Hear Dr. John and Aaron Neville cover The Traveling Wilburys

Credit: Derek Bridges

Listen to Dr. John and Aaron Neville cover The Traveling Wilburys

Sat 20 August 2022 8:30, UK

Dr. John and Aaron Neville are two figures who are inextricably linked to the history of New Orleans music. On one side stands The Night Tripper, a voodoo-heavy alter ego for the funkiest white piano player that Louisiana had ever seen, Mac Rebennack. On the other stands the smooth kind of soul who could take just about any genre and remake it in his own design. To hear John and Neville work was to hear the thick gumbo of influences and styles that floated around New Orleans, repurposed into some of the most exciting music of the 20th century.

Unfortunately, John passed away back in 2019 at the age of 77, taking one of the city’s major musician titans away. He now has a posthumous album, Things Happen That Way, coming out at the end of September. Today, we’re getting to hear John’s take on a classic – The Traveling Wilburys ‘The End of the Line’, featuring Neville and singer Katie Pruitt.

Appropriate for John’s signature mix of funk, rock, soul, and jazz, his version of ‘End of the Line’ is slinky and slippery. Complete with joyous old-school horn blasts and a tumbling second-line rhythm pushing it forward, this version of ‘End of the Line’ acts as a giant singalong. That was a major theme of Dr. John’s music: if you can sing or dance, you might as well join in.

‘End of the Line’ almost immediately became evocative of a bittersweet wave goodbye when it was released as a single in January of 1989. Just a month prior, original Traveling Wilburys member and ‘End of the Line’ co-lead vocalist Roy Orbison died of a heart attack at the age of 52. Suddenly, the song’s wistful ruminations on the past and optimistic tone carried a new meaning, especially Orbison’s assertion that “everything will work out fine”.

Just as it did when Orbison passed away, ‘End of the Line’ now helps make the passing of a legendary musical figure just a little bit easier. Bringing it all back home to New Orleans, where a funeral isn’t a funeral until it turns into a dance-along jazz funeral, John gets to go out in style with a joyfully loose and funky version of a classic rock staple.

Check out the cover of ‘End of the Line’ down below.