James Carroll Booker III is the perfect New Orleans icon.

In a town where both death and the past are less final than most anywhere else in the U.S., Booker’s genius at the piano and his flamboyant eccentricity fueled the legend that keeps him alive in people’s minds 30 years after his death.

Lily Keber’s film Bayou Maharajah: The Tragic Genius of James Booker successfully fires on two cylinders at once, varnishing Booker’s legend while fleshing o...