NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) - James Carroll Booker III was a force. By all accounts he ranks on everyone's lists as one of the top and most ingenious piano players our city ever produced. Though he was a classically trained artist, he made a big splash in the R&B world.
No one played like Booker, and no personality was bigger. With his trademark eye patch, he fit New Orleans like a glove.
As James Booker once said, "I think I better reintroduce myself because the governor of Louisiana said that I am not the Piano Prince, but the Ivory Emperor. Yeaow!"
In his early days, he recorded music with the likes of Fats Domino and Lloyd Price, but his biggest solo recording was the song Gonzo in 1960.
An often troubled soul, Booker served time at Angola for drug possession. In exchange for some of the trouble he got into, Harry Connick Sr. provided legal help in exchange for lessons for his son.
Harry Connick Jr. counts the time with Booker as some of his most important lessons, "I wanted to know how to play like that so badly that it was constantly a barrage of questions, and the older I got the more specific the questions would be."
Years of drug abuse eventually took a toll on James Booker's life and we lost him at the age of 44, but his legend lives on in film maker Lily Keber's award winning documentary Bayou Maharajah.
Jazz Fest founder Quint Davis says, "James Carroll Booker III was in that line of piano professors coming down really from Jelly Roll Morton heading towards Allen Toussaint, and he was a genius, just like we have these other geniuses like Allen Toussaint and now Davell Crawford."
His Jazz Fest performances were also legendary, as any person that heard Booker play walked away differently than they came. For his innovation on the piaon and the independent spirit he possessed, James Booker is a Giant of the Fest.
Bayou Maharajah screens Monday at 8 p.m. at One Eyed Jacks.