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iTunes Review

While Professor Longhair and Dr John may be better known NOLA piano players, neither of those angular individuals were as brilliantly talented nor as personally eccentric as James Carroll Booker III. This 1982 collection, the story of whose recording is almost as good as what's on the record, may well be his masterpiece. After many postponements and two entirely wasted days of a three -ay recording session, Booker showed up early and in roughly four hours, his left hand flying up and down the keys, cut this glorious example of New Orleans piano at it's very weirdest. While a quartet was on hand, including the great New Orleans tenor saxman and Booker intimate, Alvin "Red" Tyler, this is really a solo date. You can practically see the one-eyed pianist smiling during a laid-back rendition of Roger Miller's "King of The Road," that borrows more than a hint of Ray Charles's successful way with country music. Leiber and Stoller's "Hound Dog" is remade as a rolling piano blues, and even the covered-to-death "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" is slowed down and turned inside out. On "Swedish Rhapsody" he pulls out the stops and convincingly struts his florid classical chops. Finally, on the title track, he answers critics while also having a little fun with his autobiography: "Some say I'm crazy/Some say I'm dumb/That doesn't mean they know where I'm coming from."