The Genius of James Booker

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.

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.

Our Favorite Guitarists

SOME of you -- especially if you are a musician, music writer, or serious listener -- have already taken part in my informal poll of favorite guitarists. This was conceived not exactly as a historically rigorous greatest-of-all-time but the work you'd grab either if your house was burning down, or to take to the proverbial desert island. (I'm aware that these are two slightly different categories, one spurred by an instant craving the other by the opportunity for eternal contemplation. Can some musicians offer both?)

In any case, I have very roughly compiled the results. I'll admit that my method was unscientific and personally biased -- these people are friends or at least peers of mine. I allowed myself one vote, like anyone else, tho I think I will not post my own ever-changing list quite yet. And, most of those polled were born between the late '40s to the late '60s -- that is, we have fans who came of age with the British blues boom voting alongside those who grew up with college radio, alt-rock, indie, and so on. Some were primarily blueshounds or jazzheads; one is a critic of classical music.

Some generational patterns, of course, are apparent, and while most Boomers voted for Clapton, Page, Beck, Richards, etc. it wasn't enough to launch more than of them into the very top tier. Perhaps appropriately, the very highest vote getting musician is an eclectic and atypical Boomer with a significant Gen X/ alt-rock following. I was also surprised that Hendrix -- perhaps my favorite and certainly the greatest of all time -- did not simply shut down all opposition.

With no further ado, here is the list -- I don't think a difference of a single vote is significant, but this is in order of votes attained. (I have posted a poll on the right margins, using the top six names here as finalists. Sorry, folks, if your hero not on list -- I can only go to six.)

Richard Thompson
Nels Cline
Jimi Hendrix
Neil Young
Robert Quine
Keith Richards
Thurston Moore
Wes Montgomery
Roger McGuinn

Let me point out that the top four names on this list are all West Coast figures -- though of course Thompson grew up in England while Hendrix made his name there, Young is originally Canadian, etc. But Roger McGuinn is as solidly grounded in LA rock as you can get.

Some others came close -- Johnny Marr, Robert Fripp, Peter Buck, Pat Metheny, Pete Townshend. I'm struck by the huge amount of talent and huge range of styles in just a few names.

Christmas With John Fahey

AN underrated West Coast guitarist, the great and mysterious John Fahey, is best known for gloomy, weird, angular records like "Blind Joe Death" and "The Voice of the Turtle" that begin in Charley Patton territory and in some ways anticipate the anti-folk movement.

But for me, Fahey and his "American primitivist" style is most important as part of my Christmas experience, and has been for decades now. Around this time of year, I develop this weirdly atavistic connection -- the kind I would surely find corny in others -- to my Anglo-Irish roots, and I play a lot of dark Celtic folk music, old and new. But there's nothing I play as often, or soak up as deeply, as Fahey's solo acoustic Christmas record, "The New Possibility," which I know from my parents.


In some ways -- I'm glad to say -- it's as gloomy, weird and angular as his other work. Fahey (who died in '01 -- here is his posthumous website) was an odd cat.


Here is the album's first song, "Joy To the World."


Here he is teaching "auld lang syne" behind dark glasses.


And here, a subdued reading by a young Fahey of the Anglican hymn, "In Christ There is no East or West."


Anyway, alongside Johnny Cash's gospels recordings and Bach's sublime and lonely cello suites, this is stuff is almost enough to make me love Protestantism.

Update for fall 2013: Fantasy has reissued The New Possibility on vinyl, and put out a new CD compilation of his four holiday albums called Christmas Guitar Soli with John Fahey. They're on their way to me, look forward to hearing. 

Joe Henry vs. Robert Johnson

THERE'S something genuinely -- and not just fashionably -- retro about joe henry, an artist who keeps us guessing about where he'll go next but stays deeply rooted in the american past.

i could have spent all day talking about music with henry -- about the portrait of billy strayhorn over his piano, for instance which he compares to the "what would jesus do" bracelets christian teens wear. but he probably would have kicked me out of his super-cool brick-and-stone basement studio.

my story, from today's LATimes, was mostly about his new album, "blood from stars." but we also discussed two of my favorite R&B records -- solomon burke's "don't give up on me" and bettye lavette's "i've got my own hell to raise" -- both of which joe produced.

we started out speaking about delta blues players like son house, robert johnson and skip james. "to me, it's like reading keats or blake," the singer/guitarist said. "it takes god, sex, love and death and puts them all in the same room."

UPDATE FOR 2010: Joe plays the Largo at the Coronet on Saturday, March 6; great reputation as a live artist.

Photo credit: Anti- Records