Cocaine boogie: James Booker
It was the legendary Louisiana musician Dr John who memorably described James Booker as “the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced”. Though Booker – who died from hard living in 1983 at the age of 43 – would have undoubtedly approved of the description, it does diminish his musical stature somewhat, while only hinting at his flamboyance and talent for self-destruction.
In a new documentary, Bayou Maharajah, which screens at the Barbican this week as part of the London jazz festival, Booker emerges as a complex figure, dogged by demons and an on-off addiction to heroin. “When I moved to New Orleans in 2006, I heard his name a lot,” says its director, Lily Keber, who hails from Georgia. “Local musicians would tell these mad stories about Booker throwing up on his piano, or playing with syringes stuck between the keys. He was a mythical figure by then, not least because his records were so hard to find. Then I finally heard his songs playing on the jukebox in a local dive and that was that. I was hooked.”
For those who only know of the New Orleans rhythm and blues piano tradition through the likes of Fats Domino and Professor Longhair, Booker’s playing may come as a revelation. Melding blues, jazz and classical, it pays scant regard to the traditional rules of song or composition. Live, Booker often talked through the intro of a song and extended the ending for ages, adding one musical flourish after another.
Though he backed a vast array of musicians – from Little Richard to Aretha Franklin, from Ringo Starr to the Doobie Brothers – Booker found free rein for his musical genius as a solo pianist. “There’s nobody that could even remotely come close to his playing ability,” his close friend, the pianist Harry Connick Jr, tells Keber in Bayou Maharaja. “I’ve played Chopin Etudes, I’ve done the whole thing, but there is nothing harder than James.”
His genius, though, often took second place to his waywardness. Various musicians attest to Booker’s madness and self-sabotage, as well as the drug busts and no-shows that harmed his career. He toured East Germany wearing an afro wig stuffed full of marijuana and once appeared on stage at Tipitina’s in New Orleans wearing a nappy fastened by a huge gold pin. Musician David Torkanowsky recalls the moment: “From behind the nappy, he pulls out a .357 Magnum, puts it to his own head and announces to the audience, ‘If somebody doesn’t give me some cocaine right now, I’m going to fucking pull the trigger.'”
Read the full article at The Guardian.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa67ZUQGRKQ