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UNDER A HOODOO MOON

Name: UNDER A HOODOO MOON
Author: Mac Rebennack
ISBN: 0-312-10567-3

THE LIFE OF DR. JOHN THE NIGHT TRIPPER

by Mac Rebennack & Jack Rummel ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 1994

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This unflinching autobiography by Mac Rebennack, aka Dr. John, with Rummel (Malcolm X, 1989) gives a firsthand account of New Orleans street life and musical history in the last few decades. Rebennack began frequenting New Orleans music clubs at an early age. In the '50s he dropped out of high school and devoted himself to playing the piano and guitar. While developing his music he also developed a taste for heroin and other drugs. Musicians in the New Orleans scene provided entertainment for ``turistas'' and, in the early morning hours, for pimps, prostitutes and thieves. To supplement their income, musicians also engaged in some of these vocations. Rebennack admits to participating in many shady dealings: He disposed of fetuses for an abortionist, held stick- ups, and conspired to, but evidently did not, murder. After a stint in prison on narcotics charges, he cast himself as Dr. John, based on the 19th-century conjurer by that name, and played distinctly New Orleans music in a wild stage show that featured snake handling and black magic. Dr. John's music became popular with the '60s counterculture. Rebennack also played as a sideman throughout his career with a catalog of music greats—some obscure and some well- known, such as Little Richard and Professor Longhair; considering the ``narcotic haze'' in which he often found himself, he remembers many details from sessions. Rebennack, however, has no respect for fame without musical skill—he refers to the group Iron Butterfly as ``Iron Butterfingers.'' Taken advantage of by unscrupulous music business executives and strung out on heroin for 34 years, he tells a tough tale. A life this varied and chaotic is hard to translate into a linear story. Though Rebennack's prose sometimes rambles, he gives the reader a perspective that most tourists to Bourbon street never see.

Pub Date: April 21, 1994

ISBN: 0-312-10567-3

Page Count: 288

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)