Booker worked in the library, taught some of the inmates to read, practiced piano and played in the prison band, which included Charles Neville, Chris Kenner and James Black. And for local happening, watch for the James Booker tribute portion of this year’s Piano Night at Tipitina’s. Welcome to the James Booker Project! James Carroll Booker III was born in New Orleans on December 17, 1939, son of a minister, who played piano. However, New Orleans Piano Wizard: Live, recorded in 1977 at the Boogie Woogie and Ragtime Piano Contest in Zurich, Switzerland, is for me the ultimate Booker album. It contains nine Booker selections that he performed at the 1977 Boogie Woogie & Ragtime Piano Contest held in Zurich. It was his sister’s music teacher who taught him piano scales and to read music. He was 43. In New Orleans, and to a great number of musicians, mainly piano players, the name James Booker is holy. Booker's unique style combined rhythm and blues with jazz standards. If these trends continue, maybe one day Booker’s music will be ranked where it deserves to be: among that of Tatum, Monk, Ellington, and all the other great American Pianists. Known variously as the “Piano Prince of New Orleans,” the “Bayou Maharajah,” and the “Black Liberace,” Booker’s style suggests a uniquely Louisiana hybrid of Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Moreau Gottschalk, plus contemporary material from his own lifetime. I don’t claim to play exactly like Booker but I do love listening to the tiny details and working out how he sounded so good. Why so much of what pianist/vocalist James Booker recorded in the 1970s didn't surface until the '90s is a mystery, but that's secondary compared to the greatness routinely presented on this CD. Mr. Booker… James Carroll Booker III, self proclaimed "Bronze Liberace" and the "Black Prince of Europe," was one of the greatest pianists ever to emerge from the New Orleans musical scene. The name James Booker means very little in most parts of the world. Not bad for someone who was once called "the best black, gay, junkie piano player who ever lived." When Booker died in 1983, Harry Connick Jr. was starting his career in New York and Davell Crawford was an 8-year old piano prodigy; his grandfather, James … It’s James, solo, tearing through some old chestnuts, half instrumental, half vocal, in front of a sizable and very appreciate crowd that really gets how great he is. James Carroll Booker III (December 17, 1939 – November 8, 1983) was a New Orleans rhythm and blues pianist, organ player and singer, born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. James Booker, the self-described ''Piano Prince of New Orleans,'' died Tuesday of a heart attack in his New Orleans apartment. This site is made purely from love for my piano hero, James Booker. Certainly one of the most flamboyant New Orleans pianists in recent memory, James Carroll Booker III was a major influence on the local rhythm & blues scene in the '50s and '60s. Booker's training included classical instruction until age 12, by which time he had already begun to gain recognition as a blues and gospel organist on radio station WMRY every Sunday. He managed to get out on parole after six months, but immediately violated the parole by going to Los Angeles. Fellow musician Dr. John described Booker as »the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced.« This is a carefully produced re-issue, re-mastered and pressed in Germany on audiophile vinyl. Booker toured extensively with Grammy winner, Dr. John (Mac Rebennack) during the 70's and early 1980's before succumbing to a drug overdose in 1983. THE classic album by the late, great James Booker.