Jerry Garcia - Studio '76
The essay/notes below are
courtesy of Tim.
He is quite familiar with James Booker who had some studio session
sessions with Jerry Garcia in January 1976. Perhaps you have some of those
sessions and performances on tape, they do circulate.
I am a great James Booker
Fan. I saw him several times in England playing
solo piano at the 100 club in Oxford St London, during the late 70s
(and
possibly 80s) . Booker became very popular over in Europe at that
time,
along with other New Orleans / Cajun Artists (e.g. Professor
Longhair,
Rockin Dopsie, Clifton Chenier, Neville Brothers, etc.) and had
several solo albums released. He also appeared
on various other albums including Geoff
Mulduar ' s wonderful - 'Having a Wonderful Time' on which he played
Piano
and Hammond. I guess you would say he was of the same generation as
Dr John, Allen Toussaint, and Art Neville.
I also saw him play in the
foyer of a New Orleans Theatre in 1982 -- he was
drunk as a skunk and miserable when he started playing at 8:00PM and
over the course of 3 or 4 1/2 - 3/4 hr sets played himself sober and
happy
again -- leaving us all with a barnstorming after midnight set. On
the same
visit I also saw Tuts Washington (who was about 80 something at the
time) -- who was the guy who taught Longhair. He was playing in the
lounge bar of the Ponchetrain (check the spelling!) hotel, and
complained miserably about the loud-mouth punters who knew nothing
about music.
Booker was apparently a
fairly unhappy person - in jail at least once on
a heroin possession charge and also appeared to have a
manic-depressive personality. This effectively meant his career
never ran smoothly and he was never as successful as his playing
deserved.
In terms of Piano Style, he
was classically trained and had an incredible
technique, using a lot of filigree decoration in the right hand --
not in
quite the same ' lazy rolling baroque' N.O. style as Dr John.
However it was his left hand style that sort of set him apart. He
used a sort of syncopated stride style a lot - but instead of doing
a root note jump to chord, fifth jump, root jump, fifth jump style ,
he would either:
1) Break the root note octave quite heavily into 2 notes (from the
thumb down to the little finger) i.e. ba-doom jump chord ba-doom jump chord
--- best exemplified on say his version of On the Sunny
Side of the Street. A lot of piano players will break the root
octaves a bit when doing a stride piano style, mainly out of laziness
etc (it seems to make accuracy a bit easier) - but Booker's break
was really pronounced and heavy.
OR
2) Uses a double bounce on the root and jump chord like so dum-dum
(root or fifth) da-da (top chord) dum-dum (root) da-da. (top-chord)
(Like
doing a stride piano -- in a 16ths shuffle rhythm ). This style was
his real trademark and he used it on his versions of Junco Partner
and Goodnight Irene. Of course this style would possibly not
transfer very well to a band situation !!
He had one minor
instrumental hit in the late 50s called GONZO. He was also renowned
for playing bluesed up versions of chopin waltzes etc. (The Black
Minute Waltz) ......
I guess Jerry may have got to hear of Booker through the Dead
working with the Neville Brothers (and Jerry playing on one of their
albums -- apparently not one of their best!!!) -- or possibly via
John Kahn (who was / is ? married to Maria Muldaur -- and would
therefore probably known Geoff Muldaur - who had used Booker as a
session man).
Written by Tim Penn
