Category Archives: New Orleans

“Tuts” was another New Orleans Piano legend. Born January 24, 1907 in New Orleans he started to teach himself how to play piano at age 10 and then studied with New Orleans jazz pianist Joseph Louis “Red” Cayou. He played with many jazz and Dixieland groups through the 20s and 30s. Hos keyboard style blended elements of ragtime, jazz, blues and boogie-woogie.
After living and playing in Saint Louis for many years he returned to New Orleans and in his later years he became a staple at the lounge of the Pontchartrain Hotel on the corner of St. Charles and Jackson Avenues on the edge of the Garden District.

Although he avoided recording for most of his career, he released the solo piano album New Orleans Piano Professor on Rounder Records in 1983.

On August 5, 1984, Tuts was playing at the New Orleans World’s Fair. After his first number and his usual response to the applause, (“Thank you, music lovers.”) He said, “I’m really happy to be with you here today. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do this. I’m getting pretty old, you know…” He then played a little riff and stopped for a moment. He started playing another bit of a song and paused again before playing a couple of bars of a different song and then he died. Right there at the piano! No collapse and rushed off to a hospital somewhere. Isidore “Tuts” Washington died doing what he spent his life doing…making a joyful noise unto the Lord. We should all be so lucky to end our days the same way.

(P.S. I know this to be true because I actually happened to be there when it happened. The show was being broadcast live on WWOZ radio and somewhere in a HUGE box of cassette tapes I have is a rebroadcast of the event.)

Continuing on with my theme of great New Orleans piano players I was fortunate enough to see while living there, I present you with James Booker, also known as the “Piano Wizard of New Orleans.

Booker was an all-round player. Jazz, classical and New Orleans funk were all in his repetoir. He was the house pianist at the famed Maple Leaf bar in the Carrolton section of the city… a place where you could drink an ice cold Dixie beer, do your laundry and listen to great music all at the same time back in the early ’80s.

A little-known fact about Booker is that not only was he a wizard on the 88s, he was also a world champion typist. Booker, while little known to the American pulbic outside of New Orleans was extremely popular in Europe.

Sal Nunziato writing in an article said,

“It’s hard to describe Booker’s playing. Of course, as a New Orleans native, Booker will get the obvious comparisons to Professor Longhair and “Tuts” Washington, but it’s not that simple. James Booker also studied the solos of Chopin and Liberace, while continuing to play jazz standards and rock and roll. “He sounds like he has more than two hands.” That quote is attributed to…well…everyone who has heard Booker play.

“Booker played with people as diverse as Lloyd Price, Aretha Franklin, The Doobie Brothers, Rickie Lee Jones, and Ringo Starr. He even toured with Jerry Garcia. New Orleans piano player Joshua Paxton said this about James Booker’s playing in an article from Offbeat magazine: “It was the kind of piano playing that I had always wanted to hear, but never had. It was Ray Charles on the level of Chopin. It was all the soul, all the groove, and all the technique in the universe packed into one unbelievable player. That Booker’s music hasn’t become part of the standard piano repertoire is, in my opinion, a crime.”

Booker died in a wheelchair November 8th, 1983 waiting to be seen in the emergency room at Charity Hospital.

This is Booker’s last recorded song…Classified

Okay, children, sit up and pay attention. It’s music history time.

There are many who claim the title of the “King of Rock & Roll.” Carl Perkins, Elvis, Little Richard, but for those who really know the score, the “Real King of Rock & Roll” was Henry Roeland Byrd, more universally known as “Professor Longhair.”

Born December 19, 1918 in Bogalusa, Louisiana. You can hear the Fess’s piano influence in such piano players as Fats Domino, Little Richard, Doctor John, James Booker, Ann Rabson (Saffire, the Uppity Blues Women) and, of course, Marcia Ball who you’ve seen here previously. When Paul McCartney had his 40th birthday party aboard the Queen Mary his musical entertainment for the evening was provided by Professor Longhair. When asked to do a documentary about the Fess and play with him Allen Toussaint, noted songwriter (Java, Southern Nights among many) and no mean ivory tickler in his own right said, “Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that…when the Fess plays the only thing I can do is listen.”

Albert Goldman, Elvis’s biographer, said that “Professor Longhair gave Elvis Presley his blue suede shoes voice and the arrangements gave producer Sam Phillips the sound.”

It was one of Fess’s songs that gave the world-famous music club located on the corner of Napoleon and Tchoupitoulas Streets its name…Tipitina’s.

I spent many nights there completely entranced by his music and always tried to stand as close to the stage as possible to watch his hands in action. A good friend of mine, Curtis Arsenault, aka Coco Robicheaux, who lived upstairs from me, was one of the doormen at Tip’s and would often let me slip in for free. On the night of January 29th, 1980, my girlfriend at the time and I were driving past the club. I said that Curtis was on the door and asked if she’d like to stop in and catch a set. “No,” she said, “I’m exhausted. Let’s just go home and go to bed.” That night after his gig Henry Roeland Byrd went home and on the morning of January 30th died in his sleep. He was given a New Orleans Jazz Funeral in February on what turned out to be the coldest day of 1980.

My friend Curtis told me he was going to do a bronze bust of the Fess in his honor. Curtis was a good artist and cartoonist, but I had no idea that he was capable of doing a bronze sculpture. He did as you can see below.

There is a small park kitty-corner to Tip’s and the original plan was to rename the park after the Fess and mount the bust there, but doo-doo transpires, as they say, and it never happened, so for the next two years the Fess served as the door stop of Curtis’s apartment. Happily it now sits just inside the entrance of Tipitina’s.

Here, then, is the Fess, himself, playing his song, Tipitina…..