IT'S long been something of a cliché to talk about what a head-spinning
musical and cultural melting pot New Orleans is. But there’s no other way to frame
the protean New Orleans pianist James Booker (1939-‘83), who is very near the
top of my list of most individual/ accomplished musician who very few people
know about. His musical vocabulary was an odd blend of bordello and concert
hall: He didn’t sit squarely in any tradition but drew from the blues, gospel,
funk, jazz and classical piano (especially Chopin; an 18-year-old Booker met
Arthur Rubinstein and knocked him out with his playing). Booker’s long,
improvised piece went in all kinds of directions and reminds me of the old
phrase, “the sound of surprise.”
My all-time favorite of his is a solo live album recorded at his hometown's Maple Club in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s called Resurrection of the Bayou Maharajah. (If I may sound 20th century for a moment, I looked for that record in half the store -- in blues, R&B, jazz, etc. -- before a helpful clerk told me it was in the "New Orleans" section.)
But nearly as good – and to some, the great Booker album – is the 1982 studio release Classified, which Rounder has just reissued with a bunch of lost material.
But nearly as good – and to some, the great Booker album – is the 1982 studio release Classified, which Rounder has just reissued with a bunch of lost material.
Classified: Remixed
and Expanded is not quite as rambling and ornery as the live stuff, but he
shows off his tremendous range and the weird melange he made of it all. You get
Doc Pomus’ “Lonely Avenue,” Allen Toussaint’s “All These Things,” a (new)
medley that includes “Papa Was a Rascal,” a lovely interpretation of the jazz
standard “Angel Eyes,” Roger Miller’s “King of the Road,” and on and on. You
hear his roots in Professor Longhair, and you hear how deep he went on his own
trip.
Much of it is solo, with a saxophone, bass and drums on some
tracks.
His life is a very long story as well, and a new
documentary, Bayou Maharajah: The Tragic
Genius of James Booker, has started to appear on the festival circuit.
(I’ve not seen it.)
Booker – a homosexual who lost his eye attacked by a
bodyguard he failed to pay, and whose late-‘60s heroin bust stalled what was a
developing career -- generally thought of himself as an R&B musician:
“There is nothing I don’t like about rhythm and blues,” he
once said. “The rhythm, makes you dance and the blues make you think.”
Here is a bit from an odd-seeming documentary (note the early-'80s fonts.)
What I hear when I listen to Booker is an unbridled and kind
of boundless musical imagination, one in a push-pull of creative tension with
his training and discipline. Long may his flag fly.
