Big Easy diplomat Dr. John visits the Golden State Theatre with The Nite Trippers.

Last week, 75-year-old Dr. John headlined the Louis Armstrong’s Wonderful World Festival in Queens. The July 22 Monterey show kicks off a string of seven straight nights in Northern California before he doubles back to New York City for the Last Waltz 40th Anniversary show with The Midnight Ramble Band, Lucinda Williams, Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller and other notables.

All this despite arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome and bone spurs in his neck.

“Music is the one thing that keeps me alive and happy,” says the musician in a dialect best described as Creole-meets-jive. “If it don’t be for music, I would have threw in the towel.”

Alongside Fats Domino, Professor Longhair and Huey “Piano” Smith, Dr. John (born Mac Rebennack) is New Orleans music royalty.

“[Our music] grew naturally and joyously and just for fun,” Dr. John says. “Just plain down-to-earth, happy-times music. When I was growing up, I used to think, ‘Oh, man, music makes me feel the best.’”

With tunes like the back alley, funk-laden “I Walk on Gilded Splinters,” Dr. John’s hoodoo-heavy, late-’60s psychedelic blues debut Gris-Gris is still a hauntingly groovy favorite a half century later. It’s also one of two records on Rolling Stone’s “Top 500 Albums Ever” list. (Dr. John’s Gumbo is the other.)

“[Gris-Gris] was a good record because it was from the heart,” the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer says. “We was trying to keep New Orleans voodoo alive.”

Dr. John’s 20-plus albums have yielded six Grammy Awards, including a Best Contemporary Blues Album accolade for his poignant 2008 City That Care Forgot, which explores Katrina’s devastation.

Dr. John enlisted The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach to produce his most recent Grammy Award-winning work, 2012’s Locked Down.

“[Dr. John] inspired me every single day we were in the studio: musically, spiritually, cosmically,” Auerbach said in a record label press release. “Something special seemed to be happening.”

Dr. John self-produced his most recent release, a 2014 tribute to Louis Armstrong called Ske-Dat-De-Dat: The Spirit of Satch, which boasts an arsenal of special guests, including Terence Blanchard, The Blind Boys of Alabama and Bonnie Raitt. Just before Ske-Dat-De-Dat hit the streets, Dr. John received an honorary doctorate from Tulane University. So “Dr.” is now legit. “For a guy that never graduated from the ninth grade, I think that’s pretty cool,” he says.

DR. JOHN AND THE NITE TRIPPERS 8pm, Friday, July 22. Golden State Theatre, 417 Alvarado St., Monterey. $33-$59. 649-1070, www.goldenstatetheatre.com