Bayou Maharajah

The fact that this has still not found a distributor makes me worry about the future of the medium. I can honestly say that this is among the greatest documentary films I have ever seen (and I've seen A LOT). James Booker was such an extraordinary character that even a so-so filmmaker would be make something able to hold your interest. Fortunately for us, it comes from a director, Lily Keber, has the potential to rank alongside the undisputed greats such as Errol Morris and Werner Herzog. The only thing that seems to be standing in the way is the fact that there is (as of yet) no distributor. The recent wave of music documentaries spotlighting lesser known bands and musicians ('Searching For Sugarman, A Band Called Death, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, etc.) makes this one a surefire hit. GET ON IT!

There is no place like New Orleans to give birth to someone like James Booker and even simply to understand a little bit about this city, it is worthy to watch this documentary.

I don't know what touched me the most, the man, his story or the undeniable genius of his piano playing. I left my first viewing of this movie filled with love, music, laughter and sadness. Filled with a renewed love for New Orleans, its music and its people. Filled with a immense love for James Booker's limitless talent and personality. (and yeah, I saw it again a couple times after that, still the same result)

I often feel musician documentaries don't do justice to their subject, often too dramatized or limited. But here, you can feel the care Lily Keber put into this documentary. The amazing people she gathered to talk about this intricate man, the consequent amount and quality of footage she assembled to carry it. Probably due to the complexity of James Booker's life which called for such a film to exist and forced the out most regard and sharpness for its narration. Also, may be because New Orleans' giant and loud musician community would have whooped her ass if she didn't do it right.

James Booker is a legendary piano master and a person everybody should discover and won't help but fall in love with. Thank you for making this happen Ms. Keber.

This film sheds some much-needed light on one of the most flamboyant and talented musicians that New Orleans has ever produced. In this nuanced portrayal, documentarian Lily Keber brings to life the little-known (outside of the New Orleans music scene and jazz/blues aficionado circles) legend of James Carroll Booker III. Tragically, Booker was among the best piano players of all time, but was also prone to mental instability and severe substance abuse issues that limited his career trajectory. In addition to paying fitting tribute to Booker's music, what really shines here is Keber's portrayal of his tortured and complicated personality. This is no small feat. Highly recommended.

If you weren't looking for it, it was easy to miss the L.A. premiere of Bayou Maharajah, Lily Keber's magnificent new documentary about the New Orleans singer-pianist James Booker. It appeared at Outfest, the local LGBT film festival. At this point, it may be the only screening the picture will receive locally for some time: It still has not secured theatrical distribution. But it may show up at a film festival in your neck of the woods.

Even the most radically sensational aspects of Booker's life – his alcoholism, his addiction to heroin and cocaine – get measured treatment. One violent piece of Booker's legend – the loss of his left eye – receives widely divergent retelling from a host of witnesses, none of whom appears to have the real story. Every element of what could have been a luridly told tale is recounted even-handedly, with the heat turned down low.

The focus of Bayou Maharajah, as it should be, is on Booker's extraordinary music. He was a pure product of New Orleans, where he was born in 1939 and died, at the age of 43, in 1983. He stands in a line of Crescent City piano wizards that includes Edward Frank, Tuts Washington, Archibald, Professor Longhair, and Fats Domino, to name just a few. Jelly Roll Morton was clearly a model of sorts. But Booker's style, though rooted in New Orleans jazz and R&B, was sui generis. Perhaps that is why he still remains one of the city's least-known giants. The fact that he cut just two studio albums in his own right during his lifetime – Junco Partner (1976) and Classified (1982) – may have something more to do with his comparative obscurity.

It's a pity, for Booker is beyond compare. Reared in a family of Baptist ministers, he learned piano and organ (and saxophone as well) as a child, and showed prodigious skill on the keyboards. He was as at home with the classics as he was with the funk. He was just 14 when he recorded his first hit, "Doin' the Hambone," for Imperial Records. A No. 3 R&B hit, "Gonzo," followed in 1960. But his own preferences turned to hard drugs, and he wound up, in his words, "partying on the Ponderosa" – doing a stint at Louisiana's notorious Angola prison farm.

Booker had opportunities to record – the master tapes of a 1973 album cut with Dr. John's band disappeared after he absconded with them for "safe keeping" – but he found his greatest success as a performer on the European festival circuit.

After his Montreux moment, it was almost all downhill for Booker. He returned to New Orleans from Europe and found that he couldn't get a gig. Maple Leaf Bar owner John Parsons provided him with about the only steady work he would get for the remainder of his life. For a time, he took a job for the city of New Orleans, sitting at a desk behind a computer in a municipal finance department. A year after his last 1982 recording session (with producer Scott Billington, for Classified), he died, unattended, sitting in a wheelchair in a hallway of Charity Hospital. Though his death was reputedly the result of cocaine abuse, the truth is likely that his body just gave out after years of hard living.

Bayou Maharajah could easily have focused on the most sordid aspects of Booker's life. While there is no shortage of mind-boggling detail, first-time filmmaker Keber never leans on it for effect. The movie is emphatically about Booker's music, and you get to hear plenty of it.

Most of the interview subjects in the film – most notably Harry Connick, Jr., whose father, for a time New Orleans' district attorney, was exceptionally tight with the musician – are plainly in awe of his work. At one juncture, Connick sits at a piano and picks apart Booker's style, a flexible, wholly original amalgam of classical, R&B, and jazz. But the music resists analysis in the end, and you sit almost stupefied by its brilliance.

In all, it's a beautiful picture, and you should – must, actually – keep your eyes open for it. Bayou Maharajah is subtitled The Tragic Genius of James Booker, but the film never wallows in its hero's dark fate. It's a very poised piece of movie-making.

I knew of James Booker having lived above him in a French Quarter apartment in New Orleans before he passed in 1983. When I saw him he was quiet with a kind demeanor. I only really learned about him and his legacy after the fact and was glad to discover his music at the radio station of WWOZ 90.7 FM between 1988-93 (when it was still located in Louis Armstrong Park) where I was a jazz host and had the privilege of auditioning my playlist before each show. I discovered he had many personas behind a troubled life and yet his music was the expression of a gifted artist who sang and played piano that felt joyful, heart wrenching, divine.. He will always be one of my favorite piano players. I am sad that he lived such a short life but through this film you too will discover music that will grab hold of you and never let go.