The cost of that persona was years lost to addiction. Dr. John struggled with heroin through the 1960s, spent time in prison on drug charges in Texas, and watched his career stall while his peers moved ahead without him. He got clean in the early 1970s and released Dr. John's Gumbo in 1972, an album that reimagined New Orleans classics and introduced a new generation to the city's deep musical heritage. The album included Iko Iko, a version that became definitive and is still played at celebrations across the city decades later. He followed it with In the Right Place in 1973, produced by Allen Toussaint and featuring the Meters as the backing band.
Right Place, Wrong Time is the one. The song became his biggest hit, a funky, off-kilter track that captured the Murphy's Law energy of its title perfectly and still sounds fresh decades later. The album that bore it featured one of the great rhythm sections in American music. He won six Grammys across five decades and recorded with everyone from the Rolling Stones to Ryan Adams to B.
B. King. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. He never stopped sounding like New Orleans, no matter where his career took him, and the Crescent City poured through every note he played until his death in 2019 at seventy-seven.
