U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Saturday that he plans to speak privately with China’s central bank governor about trade on the sidelines of annual Group of 20 finance talks in southern Japan, but has no direct message to give him.

Mnuchin and Yi Gang, chairman of the People’s Bank of China, are to hold routine talks on various issues and then break away for their discussion on trade. Yi, he noted, has participated in now-stalled talks between Washington and Beijing over the trade and technology dispute between the two largest economies.

“This will be a one-on-one with Gov. Yi to talk alone about the trade issues,” Mnuchin told reporters in the Japanese city of Fukuoka. But he added, “I would expect the main progress will be at the G-20 meetings of the presidents.”

He said there were no plans for trade talks in Washington or Beijing before Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are to meet in Osaka for the G-20 summit June 28-29.

​Trump tariffs

The Trump administration began slapping tariffs on imports of Chinese goods nearly a year ago, accusing Beijing of using predatory means to lend Chinese companies an edge in advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics and electric vehicles. Those tactics, the U.S. contends, include hacking into U.S. companies’ computers to steal trade secrets, forcing foreign companies to hand over sensitive technology in exchange for access to the Chinese market and unfairly subsidizing Chinese tech firms.

Trump has also complained repeatedly about America’s huge trade deficit with China, a record $379 billion last year.

The United States now is imposing 25% taxes on $250 billion in Chinese goods. Beijing has counterpunched by targeting $110 billion worth of American products, focusing on farm goods such as soybeans in a deliberate effort to inflict pain on Trump supporters in the U.S. heartland.

The U.S. side has been preparing to expand retaliatory tariff hikes of 25% on another $300 billion of Chinese products, and Mnuchin indicated it was prepared to take that step if negotiations with Beijing fail. But he said Trump had not yet made a decision on that, suggesting room for further delays depending on the outcome of his discussion with Xi later this month.

​‘Hearing concerns’

Asked if other financial leaders attending the meetings in Fukuoka were raising the issue, Mnuchin said no. But he acknowledged the slowdown in Europe, China and other regions.

“I’m hearing concerns if we continue on this path there could be issues. There will be winners and losers,” he said.

Mnuchin and other officials in the Trump administration assert that the winners from the tariffs standoff, including the United States, will benefit from investments by companies moving their operations out of China to avoid the tariffs.

Countries were welcoming news that after a flurry of negotiations, Trump said he would refrain from imposing 5% tariffs on products from Mexico after it “agreed to take strong measures” to stem the flow of Central American migrants into the United States.

The tariffs that had been scheduled for Monday were “indefinitely suspended” after the two sides signed an agreement, he said in a tweet.

“It’s a good thing,” Japan’s central bank governor, Haruhiko Kuroda, told reporters.

On the agenda: taxes and crime

The agenda for the G-20 talks in Fukuoka on Saturday were mainly concerned with reforms of tax policies, combatting money laundering and cybercrimes, and innovations in financial technologies.

Japan is hosting the G-20 for the first time since it was founded in 1999.
…

From: MeNeedIt

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Saturday that he plans to speak privately with China’s central bank governor about trade on the sidelines of annual Group of 20 finance talks in southern Japan, but has no direct message to give him.

Mnuchin and Yi Gang, chairman of the People’s Bank of China, are to hold routine talks on various issues and then break away for their discussion on trade. Yi, he noted, has participated in now-stalled talks between Washington and Beijing over the trade and technology dispute between the two largest economies.

“This will be a one-on-one with Gov. Yi to talk alone about the trade issues,” Mnuchin told reporters in the Japanese city of Fukuoka. But he added, “I would expect the main progress will be at the G-20 meetings of the presidents.”

He said there were no plans for trade talks in Washington or Beijing before Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are to meet in Osaka for the G-20 summit June 28-29.

​Trump tariffs

The Trump administration began slapping tariffs on imports of Chinese goods nearly a year ago, accusing Beijing of using predatory means to lend Chinese companies an edge in advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics and electric vehicles. Those tactics, the U.S. contends, include hacking into U.S. companies’ computers to steal trade secrets, forcing foreign companies to hand over sensitive technology in exchange for access to the Chinese market and unfairly subsidizing Chinese tech firms.

Trump has also complained repeatedly about America’s huge trade deficit with China, a record $379 billion last year.

The United States now is imposing 25% taxes on $250 billion in Chinese goods. Beijing has counterpunched by targeting $110 billion worth of American products, focusing on farm goods such as soybeans in a deliberate effort to inflict pain on Trump supporters in the U.S. heartland.

The U.S. side has been preparing to expand retaliatory tariff hikes of 25% on another $300 billion of Chinese products, and Mnuchin indicated it was prepared to take that step if negotiations with Beijing fail. But he said Trump had not yet made a decision on that, suggesting room for further delays depending on the outcome of his discussion with Xi later this month.

​‘Hearing concerns’

Asked if other financial leaders attending the meetings in Fukuoka were raising the issue, Mnuchin said no. But he acknowledged the slowdown in Europe, China and other regions.

“I’m hearing concerns if we continue on this path there could be issues. There will be winners and losers,” he said.

Mnuchin and other officials in the Trump administration assert that the winners from the tariffs standoff, including the United States, will benefit from investments by companies moving their operations out of China to avoid the tariffs.

Countries were welcoming news that after a flurry of negotiations, Trump said he would refrain from imposing 5% tariffs on products from Mexico after it “agreed to take strong measures” to stem the flow of Central American migrants into the United States.

The tariffs that had been scheduled for Monday were “indefinitely suspended” after the two sides signed an agreement, he said in a tweet.

“It’s a good thing,” Japan’s central bank governor, Haruhiko Kuroda, told reporters.

On the agenda: taxes and crime

The agenda for the G-20 talks in Fukuoka on Saturday were mainly concerned with reforms of tax policies, combatting money laundering and cybercrimes, and innovations in financial technologies.

Japan is hosting the G-20 for the first time since it was founded in 1999.
…

From: MeNeedIt

NASA will open parts of the International Space Station to more commercial opportunities, it announced Friday, allowing companies to use the space station’s facilities in a number of ways, including private astronaut missions.

The space agency has balked at commercial ventures in the past, but the cost of operating the space station, which is one of the agency’s greatest expenses, currently runs $3 billion to $4 billion a year, or more than $8 million a day. NASA leadership has made it clear that the agency wants to eventually transition control of the space station and its region of space, low Earth orbit, to the private sector. 

“What this is, is an investment in the future for demand for low-Earth platforms” said Mike Read, the manager of Commercial Space Utilization at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, told VOA News. “What we want to do is leverage the station and try to enable others to turn a business model … while we have the infrastructure of the space station.” 

By handing control of the space station over to commercial ventures, NASA could have more money to pursue more ambitious missions, such as building a new space station around the moon and sending humans back to the lunar surface. 

In late 2018, the agency selected 12 companies to study the potential growth of a low-Earth orbit economy and how to best stimulate demand for human space flight. (Low-Earth orbit means altitudes below 2,000 km or 1,240 miles.) This group brainstormed ways companies could turn a profit at the space station, and the members decided that allowing corporations to build and market their products using space station resources would help ignite the economy NASA is seeking to build on. 

But getting to space is not cheap. 

Private astronaut missions will be limited to two flights per year, or about 12 astronauts per year, and come at a significant cost. The cost of travel and accommodations will have to be picked up by the private sector. 

As of now, the only ways to get to the space station are spacecraft developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boeing, so “whatever prices Boeing and SpaceX set is on them,” said Jeff DeWit, NASA’s chief financial officer. 

NASA pays about $80 million per seat, a price that it is working to trim to $50 million per seat, to send its astronauts. 

Apart from the cost of getting there, companies hoping to work on the space station will have to pay to stay there: One night’s stay would be about $35,000 for one person, DeWit said. 

“It’s now up to you to use your creativity — your ingenuity — and figure out how you can generate potential revenue,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration. 

‘Learning experience’

“This is the beginning of us actively starting open dialogue with the industry to figure out how we can open up space to commercial activities, where revenue can be generated from private sector companies. … This is going to be a growing and learning experience for both [sides].” 

But NASA’s Read points out a key element to this new venture: “We are a government bureaucracy that is trying to enable development of a new economy. That’s pretty different,” he said. 
…

From: MeNeedIt

Friends, Romans and Latin lovers — lend the Vatican your ears. Vatican Radio is starting its first regular news bulletin in the language of Caesar and Cicero.

Called “Hebdomada Papae, Notitiae Vaticanae latine reddiate” (“The pope’s week, Vatican news in the Latin language”), it is the latest in a series of initiatives to broaden use of Latin, once a staple of Western European education and the language of all Roman Catholic services.

This month, Hebdomada Aenigmatum, a new book of crossword puzzles in Latin and ancient Greek, said to be the first with no help or definitions in modern languages, hit book stores in Italy.

The weekly Vatican Radio broadcast, which starts Saturday, will run for five minutes and be followed by a half-hour show with Latin conversation — and tips in Italian on using the language of ancient Rome in a modern setting.

“We wanted the official language of the Church to be experienced in news just as it is in the daily broadcast of a Mass in Latin,” said Andrea Tornielli, the editorial director for Vatican communications.

The program will be produced by the radio’s news team and the Vatican department that translates and writes official documents in Latin.

Growing interest

Luca Desiata, an Italian businessman who published the book of crosswords in Latin, said the internet has helped revive interest in the language just as more and more schools around the world stopped teaching it.

“We now have Wikipedia in Latin (“Vicipaedia Latina”), about 40 Latin Facebook groups around the world — and the pope’s Twitter account in Latin is followed by nearly a million people,” he told Reuters. “Not bad for a dead language.”

Desiata came up with the idea for the crossword book after publishing a weekly online Latin puzzle magazine for five years that pulled in 10,000 subscribers.

In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI started the Pontifical Academy for Latin Studies to promote the use of Latin in the Church and beyond.

Many attempts have been made to revive Latin. Some have tried to bring it up to date by introducing new words for things that did not exist at the time of the Roman Empire — not all of them very functional.

Years ago, Father Carlo Egger, a top Vatican Latinist, came up with “machina linteorum lavatoria” for washing machine; “escariorum lavator” for dishwasher; “autocinetorum lavatrix” for carwash — and “sphaeriludium electricum numismate actum” for pinball machine.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Fourteen Russia-backed YouTube channels spreading disinformation have been generating billions of views and millions of dollars in advertising revenue, according to researchers, and had not been labeled as state-sponsored, contrary to the world’s most popular streaming service’s policy.

The channels, including news outlets NTV and Russia-24, carried false reports ranging from a U.S. politician covering up a human organ harvesting ring to the economic collapse of Scandinavian countries. Despite such content, viewers have flocked to the channels and U.S. and European companies have bought ads that run alongside them.

The previously unpublished research by Omelas, a Washington-based firm that tracks online extremism for defense contractors, provides the most comprehensive view yet of the Russian government’s success in attracting viewers and generating revenue from propaganda on YouTube, which has 2 billion monthly viewers worldwide.

YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc’s Google, introduced a policy in February of 2018 to identify channels predominantly carrying news items and are wholly or partly funded by national governments, in order to help users make informed viewing decisions.

YouTube said on Wednesday that following inquiries from Reuters it added the state-funding disclaimer to 13 additional Russian channels, including eight of the channels spreading disinformation.

Twelve other Russia-sponsored channels identified by Omelas with misleading or inaccurate news reports already had the state-funding label.

Collectively, the 26 channels drew 9 billion views from January 2017 through December 2018, Omelas found. Another 24 Russian channels with no apparent ties to disinformation attracted an additional 4 billion views, Omelas said.

Omelas estimated those 13 billion total views could have generated up to $58 million from ads, including some from Western advertisers. It estimated that Russia could have received $7 million to $32 million under YouTube’s standard revenue-sharing program, while YouTube itself would have pocketed from $6 million to $26 million.

An accurate analysis is difficult because YouTube shares limited audience and sales data. YouTube declined comment on the channels’ revenue. Calls and emails to the Russian government and the country’s embassies in the United States and Britain were not returned.

It is not uncommon for state broadcasters around the world to put videos on YouTube. Russia’s channels, though, have faced more scrutiny since the United States concluded that Russian operatives attempted to disrupt the 2016 presidential election by posting fake news to social media from fabricated personas and news organizations. Russia has denied any wrongdoing.

“YouTube continues to enable the monetization of state propaganda, fringe conspiracies and intentional outrage,” said Ryan Fox, chief operating officer of cybersecurity firm New Knowledge.

Money-maker for Google

YouTube said it welcomes governments in its revenue-sharing program and does not bar disinformation.

“We don’t treat state-funded media channels differently than other channels when it comes to monetization, as long as they comply with all of our other policies,” YouTube spokeswoman Alex Krasov told Reuters. “And we give users context for news-related content, including by labeling government-funded news sources.” 

The Russian-sponsored YouTube channels come from government ministries and state media networks, some dating back 13 years, according to Omelas, which based its research on a public database from the European Union of online disinformation sources.

The channels listed by Omelas, of which NTV was the most viewed, contain nearly 770,000 videos, including singing competitions, talk shows and news clips, some more clearly biased or inaccurate than others. A few of the channels are in English, French or other languages but most are in Russian. YouTube mostly generates its revenue from selling ads placed adjacent to, before or during videos on its service.

Some Western advertisers, which were unaware their ads were appearing on Russian channels, told Reuters they were concerned about being associated with questionable content.

Grammarly, an online grammar-checking service whose ads appeared on Russian channels with deliberately misleading news, told Reuters it would never knowingly associate with misinformation.

“We have stringent exclusion filters in place with YouTube that we believed would exclude such channels, and we’ve asked YouTube to ensure this does not happen again,” spokesperson Senka Hadzimuratovic said in a statement.

Other ads reaching viewers on Russian-funded conspiracy videos came from insurer Liberty Mutual, the European Central Bank and software firms Adobe Inc, Yandex NV and Wix.com Ltd, according to research by Omelas and Reuters.

The ECB, Adobe and Yandex declined to comment. Liberty Mutual and Wix did not respond to requests for comment. John Montgomery, a global executive vice president at ad buying company GroupM, said advertisers can set filters to automatically avoid supporting some objectionable channels but they are imperfect.

“Disinformation is probably the biggest challenge we’ve got on the internet today,” he said.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Fourteen Russia-backed YouTube channels spreading disinformation have been generating billions of views and millions of dollars in advertising revenue, according to researchers, and had not been labeled as state-sponsored, contrary to the world’s most popular streaming service’s policy.

The channels, including news outlets NTV and Russia-24, carried false reports ranging from a U.S. politician covering up a human organ harvesting ring to the economic collapse of Scandinavian countries. Despite such content, viewers have flocked to the channels and U.S. and European companies have bought ads that run alongside them.

The previously unpublished research by Omelas, a Washington-based firm that tracks online extremism for defense contractors, provides the most comprehensive view yet of the Russian government’s success in attracting viewers and generating revenue from propaganda on YouTube, which has 2 billion monthly viewers worldwide.

YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc’s Google, introduced a policy in February of 2018 to identify channels predominantly carrying news items and are wholly or partly funded by national governments, in order to help users make informed viewing decisions.

YouTube said on Wednesday that following inquiries from Reuters it added the state-funding disclaimer to 13 additional Russian channels, including eight of the channels spreading disinformation.

Twelve other Russia-sponsored channels identified by Omelas with misleading or inaccurate news reports already had the state-funding label.

Collectively, the 26 channels drew 9 billion views from January 2017 through December 2018, Omelas found. Another 24 Russian channels with no apparent ties to disinformation attracted an additional 4 billion views, Omelas said.

Omelas estimated those 13 billion total views could have generated up to $58 million from ads, including some from Western advertisers. It estimated that Russia could have received $7 million to $32 million under YouTube’s standard revenue-sharing program, while YouTube itself would have pocketed from $6 million to $26 million.

An accurate analysis is difficult because YouTube shares limited audience and sales data. YouTube declined comment on the channels’ revenue. Calls and emails to the Russian government and the country’s embassies in the United States and Britain were not returned.

It is not uncommon for state broadcasters around the world to put videos on YouTube. Russia’s channels, though, have faced more scrutiny since the United States concluded that Russian operatives attempted to disrupt the 2016 presidential election by posting fake news to social media from fabricated personas and news organizations. Russia has denied any wrongdoing.

“YouTube continues to enable the monetization of state propaganda, fringe conspiracies and intentional outrage,” said Ryan Fox, chief operating officer of cybersecurity firm New Knowledge.

Money-maker for Google

YouTube said it welcomes governments in its revenue-sharing program and does not bar disinformation.

“We don’t treat state-funded media channels differently than other channels when it comes to monetization, as long as they comply with all of our other policies,” YouTube spokeswoman Alex Krasov told Reuters. “And we give users context for news-related content, including by labeling government-funded news sources.” 

The Russian-sponsored YouTube channels come from government ministries and state media networks, some dating back 13 years, according to Omelas, which based its research on a public database from the European Union of online disinformation sources.

The channels listed by Omelas, of which NTV was the most viewed, contain nearly 770,000 videos, including singing competitions, talk shows and news clips, some more clearly biased or inaccurate than others. A few of the channels are in English, French or other languages but most are in Russian. YouTube mostly generates its revenue from selling ads placed adjacent to, before or during videos on its service.

Some Western advertisers, which were unaware their ads were appearing on Russian channels, told Reuters they were concerned about being associated with questionable content.

Grammarly, an online grammar-checking service whose ads appeared on Russian channels with deliberately misleading news, told Reuters it would never knowingly associate with misinformation.

“We have stringent exclusion filters in place with YouTube that we believed would exclude such channels, and we’ve asked YouTube to ensure this does not happen again,” spokesperson Senka Hadzimuratovic said in a statement.

Other ads reaching viewers on Russian-funded conspiracy videos came from insurer Liberty Mutual, the European Central Bank and software firms Adobe Inc, Yandex NV and Wix.com Ltd, according to research by Omelas and Reuters.

The ECB, Adobe and Yandex declined to comment. Liberty Mutual and Wix did not respond to requests for comment. John Montgomery, a global executive vice president at ad buying company GroupM, said advertisers can set filters to automatically avoid supporting some objectionable channels but they are imperfect.

“Disinformation is probably the biggest challenge we’ve got on the internet today,” he said.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Facebook has stopped letting its apps come pre-installed on smartphones sold by Huawei in order to comply with U.S. restrictions, dealing a fresh blow to the Chinese tech giant.

The social network said Friday that it has suspended providing software for Huawei to put on its devices while it reviews recently introduced U.S. sanctions.

Owners of existing Huawei smartphones that already have Facebook apps can continue using them and downloading updates.

It’s not clear if buyers of new Huawei devices will be able to install Facebook’s apps on their own.

Facebook’s move is the latest fallout in the escalating U.S.-China tech feud.

The Commerce Department last month effectively barred U.S. companies from selling their technology to Huawei and other Chinese firms without government approval.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Facebook has stopped letting its apps come pre-installed on smartphones sold by Huawei in order to comply with U.S. restrictions, dealing a fresh blow to the Chinese tech giant.

The social network said Friday that it has suspended providing software for Huawei to put on its devices while it reviews recently introduced U.S. sanctions.

Owners of existing Huawei smartphones that already have Facebook apps can continue using them and downloading updates.

It’s not clear if buyers of new Huawei devices will be able to install Facebook’s apps on their own.

Facebook’s move is the latest fallout in the escalating U.S.-China tech feud.

The Commerce Department last month effectively barred U.S. companies from selling their technology to Huawei and other Chinese firms without government approval.
…

From: MeNeedIt

One of the first Lindy Hoppers in America, Norma Miller dazzled the country with this fast-paced, acrobatic dance in the 1930s and 1940s. A multitude of international tours and thousands of students and fans later, America fell in love with Lindy Hop and Miller became known as the Queen of Swing. Miller died in May at 99 in Florida, but her dance legacy continues. For VOA, Ksenia Turkova attended a farewell ceremony in New York and has more on Miller’s life and legacy. Anna Rice narrates.
…

From: MeNeedIt

One of the first Lindy Hoppers in America, Norma Miller dazzled the country with this fast-paced, acrobatic dance in the 1930s and 1940s. A multitude of international tours and thousands of students and fans later, America fell in love with Lindy Hop and Miller became known as the Queen of Swing. Miller died in May at 99 in Florida, but her dance legacy continues. For VOA, Ksenia Turkova attended a farewell ceremony in New York and has more on Miller’s life and legacy. Anna Rice narrates.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Dr. John, the New Orleans musician who blended black and white musical styles with a hoodoo-infused stage persona and gravelly bayou drawl, died Thursday, his family said. He was 77.

In a statement released through his publicist, the family said Dr. John, who was born Mac Rebennack, died “toward the break of day” of a heart attack. 

They did not say where he died or give other details. 

He had not been seen in public much since late 2017, when he canceled several gigs. He had been resting at his New Orleans area home, publicist Karen Beninato said last year in an interview.

Memorial arrangements were being planned. “The family thanks all whom have shared his unique musical journey, and requests privacy at this time,” the statement said.

His spooky 1968 debut “Gris-Gris” combined rhythm `n blues with psychedelic rock and startled listeners with its sinister implications of other-worldly magic. He later had a Top 10 hit with “Right Place, Wrong Time,” collaborated with numerous top-tier rockers, won multiple Grammy awards and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

A white man who found a home among black New Orleans musicians, he first entered the music scene when he accompanied his father, who ran a record shop and also fixed the P.A. systems at New Orleans bars.

As a teenager in the 1950s, he played guitar and keyboards in a string of bands and made the legendary studio of Cosimo Matassa his second home, Rebennack said in his 1994 memoir, “Under a Hoodoo Moon.” 

He got into music full-time after dropping out of high school, became acquainted with drugs and petty crime and lived a fast-paced life. His gigs ranged from strip clubs to auditoriums, roadhouses and chicken shacks. The ring finger of Rebennack’s left hand was blown off in a shooting incident in 1961 in Jacksonville, Florida.

He blamed Jim Garrison, the JFK conspiracy theorist and a tough-on-crime New Orleans district attorney, for driving him out of his beloved city in the early 1960s. Garrison went after prostitutes, bars and all-night music venues.

The underworld sweep put Rebennack in prison. At that time, he was a respected session musician who had played on classic recordings by R&B mainstays like Professor Longhair and Irma Thomas, but he was also a heroin addict. After his release from federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, at age 24, Rebennack joined friend and mentor Harold Battiste who had left New Orleans to make music in Los Angeles.

Rebennack, who’d long had a fascination with occult mysticism and voodoo, told Battiste about creating a musical personality out of Dr. John, a male version of Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen.

In his memoir, Rebennack said, he drew inspiration from New Orleans folklore about a root doctor who flourished in the mid-1800s. 

Battiste, in a 2005 interview, recalled, “It was really done sort of tongue-in-cheek.”

But Dr. John was born and Rebennack got his first personal recordings done in what became “Gris-Gris,” a 1967 classic of underground American music.

In the years that followed, he played with The Grateful Dead, appeared with The Band in director Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Waltz” documentary, jammed on The Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main Street” album and collaborated with countless others — among them Earl King, Van Morrison and James Booker.
…

From: MeNeedIt

Dr. John, the New Orleans musician who blended black and white musical styles with a hoodoo-infused stage persona and gravelly bayou drawl, died Thursday, his family said. He was 77.

In a statement released through his publicist, the family said Dr. John, who was born Mac Rebennack, died “toward the break of day” of a heart attack. 

They did not say where he died or give other details. 

He had not been seen in public much since late 2017, when he canceled several gigs. He had been resting at his New Orleans area home, publicist Karen Beninato said last year in an interview.

Memorial arrangements were being planned. “The family thanks all whom have shared his unique musical journey, and requests privacy at this time,” the statement said.

His spooky 1968 debut “Gris-Gris” combined rhythm `n blues with psychedelic rock and startled listeners with its sinister implications of other-worldly magic. He later had a Top 10 hit with “Right Place, Wrong Time,” collaborated with numerous top-tier rockers, won multiple Grammy awards and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

A white man who found a home among black New Orleans musicians, he first entered the music scene when he accompanied his father, who ran a record shop and also fixed the P.A. systems at New Orleans bars.

As a teenager in the 1950s, he played guitar and keyboards in a string of bands and made the legendary studio of Cosimo Matassa his second home, Rebennack said in his 1994 memoir, “Under a Hoodoo Moon.” 

He got into music full-time after dropping out of high school, became acquainted with drugs and petty crime and lived a fast-paced life. His gigs ranged from strip clubs to auditoriums, roadhouses and chicken shacks. The ring finger of Rebennack’s left hand was blown off in a shooting incident in 1961 in Jacksonville, Florida.

He blamed Jim Garrison, the JFK conspiracy theorist and a tough-on-crime New Orleans district attorney, for driving him out of his beloved city in the early 1960s. Garrison went after prostitutes, bars and all-night music venues.

The underworld sweep put Rebennack in prison. At that time, he was a respected session musician who had played on classic recordings by R&B mainstays like Professor Longhair and Irma Thomas, but he was also a heroin addict. After his release from federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, at age 24, Rebennack joined friend and mentor Harold Battiste who had left New Orleans to make music in Los Angeles.

Rebennack, who’d long had a fascination with occult mysticism and voodoo, told Battiste about creating a musical personality out of Dr. John, a male version of Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen.

In his memoir, Rebennack said, he drew inspiration from New Orleans folklore about a root doctor who flourished in the mid-1800s. 

Battiste, in a 2005 interview, recalled, “It was really done sort of tongue-in-cheek.”

But Dr. John was born and Rebennack got his first personal recordings done in what became “Gris-Gris,” a 1967 classic of underground American music.

In the years that followed, he played with The Grateful Dead, appeared with The Band in director Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Waltz” documentary, jammed on The Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main Street” album and collaborated with countless others — among them Earl King, Van Morrison and James Booker.
…

From: MeNeedIt