Some things you may or may not know about MAC REBENNACK aka the NIGHT TRIPPER aka DR. JOHN, who died Thursday, possibly at the age of 78 but more likely at the age of 77: DR. TEETH, the keyboard-playing leader of the MUPPETS band the ELECTRIC MAYHEM, was based on him. Your understanding of the song "IKO IKO" is almost certainly based, directly or indirectly, on his classic 1972 version, from the album DR. JOHN'S GUMBO. He sang a POPEYES chicken jingle. His keyboard teachers included fellow New Orleans legends PROFESSOR LONGHAIR and JAMES BOOKER. In a nearly 50-year career as a bandleader and solo artist, he had exactly one top-40 hit. The BONNAROO festival took its name from one of his albums (and/or its title song). He took his name from a 19th century voodoo figure. He played piano and organ because he was shot in the finger while defending a friend in a fight, putting an early end to the guitar career he had planned for himself. Asked once if he spoke Spanish, he said, "No, I don't even speak English." His songs and his speech sometimes bore that last fact out. There are a million different ways to measure the giants of American music. There are those who dominated the airwaves during their lifetime. There are those who changed the course of pop culture. There are those who pioneered this style, or changed that sound, or blew the saxophone better than anyone else who ever lived. Mac Rebennack was a different kind of giant. An inheritor and carrier of one of the greatest of all American traditions—the music of New Orleans—who took it on a journey to there and back, and there and back again, over a long, prolific, sometimes weird, sometimes grounded, sometimes both, career. Sometimes live snakes were involved. Sometimes the METERS were involved. Sometimes just him and his piano. He was an embodiment and ambassador of a musical spirit that's hard to pin down but easy to hear. Even if you didn't exactly know him, you sort of did. He was a messenger and you were almost certainly on his route... I love this Dr. John detail: He neither planned to be, nor wanted to be, a frontman. He hated the very idea of any musician taking that role. But after the friend he wanted to sing on his first album backed out, a bandmate approached him and said, "Look, if BOB DYLAN and SONNY AND CHER can sing, you can sing." And so he did... It's FRIDAY and that means new music from AVICII—whose posthumous TIM actually came out Thursday—the JONAS BROTHERS, FUTURE, TYGA, BRANDEE YOUNGER, PELICAN, CAVE IN, LUKE COMBS, CARLIE HANSON, STEF CHURA, SANTANA, TIM HEIDECKER, TEE GRIZZLEY, DYLAN LEBLANC, KEEL HER, LUST FOR YOUTH, PLAID, PIXX, EABS, SILVERSUN PICKUPS, PLAGUE VENDOR, AURORA, FROTH, IDA MAE, RON CARTER & DANNY SIMMONS, DAVID SANCHEZ, CASEY VEGGIES, BIG TONE & HOUSE SHOES, YEASAYER, JAKE XERXES FUSSELL, PERRY FARRELL, LIFTED, PALEHOUND, YOUNGHUSBAND, PETER FRAMPTON, GLORIA GAYNOR, RICKIE LEE JONES, PETER PERRETT and HOLLIS BROWN... And from the vaults: BOB DYLAN in 1975, NEIL YOUNG in 1973, MASAYUKI TAKAYANAGI NEW DIRECTION UNIT in 1975 and PRINCE's demos for 15 songs he gave away... RIP "HUMBLE HARVE" MILLER.