James Caroll Booker III
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They called him Little Booker, The Bayou Maharajah, The Piano Prince of New Orleans and just simply Booker. He lived from 1939 until 1983 and was the best pianist anyone ever heard. His fingers going across the keys looked like a nest of spiders let loose on the piano. His voice was possessed with the soul of someone trying to make sense of all the turmoil and pain of his life and yours. When he played the piano, any and all songs could come from the notes. Everything from the Godfather theme to the works of
Ernesto Lecuona to Beethoven to the rawest, gutbucket, junker blues of back o' town New Orleans, many times all in the same song.

He was a wild character, often leaving in the middle of a set or haranguing the audience with his theories of philosophy, the legalization of drugs and the CIA. When he got onstage, those lucky witnesses saw the grand questions that writers, musicians, poets and thinkers have been contemplating since the beginning of time: What is the line between genius and madness? Music and beauty and art? What is the nature of tragedy and joy and how do they dance together?

However, the bottom line was the music. It was beautiful and intense, dark and light, focused and crazed, always technically and creatively the work of a genius. James Booker's music is music that changes the lives of everyone who heard and still hears it. There are recordings of him on several labels including
Rounder, DJM and Aves. He can also be heard playing with Aretha Franklin, Fats Domino, Earl King, The Coasters, Ray Charles, Lionel Hampton and Lloyd Price. Pianists influenced by him include Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, Harry Connick, Jr., George Winston, Art Neville, John Lee Sanders, Jon Cleary, Tom McDermott and Joshua Paxton. And now the entire catalog of Booker's music is available from the Don Williams MusicGroup. --David Kunian
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