If Mojo don’t love you baby, then grits ain’t groceries, eggs ain’t poultries, an Mona Lisa was a man. Yeah, that’s right, that’s what my man the late James Booker used to sing in “All Around The World” while wearing that sexy eye patch with the star on it.
It just stuns me that more people don’t appreciate this New Orleans great, he’s a footnote, an afterthought in the hall of fame of American pianists (not just blues or jazz players, I mean all-time greats). Heck, he’d weave classical motifs into his blues, like in “Gitanarias” and the “Black Minute Waltz.” From the sounds of things, he took these musical side streets just for the sport of it.
And of course early in his career he played a little B-3 and did the James Brown thang on cuts like “Beale Street Popeye.”
But he was at his best playing cuts like “Something You Got” and “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” in the classic New Orleans doctor-professor impresario style. His complex left hand rhythms complemented the furious, ornate melodies coming out of the right, making most other blues cats look like ham-fisted piano-beaters. Dig yourself some live “Tico Tico/Papa Was a Rascal” and listen to the interplay between his steady left and deadly right. (more…)
If I were Allen Toussaint, I’d have taken a decade’s hiatus from making solo records, too. While the great New Orleans pianist—right up there on the city’s piano Mount Rushmore with Professor Longhair, James Booker, and Dr. John—got his 