Mac Rebennack has made most of his career into a theatrical performance as the New Orleans mythic icon Dr. John, and he returns with a droll, witty and utterly delightful tribute to one of the greatest songwriters in American music history, Johnny Mercer. There have been plenty of Mercer tributes, but never by an artist who can claim nearly as many different accomplishments as The Man himself. Like Mac, Mercer doubled as an actor and a songwriter, eventually putting away the greasepaint to write some 1,500 tunes including “Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe,” “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive” and “Candy,” none of which are included here. Like Mac, Mercer was also a big time wheeler-dealer both on stage and behind the scenes in the music industry, singing duets with Bing Crosby and co-founding Capitol Records, where he recruited such stars as Nat King Cole, Stan Kenton and Peggy Lee.

Mac approaches the Mercer songbook more like Frank Sinatra (who cut most all of it) than Rod Stewart, although the tonal quality of his singing is much closer to the Southern rasp that Stewart affects than the wild honey of the Chairman of the Board’s style. Like Sinatra, Rebennack understand that it’s all about attitude. You can’t leer when you sing, “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” so he gives it a grandfatherly twinkle of an eye. So many terrible Vegas crooners have abused “Moon River” that it is a monstrous cliché only a beastmaster can tame, and here we get a zen reading that does not conjure a snicker. Yet the humor is never far away, as the oddball but totally satisfying inclusion of “I’m An Old Cowhand” proves.

It’s hard not to see this album in context of Mac’s wonderfully eccentric Duke Elegant, another of his Blue Note outings, but aside from the fact that both albums cover tunes that are mostly jazz standards, there’s a real, subtle difference in his approach. The Ellington tribute was, for a Dr. John album, almost worshipful. Mac brought his inimitable vibe to the material, and even unearthed such unexpected delights as “The Wrong Side of the Railroad Tracks,” but he was drinking at the sacred fountain. Mac treats Mercer like an old buddy, singing his tunes with the sly, knowing humor of someone who was in on the whole deal. And when he sings the ultimate hipster auto-comment, “I Ain’t No Johnny Mercer,” you can almost see him winking at the collaborator he never met.