reviewed together with James Booker’s Blues & Ragtime from New Orleans.

There are around 15 James Booker albums on the market, but in fact the Piano Prince released only five LPs of music during his lifetime. Four of these five should be considered the very best of his work. The easy-to-find ones are New Orleans Piano Wizard: Live! (issued first on Gold, then Rounder), and his debut (on Island, reissued on Hannibal), Junco Partner. For years, the other LPs, recorded on consecutive nights in Hamburg in 1976 and released on Aves, a German label, were very hard to find. Now they have finally been released in a digital format (MP3 downloads for now) on the German Black Sun label.

These tracks are as good as Booker gets. They sport a good, well-recorded piano, a simpatico audience and material he never recorded elsewhere: Dr John’s “Desitively Bonnaroo/Right Place, Right Time” for instance, and quirky originals like “Ora”, “Slowly but Surely” and “Love Monkey.” His take on “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home” may be the luscious apex of his “butterfly stride” style, and his version of Allen Toussaint’s “Life,” the pinnacle of his virtuosity on record. All the emotions you want out of Booker, along with the crazed commentary, manic jollity and heartbreaking pathos come out in some of the best singing of his career.

I can say without question that I’ve listened to these two discs (in the form of an old cassette in the mid-‘80s) more than any two albums I’ve ever owned. If you’re a Booker lover and don’t have these discs, your train has just come in.

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