Track Listing

1. Black Minute Waltz
2. Goodnight Irene
3. Pixie
4. On the Sunny Side of the Street
5. Make a Better World
6. Junco Partner
7. Put Out the Light
8. Medley: Blues Minuet/Until the Real Thing Comes Along/Baby Won't You
9. Pop's Dilemma
10. I'll Be Seeing You

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64555 in Music
• Released on: 1993-02-09
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered

Album Description
K2 digitally remastered Japanese limited edition special issue of the album classic in a deluxe, miniaturized LP sleeve replica of the original vinyl album artwork.

Amazon.com
Like Jelly Roll Morton and Professor Longhair, James Booker belonged to the great tradition of New Orleans piano "professors," players whose flamboyance extended from the keyboard to every aspect of life. On this 1975 solo recording, Booker's music is a gumbo of everything from barrelhouse blues and R&B to memories of childhood classical training as he ranges through material that had its origins with Chopin, Leadbelly, Earl King, and Tin Pan Alley. It's all stirred together in the high-speed blender of Booker's piano technique, driving, rock-solid left-hand rhythms colliding with the percussive runs that explode from the right. Booker is an effective singer, with a casual musicality and a lived-in voice, but the vocal tracks inevitably feel like piano with vocal accompaniment. --Stuart Broomer

Customer Reviews

Spiritual Master of Solo Piano Nawleens Stylee
This album, produced by Joe Boyd(Richard Thompson, et.al), is solo piano, well recorded with a mix of instrumental pieces(Pixie, Black Minute Waltz) and piano/vocals like Sunny Side Of The Street, Good Night Irene and Make A Better World. Black Minute Waltz is Booker's take on Chopin's Minute Waltz and will give you a taste of how far afield piano can get and how deeply affecting James Booker's world can get. Start with the best piano playing, add the crazed, yodeling vocals and mix in profound love for humanity (and various drugs) and you end up in the church of Booker, praising the late master to the skies as he laughs and strides on. The only match for this masterpiece is the live album on Rounder(2027) New Orleans Piano Wizard.

Only two hands?
I defy anyone to listen to "Pixie" and be convinced only one man is playing. Unless that one man is the legendary James Booker. Not unlike Nina Simone in his way of combining classical elements into jazz and R+B, Booker is as good as it gets for New Orleans-style piano. When he sings "Junco Partner", its with a voice that rings all too true. Great stuff.

If music was booze.
It's like Chopin on the rocks, with a twist of New Orleans