Like Jelly Roll Morton and Professor Longhair, James Booker belonged to the great tradition of New Orleans piano "professors," players whose flamboyance extended from the keyboard to every aspect of life. On this 1975 solo recording, Booker's music is a gumbo of everything from barrelhouse blues and R&B to memories of childhood classical training as he ranges through material that had its origins with Chopin, Leadbelly, Earl King, and Tin Pan Alley. It's all stirred together in the high-speed blender of Booker's piano technique, driving, rock-solid left-hand rhythms colliding with the percussive runs that explode from the right. Booker is an effective singer, with a casual musicality and a lived-in voice, but the vocal tracks inevitably feel like piano with vocal accompaniment. --Stuart Broomer