventured farther south that year than Baltimore, MD and Washington D.C. But the music spoke to this kid in the darkness, dark being the best way to listen to music ... especially THIS kind of music. All kinds of images, horrible, weird, exotic, and erotic formed in my imagination, the incantations, the drums, the dancing, the tropics, the swamps, the zombies, all as torrid as the summer was hot that year. Anyway, I won't belabor the issue .. it was a great song then and is a great song now. So, welcome to my nightmare, as another rock star once said ... and welcome to the world of Dr. John, The Night Tripper and take a "Walk On Gilded Splinters."