James Booker: The Greatest Piano Player Nobody Knew

The Greatest Piano Player Nobody Knew

If you asked Dr. John who the best pianist in New Orleans was, he wouldn't hesitate. Harry Connick Jr. would tell you the same thing. So would Allen Toussaint. The answer was always James Booker — and it wasn't even close.

Born in New Orleans in 1939, Booker was a child prodigy who had mastered Bach's complete Inventions and Sinfonias by the age of twelve. When the legendary concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein heard the teenager play in 1958, he was reportedly stunned. Here was a kid from New Orleans who could play classical piano at a concert level, then pivot to the filthiest rhythm and blues you ever heard, all in the same set.

They called him the Black Liberace, though that barely captures it. Booker played with an eye patch — he'd lost his left eye in a prison assault in 1967 — and a flamboyance that made even the showiest performers look understated. He'd play Bach preludes that morphed into Professor Longhair shuffles, Beatles covers reimagined as New Orleans funk, Chopin études with a backbeat. Someone once described his playing as Ray Charles on the level of Chopin, and that's probably the closest anyone has come to nailing it.

His 1960 instrumental "Gonzo" was a hit, reaching number three on the R&B charts. He toured Europe in the late seventies, killing audiences at the Nice and Montreux jazz festivals. Back home, he held court as the house pianist at the Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street from 1978 to 1982, where any given Tuesday night might produce the greatest piano performance you'd ever witness.

But Booker's demons were as outsized as his talent. A childhood ambulance accident led to morphine treatments that began a lifelong battle with heroin. The addiction cost him gigs, relationships, and eventually his life. He died in 1983 at the age of forty-three, slumped in a wheelchair in the waiting room of Charity Hospital.

New Orleans has produced more musical genius per square mile than anywhere on Earth. And the musicians who lived here — the ones who heard everybody — they'll tell you James Booker was the best of all of them. That's not hyperbole. That's just what happens when God gives one person too much talent and not enough time.