[6] Growing up in the 3rd Ward of New Orleans, he found early musical inspiration in the minstrel show tunes sung by his grandfather and a number of aunts, uncles, sister, and cousins who played piano.

[7] When Rebennack was a young boy, his father exposed him to jazz musicians King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, who later inspired his 2014 release, Ske-Dat-De-Dat: The Spirit of Satch.

In late 1950s New Orleans, Rebennack led his own band, Mac Rebennack and the Skyliners, (Paul Staehle/Dennis "Bootsie" Cuquet, drums; Earl Stanley, bass; Charlie Miller, trumpet; Charlie Maduell, sax; Roland "Stone" LeBlanc, vocals), while playing gigs with others, including Frankie Ford and the Thunderbirds, and Jerry Byrne and the Loafers.

At A&R, he and Charlie Miller recorded monophonic singles on 45s for Johnny Vincent and Joe Corona for local labels Ace, Ron, and Ric.

[12] Rebennack's career as a guitarist was stunted around 1960,[13] when the ring finger on his left (guitar fretting) hand was injured by a gunshot during an incident at a Jacksonville, Florida gig.

[14][15] After the injury, Rebennack concentrated on bass guitar before making piano his main instrument, developing a style influenced by Professor Longhair.

He kept an assortment of snakes and lizards, along with embalmed scorpions and animal and human skulls, and sold gris-gris, voodoo amulets which supposedly protect the wearer from harm.

[18][19] Rebennack decided to produce a record and a stage show based on this concept, with Dr. John serving as an emblem of New Orleans heritage.

A second lineup formed later in the year for an extensive tour of the East Coast with Crooks and Johnson joined by Doug Hastings (guitar) and Don MacAllister (mandolin).

By the time The Sun, Moon, and Herbs was released, he had gained a notable cult following, which included artists such as Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger, who both took part in the sessions for that album.

His next album, Dr. John's Gumbo, with drummer Fred Staehle serving as the band's backbone, proved to be a landmark recording and is one of his most popular to this day.

In his 1994 autobiography, Under a Hoodoo Moon, Dr. John writes, "In 1972, I recorded Gumbo, an album that was both a tribute to and my interpretation of the music I had grown up with in New Orleans in the late 1940s and 1950s.

"After we cut the new record", he wrote, "I decided I'd had enough of the mighty-coo-de-fiyo hoodoo show, so I dumped the Gris-Gris routine we had been touring with since 1967 and worked up a new act—a Mardi Gras revue featuring the New Orleans standards we had covered in Gumbo."

Artists such as Bob Dylan, Bette Midler, and Doug Sahm contributed single lines to the lyrics, which lists several instances of ironic bad luck and failure.

Dr. John attempted to capitalize on In the Right Place's successful formula, again collaborating with Allen Toussaint and The Meters, for his next album, Desitively Bonnaroo – from part of which a Tennessee festival took as its name – released in 1974.

The tribute included covers of Pomus-penned songs by Bob Dylan, John Hiatt, Shawn Colvin, Brian Wilson, The Band, Los Lobos, Dion, Rosanne Cash, Solomon Burke, and Lou Reed.

In 1975, his manager, Richard Flanzer, hired producer Bob Ezrin, and Hollywood Be Thy Name was recorded live at Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles, California.

He provided back-up vocals on the Rolling Stones' 1972 song "Let It Loose", and backed Carly Simon and James Taylor in their duet of "Mockingbird" (from Hotcakes) in 1974, and Neil Diamond on Beautiful Noise in 1976.

He toured with Willy DeVille and contributed to his albums Return to Magenta (1978), Victory Mixture (1990), Backstreets of Desire (1992), and Big Easy Fantasy (1995).

His movie credits included Martin Scorsese's documentary The Last Waltz, in which he joined the Band for a performance of his song "Such a Night", the 1978 Beatles-inspired musical Sgt.

His hit song "Right Place Wrong Time" was used extensively in the movies Dazed and Confused and Sahara and the series American Horror Story: Coven.

Between July and September 1989, Dr. John toured in the first Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band, alongside Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Nils Lofgren, Jim Keltner, Joe Walsh, Billy Preston, Clarence Clemons and himself of piano, bass and vocals.

In November 2005, he released a four-song EP, Sippiana Hericane, to benefit New Orleans Musicians Clinic, Salvation Army, and the Jazz Foundation of America.

Dr. John played keyboards and had a major role in shaping Gregg Allman's 2011 album Low Country Blues, which was produced by T-Bone Burnett.

The same year he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame along with Neil Diamond, Alice Cooper, Darlene Love and Tom Waits.

The Los Angeles Times said that it showed Dr. John "exiting a period of relative creative stagnation by creating something magical, the embodiment of everything he's done but pushed in a clear new direction".

The Los Angeles Times said, "Tribute albums come and go, but it's a real rarity that can snap a listener to attention like Dr. John's new salute to jazz founding father Louis Armstrong.

The same year, Dr. John was a headliner on The Last Waltz 40th Anniversary Tour with Music Directors Warren Haynes and Don Was, reprising his "Such a Night" performance from the original concert and film with The Band.

In April, he joined John Legend (who inducted him into the Rock Hall) and Jon Batiste on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and he appeared in Tig Notaro's critically acclaimed Amazon TV series One Mississippi.

"The New Orleans piano man who embodied the musical mélange of his hometown had the kind of drawly, lived-in voice that only improved with age," The New York Times wrote.