March 31, 2012

Every day in New Orleans, Lily Keber rolls out of bed and walks to a flat, minor office building to meet her muse. Keber makes a cup of coffee with chicory, hooks up her computer and waits for what sounds like a dozen spiders to crawl across a piano.Keber is making Bayou Maharajah, a documentary about the black, gay, one-eyed junkie, James Booker, the “Piano Prince of New Orleans.” Booker, who tutored Dr. John and Harry Connick Jr., was the first to call his fingers “spiders on the keys.””James Booker was one of our country’s greatest piano players,” Keber says. “You can find musicians who are good at classical, and you can find musicians who are good at street music. But it’s a special breed who can master both.”

via Reviving James Booker, The ‘Piano Prince Of New Orleans’ : NPR.