The Bayou Maharajah

James Booker (Photo by Henry Horenstein)

A couple of weeks ago, I made a trip to the Little Big Store in Raymond, MS to check out their used vinyl and CDs.  I've always been able to find some really cool blues and jazz recordings and this visit was no exception.  Someone had unloaded a stack of New Orleans piano CDs since my last visit.  A lot of them I already had, but there were a couple that caught my eye.  One of them was Champion Jack Dupree's Blues From The Gutter, which I had always wanted, and the other was an album that I bought in cassette form many years ago, but never picked up a CD version.....Resurrection of the Bayou Maharajah:  Live at the Maple Leaf Bar from James Booker.

I first heard about Booker in Wavelength magazine, the late, great New Orleans music magazine, in the late 80's.  I can't remember the article, maybe it was about New Orleans piano players in general, but I do know Booker was referenced in the article as one of the great, unsung Crescent City piano masters.  At the time, there weren't a lot of Booker recordings (like now, only less so), so I tracked down two of his releases on Rounder at the time, New Orleans Piano Wizard:  Live! and Classified, a studio album Rounder released about a year before Booker's death in 1983. 

After I got a taste of Booker's music, live and studio, I understood what the article was saying.  I had been on a New Orleans kick for a while, after my first visit to Jazz Fest, grabbing copies of releases from Professor Longhair, the Nevilles, Fats Domino, Tuts Washington, Dr. John, Johnny Adams, Walter "Wolfman" Washington, plus several collections of New Orleans R&B (Rhino had a great three volume set, and Rounder had a few collections).  Those two recordings from Booker were jaw-dropping....I had never heard such masterful piano playing, combining blues, jazz, soul, classical, boogie woogie.  He could play at a breakneck pace, or he could slow it down and nearly bring you to tears.  Combined with his vocals, which were distinctive, to say the least, it was a pretty heady mix.

Booker was born James Carroll Booker III on December 17, 1939 in New Orleans.  He was a child prodigy, trained from six years old as a classical pianist and he played the organ in his father's churches.  Due to his father's health problems, Booker's mother took him and his sister to Bay Saint Louis, MS to live on several occasions, near his aunt.  He returned to New Orleans to stay at the age of eight, befriending several school classmates and future musical collaborators ......Art and Charles Neville, and Allen Toussaint.

When Booker was nine, he was hit by an ambulance in New Orleans.  Booker said that it was traveling at a high speed, and he was dragged about thirty feet, breaking his leg in eight places.  He spent months in the hospital, his leg was nearly amputated and he was given morphine for the pain.  Booker later said that this was the beginning of his lifetime battle with drug addiction.  

He also learned to play the saxophone, having been gifted one for his tenth birthday, but continued to focus on the piano and organ, performing blues and gospel every Sunday on New Orleans' WMRY radio station.  He continued his classical training mastering Bach's "Inventions and Sinfonias" at the age of 12.  

He worked as a musician during his teens and managed to do well in his studies as well, and even recorded several songs during high school, including his first release, "Doing The Hambone" on Imperial Records in 1954 at 14 years old.  In 1960, his groovy organ instrumental, "Gonzo," made the charts on Duke Records (where Don Robey got composer credits as "Deadric Malone").  On many of his 45's, he was backed by some of New Orleans' finest musicians - sax masters Lee Allen, Red Tyler, and Robert Parker, drummer Earl Palmer among them.

He also toured and recorded with numerous stars of the time, "ghosting" on piano for Fats Domino occasionally, and performing with Huey "Piano" Smith (sometimes impersonating Smith on the road), Shirley & Lee, Joe Tex, Larry Davis, Junior Parker, Earl King, Smiley Lewis, Lloyd Price, and many others.  He also played regularly in New Orleans nightclubs.

In the mid 60's, Booker was hit by two tragedies.  His sister died in 1966 and his mother passed away less than a year later in 1967.  Not long after his mother's death, he was arrested outside the Dew Drop Inn for possession of heroin.  He had begun using the drug in the early 60's and this arrest resulted in a conviction and one-year sentence to Angola Prison (often called "the Ponderosa" in some of Booker's later songs and performances).  While in prison, he lost his left eye in an assault (he gave different reasons for this over his lifetime).

James Booker at 1978 Jazz Fest (photo by Michael P. Smith)

He continued to play sessions with Fats Domino upon his release, and also recorded with Freddy King.  He also became friends with New Orleans D.A. Harry Connick, Sr., who served as his legal counselor occasionally.  Booker and Connick had an agreement where a prison sentence for Booker would be nullified in exchange for piano lessons for Connick, Sr.'s son, Harry Jr.  The pair formed a musical and personal friendship.

Booker cut a session in 1973 at Paramount Studios in Hollywood with Dr. John's band, but the master tapes mysteriously disappeared.  Booker also played during this time with Dr. John on tour and performed on albums by Ringo Starr, John Mayall, The Doobie Brothers, LaBelle, and Geoff Muldaur, and his performance at JazzFest in 1975 earned him a recording deal with Island Records, which resulted in one release, Junco Partner.

Booker enjoyed some success in Europe in the late 70's, with several concert performances being professionally recorded and/or filmed for TV.  One of these album releases was New Orleans Piano Wizard:  Live! on Rounder Records.  This time in Germany was essential to Booker's musical and personal life, since there was less racism, and more tolerance toward his drug use and his flamboyant personal life and the European audiences really appreciated his jazz and classical leanings with his piano playing.

Returning to New Orleans in 1978, Booker became the house pianist at the Maple Leaf Bar, but the shift from concert halls to cafes and bars was a bit of a let down to the piano master and he wasn't as widely recognized or appreciated in his home country and even in his hometown.  His mental health suffered as a result and his drug use increased.  

He made his last recording, Classified, in 1982, considered to be the definitive James Booker release.  Producer Scott Billington describes the frustration of working with Booker during this period in his autobiography, Making Tracks:  A Record Producer's Southern Roots Music Journey.  Booker wasted several days noodling around on the piano, starting and stopping songs, or just wandering out of the studio, then came in and recorded the album (plus many alternate tracks that appeared on an extended release a few years later) in four hours on the last day of studio time and disappeared into the street soon after.

Booker died on November 8, 1983 at age 43, sitting in a wheelchair in the E.R. at Charity Hospital in New Orleans.  No one knew how he got there.  The cause of death was renal failure related to chronic heroin and alcohol abuse.  He was mourned by all of the New Orleans music scene, especially the piano players.  Dr. John called him "the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced," but that description, while accurate, really doesn't do him justice.  James Booker was a one-of-a-kind piano prodigy whose performances and recordings regularly blew people's minds.  Listen to this track and understand that this was an ALTERNATE take that wasn't used on the original Classified release (please check out the expanded release, you can thank me later).....just Booker noodling around on the piano on that last day of recording.

Since Booker's death, numerous albums have surfaced that capture him in amazing form.  Those lost Paramount recordings were rediscoverd, or at least a tape of the mixes were found in 1992 and released as The Lost Paramount Tapes by DJM Records in 1993.  These recordings capture Booker in great form backed by a funky New Orleans band (Dr. John's).  

Multiple live recordings have also appeared as well.  The standouts include the twin set from Rounder, the previously mentioned Resurrection of the Bayou Maharajah and it's companion, Spiders on the Keys, a collection of Booker's instrumental tunes.  

JSP Records released a pair of live shows, King Of New Orleans Keyboard Volumes 1 and 2 in the mid 80's, which they have compiled into a single CD.  All of these sets and the others have pretty good sound and each offer some noteworthy performances by Booker as a piano player and a vocalist....Booker's voice was almost as awesome as his fingers.

There is also a compilation of Booker's early recordings on Night Train International Records, More Than All The 45s that was released in the 90's.  Jasmine Records in the UK has recently repackaged some of those songs as The Ivory Emporer:  1954 - 1962 Sides.

About ten years ago, Lily Keber produced and directed a documentary about Booker, Bayou Maharajah:  The Tragic Genius of James Booker that pays tribute to his talents and his background with lots of performance footage and fond remembrances from many of his peers and admirers.  It also shows some of Booker's personality quirks along the way, so it's a pretty even-handed portrait of a troubled musician and soul.

Like many other musicians, particularly blues musicians, James Booker didn't really get recognized for his talents until after he passed away.  The documentary, and these recently discovered live performance, will make you wish that you'd been on board while Booker was still here to appreciate it.