Two-Headed Doctor is a forensic investigation into a single LP: Dr. John, the night tripper's Gris-gris. Though released in 1968 to poor sales and a minimum of critical attention, Gris-gris has accumulated legendary status over subsequent decades for its strangeness, hybridity, and innovative production. It formed the launch pad for Dr. John's image and lengthy career and the ghostly presence of its so-called voodoo atmosphere hovers over numerous cover versions, samples, and re-invocations. Despite the respect given to the record, its making is shrouded in mystery, misunderstandings, and false conclusions. The persona of Dr. John, loosely based on dubious literary accounts of a notorious voodooist and freed slave, a nineteenth-century New Orleans resident known as Doctor John, provided Malcolm Mac Rebennack with a lifelong mask through which to transform himself from session musician in order to construct a solo career.

paperback with flaps, 264 pages

Strange Attractor Press, Nov 2024

15.39 x 3.18 x 21.29 cm

"An extraordinary LP begets an extraordinary book. Two-Headed Doctor is about spectral America, the porosity of identity, racial drag, syncretic spirituality, nocturnal transmissions, fantastical fabulation. No one listens more deeply - or more hemispherically - than David Toop; no music writer is more entrancing or contagious."
- Sukhdev Sandhu