James Booker
James Carroll Booker III was an American New Orleans rhythm and blues keyboardist and singer. Flamboyant in personality and style, and a pianist of extraordinary technical skill, he was dubbed "the Black Liberace."
His 1960 recording "Gonzo" reached No. 43 on the Billboard magazine record chart and No. 3 in R&B, and he toured internationally in the 1970s. After being mainly a rhythm and blues artist, Booker later fused this genre with jazz and with popular music such as that of the Beatles, playing these in his signature backbeat. He profoundly influenced the New Orleans music scene, where his renditions and originals have been revived and are performed.
Biography
Early life
Booker's father and paternal grandfather were Baptist ministers. Both were pianists. He was born in New Orleans on December 17, 1939, to Ora, née Cheatham and Rev. James "Jimmie" Harald Booker, a New Orleans Baptist church pastor and World War I army veteran. Nicknamed "J.C.," Booker was a child prodigy, classically trained on piano from the age of six, and played the organ in his father's churches. Due to Rev. Jimmie Booker's health problems, Ora took her daughter Betty Jean and son James to live near Ora's sister, Eva Sylvester, in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, temporarily on several occasions. Those stays amounted to around half of Booker's childhood up to the age of 8. He returned permanently to New Orleans in 1948, and enrolled in the fourth grade at a school where he befriended fellow students Art Neville, Charles Neville, and Allen Toussaint. By 1949, Booker's parents had separated, and Ora remarried to Owen Champagne of New Orleans.In 1949 at age 9, Booker was struck by an ambulance in New Orleans, that he said was traveling about 70 miles an hour. According to him, it dragged him for and broke his leg in eight places, nearly requiring its amputation. He was given morphine, which he later regarded as a cause of his eventual drug addiction. The accident left him with a permanent limp.
Booker received a saxophone for his 10th birthday in December 1949. He had asked for a trumpet, yet mastered the saxophone despite not having chosen it. But he focused on the piano, and by age 11 was performing blues and gospel organ every Sunday on the New Orleans radio station, WMRY. The following year was his last in classical instruction, when Booker learned the entire set of J.S. Bach's Inventions and Sinfonias, performing these at a professional level by age 12.
Rev. Jimmie Booker died in 1953, the year that Booker began high school at Xavier University Preparatory School on Magazine Street. Ellis Marsalis Jr. was band director at the school at the time, and noted the highly advanced quality of Booker's playing of Bach. Even as a working musician by his mid teens, he excelled at Xavier, especially in math, music, and Spanish, and graduated in 1957. He aspired to become a Catholic priest, yet gave up the idea, deciding to express his faith through music.
Booker Groove
As a classical pianist, Booker focused on music of Chopin, Rachmaninoff, and Ernesto Lecuona, and memorized solos by Erroll Garner and Liberace.He learned some elements of his keyboard style from Tuts Washington and Edward Frank, and was influenced by Professor Longhair and Ray Charles.
But another major influence, one who helped inspire Booker's unique style, was Fats Domino. Booker developed a backbeat rhythm that resembles some of Domino's piano playing. Domino and his drummer, Earl Palmer, are considered among the inventors of the early rock and roll backbeat. Booker's version of this rhythm has been called the "Booker groove". Joshua Paxton, however, a New Orleans–based pianist and transcriber of Booker's solos, credits the groove to Booker, not mentioning Domino. Whatever its origin, Booker used this to substitute the original rhythm on a wide variety of popular and folk music. Many examples were New Orleans rhythm and blues, as "Junco Partner", Fats Domino's "All By Myself" and "I'm in Love Again", Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy", Earl King's "Let's Make a Better World," and it is the composed rhythm on some of Booker's own pieces, including "Pop's Dilemma." A few were jazz standards, "Tico-Tico" and "On the Sunny Side of the Street", but also pop rock, as in The Beatles' Eleanor Rigby, and country, Roger Miller's "King of the Road".
1954 to 1976: Recording and touring
Booker made his recording debut in 1954 at the age of 14, on Imperial Records, with "Doin' the Hambone" and "Thinkin' 'Bout My Baby", produced by Dave Bartholomew. While these were unsuccessful commercially, Bartholomew subsequently had Booker ghost on piano for Fats Domino, to combine his virtuosity with Domino's popular singing. This collaboration would be repeated in the late 1960s. During the late 1950s, Booker adopted a flamboyant stage dress. In this way he emulated Little Richard as did Esquerita, both of whom recorded in New Orleans. In 1958, Arthur Rubinstein performed a concert in New Orleans. Afterwards, eighteen-year-old Booker was introduced to the concert pianist and played several pieces for him. Rubinstein was astonished, saying "I could never play that... never at that tempo".From the mid 1950s into the 1960s, Booker played with a series of blues and rhythm and blues bands as partly described in liner notes to the album Classified. In interview, he said he "recorded for Leonard Chess — I did 'A Heavenly Angel' with Arthur Booker . After that, I recorded for Johnny Vincent's Ace Records. I played with Huey Smith and Shirley and Lee. When I graduated high school, I played with Joe Tex. I left Joe Tex to play with Huey Smith." Smith preferred not to be on the road, hence Booker replaced him when touring, and is even said to have impersonated Smith. Booker went on to record on piano with Larry Davis and his blues band in 1958, 1959, and 1960 in Houston, Texas. In January 1960 in Chicago, he recorded on piano with Junior Parker. He recorded on piano with Dave Bartholomew's studio band and Earl King, when King recorded for Imperial records in New Orleans in 1960 and 1961. Booker recorded as pianist with Smiley Lewis in 1960 and 1961, on organ for Lloyd Price in 1963,
and on piano for Shirley & Lee in 1962 and 1963. In March 1962, Booker recorded four titles on the organ with Dave Bartholomew's band in New Orleans, of which two were released.
In the early 1960s, Booker recorded a series of instrumental singles on organ for Peacock Records. These were "Cool Turkey" and "Gonzo" in 1960, "Smacksie" and "Kinda Happy" in 1960 and 1961, and "Tubby," "Cross my Heart" and "Big Nick," dates unknown between 1960 and 62.
In 1960, he enrolled as an undergraduate in Southern University's music department, although he did not remain beyond the fall semester of that year. The professor of music at Southern complained of the pianist's classroom antics. He insisted Booker omit his examination, and that "I'll grade him anyway; he keeps on disrupting my classes with all kinds of craziness and stuff." During the week of December 5, 1960, however, "Gonzo" reached number 43 on the United States record chart of Billboard magazine. It also reached number 3 on the R&B record chart, and was a favorite song of the author Hunter Thompson. None of Booker's other Peacock organ tracks enjoyed such fame.
Booker continued to tour and performed at New Orleans nightclubs from 1960 until 1967. Yet he experienced a series of tragedies in the mid 1960s, all during a period of two years. In September 1966, his sister died, at a time when Booker was compelled to go on touring despite this event, compounding loss with a lack of opportunity to mourn. His mother died the following year, in June 1967. Within weeks of her death, he was arrested outside the Dew Drop Inn hotel and nightclub for possession of heroin, which he had begun using earlier in the sixties. Being convicted, Booker served a one-year sentence in Angola Prison, where he lost his left eye in an assault. After his release in 1968, he resumed session work in New Orleans, including recording with Fats Domino. In July 1968, he recorded with Freddie King in New York City, tracks that were released in 1969 and 1970.
As Booker became more familiar with law enforcement in New Orleans due to his drug use, he formed a relationship with District Attorney Harry Connick Sr., who was occasionally Booker's legal counsel. Connick would discuss law with Booker during his visits to the Connick home and made an arrangement with the musician whereby a prison sentence would be nullified in exchange for piano lessons for Connick Sr.'s son, Harry Connick Jr.
In 1973, Booker recorded The Lost Paramount Tapes at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, California, U.S. with members of the Dr. John band, which included John Boudreaux on drums, Jessie Hill on percussion, Alvin Robinson on guitar and vocals, Richard "Didymus" Washington on percussion, David Lastie on sax, and David L. Johnson on bass guitar. The album was produced by former Dr. John band member David L. Johnson and by singer-songwriter Daniel Moore. The master tapes disappeared from the Paramount Recording Studios library, but a copy of the mixes that were made around the time of the recordings was discovered in 1992, which resulted in a CD release on DJM Records.
Booker then played organ in Dr. John's Bonnaroo Revue touring band in 1974, and also appeared as a sideman on albums by Ringo Starr, John Mayall, The Doobie Brothers, Labelle and Geoff Muldaur throughout this period.
Booker's performance at the 1975 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival earned a recording contract for him with Island Records. His album with Island, Junco Partner, was produced by Joe Boyd, who had previously recorded Booker on sessions for Muldaur's records. In January 1976, Booker briefly joined the Jerry Garcia Band, playing two Palo Alto, California shows where Garcia was "backing up... Booker on most numbers."