[Dixielandjazz] James Booker and Professor Longhair

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Booker was extraordinary, a boy wonder who could play Rachmaninov if he wanted, 
and he occasionally did, as a quote in an otherwise blues performance. He played 
for perhaps I think Artur Rubenstein as a boy, and under other circumstances 
could very likely have stayed where he was expected to play Rachmaninov et 
cetera. 


Instead of which he cottoned on -- musically -- to what is presumably the 
earliest sort of  barrelhouse piano, with the left hand variously drumming and 
definitely a long way from boogie woogie. It's the sort of thing you'd hear from 
Cousin Joe or Jack Dupree or even Fats Domino, when he wasn't delivering 
pop-songs, and not least Roy Byrd, who used the nom-de-disque Professor 
Longhair, with the Liszt allusion extended to calling his band on 
record  his Shuffling Hungarians. 

The style lends itself more to rhythmic elaborations than anything else. Booker 
quoted or threw in things only he could play.

Dupree very recognisably (for anybody who knows their obscure recordings) mixed 
in a lot of what he heard such local blues pianists as Honey Hill play when he 
lived in Indianapolis. The rest tended to keep a Latin sort of rhythm, later 
drowned on record with saxophones (including Ed Hall's brother Robert) 

A very few years ago I received a sampler from Bill Bissonette's label, with 
several tracks by current New Orleans ensembles playing what most Americans 
would call dixieland, and several of the pianists were doing that Longhair sort 
of thing. You never heard it from Jelly Roll Morton (and it's not on an 
admirable Jim Robinson recording reissued on Delmark and especially notable for 
Bob Greene's Morton piano) and people who played that way long ago probably 
didn't fit into bands.

During Longhair's 1970s revival he was happily recorded solo in concert in 
London with a good bongo player, and for an encore he delivered "Ice Cream" with 
astonishing animation. Professor Longhair plays George Lewis!? A piano 
transcription of a very Latino Preservation Hall performance. 


Booker's solo concert CD on Document is OK, as are a few others, but when he 
doesn't have strong blues or jazz repertoire the music tends to wind up going 
nowhere all through the LP, shallow excitement, though the Rachmaninov etc. 
quotes can be fun.