An aged poster located on the wall next to the piano proclaims, “BOOKER’S BACK BAR Piano Sessions.” Next to those words is a drawing of a frail Black man wearing a band musician’s cap plus glasses and a t-shirt that says “Maple Street Bar.”
There was a day when this simple room, located beyond the Maple Street’s main stage, echoed with some of the finest piano music in a city already known for its key board greatness. On many Tuesday nights, fans would fill the room to hear James Booker who, some would say, was the city’s best piano player ever.
Dr. John, the gravel-voiced Voodoo piano wizard who took organ lessons from the versatile key-border, thought as much. In his gruff style, the Dr. affectionally called Booker “the best Black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced.”
Harry Connick Jr. worshipped Booker from childhood through stardom. Connick would narrate a documentary about Booker called “Bayou Maharajah.” An article about the production quoted Connick breaking down Booker’s style. “He shows the left hand doing one thing, the right hand doing another thing, and also finger by finger,” said Connick. “With Booker, every finger was doing a different thing, referencing a different part of the song. It’s incredible. It’s unlike anything else before or since.”
Booker’s life was brilliant but tormented. His lost eye came from being hit by a speeding ambulance when he was 10 years old. That, however, would contribute to his flamboyance. Many times he wore a black eye patch with a bright star in the center. He would blame the trauma from the eye injury for his drifting into drugs. Heroin and alcohol were his devils leading to his eventually serving a year at Angola penitentiary and a month in parish prison.
Somehow, through it all, he mastered the keyboard. Those who knew music knew that Booker’s talent was extra special, from a special city.
Last Thursday night, Bill Malchow, a piano player from Connecticut who had lived in New Orleans before he and his wife moved to New York, re-visited the Maple Leaf. In the Big Apple he has gathered many gigs, though no one else includes so many elements of New Orleans in their repertoire. Malchow’s website quotes a music writer saying of him that “he divides his time between the Big Apple and the Big Easy – which sounds about right since his percolating, second line style bubbles and boils with Fats Waller-style Harlem stride and the steaming New Orleans sounds of Dr. John, James Booker, Allen Toussaint and Professor Longhair.”
Because of the French Quarter Festival and the Jazz Fest, many expatriate musicians re-visit home as though being lured back to Eden. During his visits, Malchow usually manages to have a night at the piano in Booker’s Back Bar. For an hour and a half, his hands, like Booker’s, glide the keyboard in full glory mixing in blues, rock, funky stuff and the classics.
James Booker was born in New Orleans on Dec. 13, 1939 and spent some of his growing up years in Bay St. Louis. He died Nov. 8, 1983 from, as one reviewer said, “hard living,” related to heroin and alcohol.
His time sitting at a keyboard was his salvation and his gift to mortals. For a man who lived such a tormented life one of Booker’s greatest, and my favorite, performance pieces was “Sunny Side of the Street.” Somewhere among the demons in his soul a chorus of angels sang too, especially as the performed the 1930’s post-depression classic that defied listeners to keep still or to not smile. A YouTube recorded version ends with a riff from Booker’s other instrument, his voice, as he sings the audience into delirium.
Perhaps in deference to Booker, Malchow ended his set last Thursday with another song about happiness, “When You’re Smiling,” a 1928 classic recorded by many including, like Booker, another New Orleanian, Louis Armstrong:
When you’re smilin’, when you’re smilin’
The whole world smiles with you
When you’re laughin’, when you’re laughin’
The sun comes shinin’ through…
But when you’re cryin’, you bring on the rain
So stop that cryin’, be happy again
Keep on smilin’, ’cause when you’re smilin’
The whole world smiles with you
Being in the presence of those who can make a piano sound like a smile brings sunshine too, even on dark days.
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