James Booker Open Thread

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by hilzoy

One of the things I did while I was feeling flattened was to listen to some of the music on Jeanne d’Arc’s New Orleans music list. Some I knew, but I hadn’t heard of James Booker before. (No doubt the rest of you have, being cool and hip and all.) He had what sounds like a horrible life — piano prodigy, heroin, prison, mental institution, paranoia, early death — in the course of which he made some really, really wonderful music. I put some up here; I’ll take it off in a few days, as usual. But you should really listen to it. What’s up there is really good, if you like blues/ragtime-y music, but it’s not his best, just some songs from the one album I did not buy from the iTunes Music Store, and thus the one I don’t have to tell you my password to let you listen to. This album is made from tapes of him playing a piano bar in New Orleans, near the end of his life, when (I gather) he was as likely to pass out at the piano as to play.

I also put up two songs by one of my relatives, who’s a folksinger. In my dreams I play guitar like he does.

14 thoughts on “James Booker Open Thread”

  4. Nobody sings Junco Partner like Booker…when he sings “gimme her-on, her-on, just before I die,” it’s so joyful, and so disturbing, ’cause he means it.
    And if by “not his best” record, recorded in “a piano bar in New Orleans,” you re referring to this record, recorded at the mighty Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street uptown, I’ll just say that you and I must politely differ about what is and isn’t James Booker’s best record.

  5. st, that’s so true. “and a little cocaine, li’l cocaine, on the side.”
    Hilzoy, thanks a million for bringing James Booker to people’s attention. My personal favorite of his is the “Junco Partner” album, since it contains his roadhouse versions of Chopin in addition to “Junco Partner” and “Tipitina.” What a sad life.
    I used to know the head of Hannibal records, who put out “Junco Partner,” and he always said that that album was one of the ones he was the proudest of. And this coming from the guy who discovered Nick Drake and Richard Thompson and gave Ali Farka Toure an American career.

  7. st: to be clear: I don’t think it’s his best, actually. At the moment, I’m particularly partial to Junco Partner, but I can see how that might change at a moment’s notice. However: the main point of my saying that was not to cast aspersions on this record, but to say: this ought to be the absolute highlight of anyone’s career. It isn’t. There are, amazingly enough, better ones. Consider the implications. They are cosmic.
    Or something like that.

  8. Since this is an open thread, I’d like to ask if anyone besides me has noticed that reading the full “Times Select” articles for free could not be more obvious and trivial without a button that says “click for free access”?
    On pirate dialect, everyone keeps getting it childishly wrong; true pirates talk like this.

  13. James Carroll Booker, III (1939-1983), was truly one of the greatest pianists in American music history. He played stride piano like a madman, and had a massive handspan, making the impossible, possible. I’m glad to know that there are people out there who appreiciate this mad genius music. Booker lived a rough, very sad life, but thank God that he was here for a while to share his amazing talents with us all.

  14. to even attempt to describe this man is a mistake,its akin to asking a colorado beetle
    what its like in venezuela.there are many factors that prevent us from seeing such a blindingly bright entity.in the same way that we don’t see the sun much,only its glare.dawn and dusk are not the sun in its full brilliance.if genius was a piano,then it will have listened to Booker,and flipped its lid,got a heroin habit,gone to prison,seen the down side,had lots of hope broken.whilst being torn apart,himself by circumstances,each demanding a piece of him.
    that does’nt even begin to explain why or

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