Dr John, The Night Tripper: Gris-Gris

ROCK HAS TRADITIONALLY looked to Louisiana with an envious eye. The history. The imagery. The swamps. Songwriters who didn't know one end of an alligator from the other used the Mississippi as their prime location (John Fogerty), sang inconceivably of "catfish pie in a gris-gris bag" (The Byrds) or wrote about a Cajun queen raising her baby "in the bayou with a Bible round his neck" (Fairport Convention). The hip glossary of New Orleans, with its John the Conqueror root and mojo hands, is as magnetic as the mythology surrounding the devil and the crossroads.