James Booker performing live with star eye patch
New jazz releases are coming out all the time. So it’s easy sometimes to overlook the great jazz music that’s already out there.
I’m not referring to the obvious stuff, but those little gems that seem to appear out of nowhere. If you follow a few jazz blogs, as I do, amazing music has a way of finding you.
One such little gem found me recently—thanks to Jazz Wax—was a video of New Orleans’ pianist James Booker performing “Malaguena a la Louisiana” at a 1991 concert in Liebzig, Germany. It’s an astounding piece of jazz piano playing, truly indicative of the cultural depths and ranges that are possible in the sounds of New Orleans’ piano styles, especially “in the hands” of James Booker.
Malaguenas are one of the traditional styles of Spanish flamenco guitar music, but Booker manages to translate what the flamenco guitarist does on the strings to what he does with the keys on the piano. “Malaguena a la Louisiana” comes naturally to Booker’s playing because his style is already steeped in generations-old New Orleans-style piano, which includes the blues, tinged with Spanish sounds, boogie woogie, swing, and that relentless jazz parade beat.
Here’s James Booker performing “Malaguena a la Louisiana” live in Liebzig, Germany, 1978, from Let’s Make A Better World Live In Leipzig released in 1991 on Black Sun records.
Booker’s playing is inspired, making it very difficult not to be drawn in by his New Orleans’ brand of flamenco.
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