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.

The 5 Browns on the Piano

Photo Andrew Southam

A GROUP of cherubic, Julliard-educated young people came to Irvine this weekend to play 5 pianos in tandem. This could be heaven or it could be hell, but this group of siblings is good.

HERE is my interview with the band in the LA Times. There is more to the story than met the eye when I accepted this piece -- their backstory is a bit complicated. I enjoyed talking to two of the young men in the group a great deal; their sincerity was unfeigned.

The Slyness of Jeremy Denk

ONE of the coolest and most genuinely individualistic musicians I've ever met is the classical pianist Jeremy Denk, whose blog Think Denk is witty, sometimes loopy, and always provocative. He's an enthusiast of Nabokov and Proust, and a player of very deep feeling whose treatment of Ives has left some friends spellbound.

HERE is my piece on Denk, who comes to town next week for two concerts with the LA Chamber Orchestra.


The roots of Denk's blog -- which The New Yorker's Alex Ross has praised as bearing the kind of voice that could only exist on the web -- begin with him rehearsing Mozart at a church in El Paso.


"This crazy man came into the church," Denk recalls, "and started lecturing me on Mozart and the purpose of music. I wasn't entirely sure if he was going to kill me . . . or what."


I urge all music lovers to check this guy out. He's a fan of Magnetic Fields and Rufus Wainwright and a truly lively mind.

Cool Polish Pianist in Los Angeles

One of the finest young(ish) pianists in the world appears with the Los Angeles Philharmonic this weekend -- Polish-born Piotr Anderszewski. His Bach, Beethoven and Chopin are magnificent -- a truly deep, probing player. (He's also interested in the oft-overlooked, harmonically interesting Karol Szymanowski.)

I spoke to the pianist the last time he was in town, and he talked about his choice of repertoire, his upbringing and his approach to the piano in general; he also told a funny story about the time he met Richter. Story here.

On Friday morning, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, he will perform in a concert that includes Beethoven's First Piano Concerto; Phil schedule here. (He has already done one stint of chamber music this week that I wish I could have caught.)

When I say young(ish) by the way, I mean he's my age. In any case, eager to see him at Disney Hall this weekend -- his show a few years ago was gripping

Photo credit K. Miura

Celebrating Glenn Gould

Today would be the birthday of a musician who's nearly up there, for me, with john lennon and john coltrane. like them, he was a force of nature, complicated personally, and a man who left so much music behind i've listen to him every week -- sometimes every day -- for years.

part of what first interested me about pianist glenn gould (1932-82) is that he was a classical musician who rockers, literati, bohos and generalist intellectuals seemed to like: there are depths to him, for sure, but you did not have to understand the harmonic theory behind "the well-tempered clavier" to respond to its velocity and intellectual force.

i've also found, especially in my younger days, gould's treatment of bach to be the best hangover medicine i know.

HERE is my piece, "the cult of gould," from the LATimes. my goal was to round up people who loved gould from outside the classical world, so i found filmmaker john waters, the actress who played Flo on "Alice," and jazz musicians brad mehldau and jason moran. critic time page served as a kind of guide to the piece. (somehow i executed this piece without including a single canadian, which seems wrong.)

moran provided my favorite detail in the story: he went to see "thirty two short films about glenn gould," with a young woman he fancied. when she decided gould was too weird for her, he could never look at her the same way. it was all over between then.

Classical Piano and the Importance of Good Grooming

Last night i caught Leif Ove Andsnes, the norwegian pianist, at disney hall. (here he is, right, after, presumably, chopping an entire nordic forest.) he played a set of janacek, brahms, mozart and schubert, with violinist christian tetzlaff. (a fine story on the celebrated duo here.)

great concert, by the way. while the ballade in the janacek was nearly heart-stopping, my favorite was the brahms sonata no. 3. (a wonderful unfashionable composer, a true genius of melody and delicate small scale pieces, on whom more another time.)

but the appearance reminded me (chin-stroking music please) of classical music's image problem. as someone who grew up with rock n roll and later the very photogenic era of mid-century jazz, i was amazed as i started to get into chamber music in the mid-90s just how dowdy a bunch classical players tended to be.  and then things started to change a bit: leif ove spoke to me for this piece in the LATimes from a few years back. every time i see a picture of that hedgehog james levine i think of it. 

could it be that classical music is more "deep" than pop music, which has become enslaved to youth and  image? dont forget, these days, even philosophers have style. what do my esteemed readers think?

 

Photo credit: Flickr user 13