My New Orleans friends Adrienne and Bill gave me this album for Christmas but I’ve just had a chance to spend some serious time listening to it.  I knew it would be cool, because Adrienne and Bill know what’s cool when it comes to New Orleans music.

Dr. John called James Booker “the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced.”  He was a virtuoso keyboardist who combined a lot of traditions, stride, Latin, classical, jazz, gospel, blues, into a distinct style that’s still recognizable as a variant of a traditional New Orleans musical gumbo.  He sometimes added plaintive vocals to his recordings.

Booker died at the age of 43 in 1983 — this album contains his last commercial recordings.  They’re strange and spooky and wonderful — something in that gumbo you haven’t tasted before and can’t quite put a name to.

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Few things make me as happy as surf music, the shittier the better.  I once saw Dick Dale play at the beach in Ventura, California and that made me unreasonably happy.  Dick said, “I always use the thickest strings I can find for my guitar to get this sound — I’ve cut my fingers to ribbons for you.”

Thank you, Dick.

This is a very enjoyable album.  You might argue that some of the mixes are a bit too Spector-ized — a bit too mushy — but Lennon’s voice cuts through them like a knife, full of his joy in these basic rock and roll numbers.  I’m especially fond of his version of “Stand By Me” — I remember dancing to it on a juke box at McManus’s Irish pub on 7th Avenue in New York, with my girlfriend of the time, back when I was young, and thinking, “This is our song.”

As far as I’m concerned we’re still dancing to it, and it’s still our song, and John Lennon, long dead, is still singing it just for us.

It’s a modern, changing world, everything is moving fast, but when it comes to love I like what they did in the past . . .

Sublime art.

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More Record Store Day booty — a repressing of Dream With Dean, and it’s pretty dreamy, with Dino singing in such a laid-back style that you think he might drift off to sleep at any moment, though that would not be cool, and Dino is impeccably cool here.

Backed up by a jazzy quartet featuring the impeccable Barney Kessel on electric guitar, the song selection is excellent, the interpretations quiet but emotionally convincing.  It’s hard to think of any singer today who could pull off an album like this — getting the job done in spades without seeming to work at it at all.

We’ve all heard “Blue Moon” a million times, but when Martin just lets it roll off his tongue here, it sounds brand new, matter-of-factly perfect.

Record Store Day booty — a new pressing of the Everly Brothers 1968 album Roots.  This is a pretty good record, though many tracks are spoiled by too much reverb on the brothers’ vocals, which makes it hard to appreciate the exquisitely precise blend of their voices singing in harmony.  The standout track is “Sing Me Back Home”, where the harmony parts are clearer in the mix.

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