Ronnie Barron was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

, keyboardist

Keyboardist

A keyboardist is a musician who plays keyboard instruments. Until the early 1960s musicians who played keyboards were generally classified as either pianists or organists. Since the mid-1960s, a plethora of new musical instruments with keyboards have come into common usage, requiring a more...

, organist

Organist

An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists...

, and white soul singer during the 1970s. He was known for his work as a session musician

Session musician

Session musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...

 for several artists, as well as his collaborations with Dr. John

Dr. John

Malcolm John "Mac" Rebennack, Jr. , better known by the stage name Dr. John , is an American singer-songwriter, pianist and guitarist, whose music combines blues, pop, jazz as well as Zydeco, boogie woogie and rock and roll.Active as a session musician since the late 1950s, he came to wider...

, a fellow New Orleans native.

Musicians who employed him include Paul Butterfield

Paul Butterfield

Paul Butterfield was an American blues vocalist and harmonica player, who founded the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in the early 1960s and performed at the original Woodstock Festival...

, Canned Heat

Canned Heat

Canned Heat is a blues-rock/boogie rock band that formed in Los Angeles, California in 1965. The group has been noted for its own interpretations of blues material as well as for efforts to promote the interest in this type of music and its original artists...

, Ry Cooder

Ry Cooder

Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder is an American guitarist, singer and composer. He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and, more recently, his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.His solo work has been eclectic, encompassing...

, Tom Waits

Tom Waits

Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...

, Eric Burdon

Eric Burdon

Eric Victor Burdon is an English singer-songwriter best known as a founding member and vocalist of rock band The Animals, and the funk rock band War and for his aggressive stage performance...

 & The Animals

The Animals

The Animals were an English music group of the 1960s formed in Newcastle upon Tyne during the early part of the decade, and later relocated to London...

, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, and others.

Barron met Mac Rebennack in 1958 and performed with him at several venues around New Orleans. During that period, he created the Reverend Ether persona to satisfy audiences who were primarily interested in entertainers. Rebennack was so impressed with the gimmick, that he wanted Barron to become Dr. John. Barron was hired by Sonny and Cher in 1965, and relocated to California to become a session musician, and left the Reverend Ether character behind.

He was married to Linda Kelly and had two children, Ronald Raymond, Jr. and Ava. He died in 1997 from complications of heart problems.

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