James Carroll Booker III

Our July shoot went fantastic! We had the opportunity to interview 2 bass players and a drummer who played with Booker, plus a piano player who played on Toulouse St right next to the Toulouse Theatre. A schoolmate of Booker’s recounted how, even as a young child, Booker had a bright light in him- not only did he make everyone in class smile, but he could charm the nuns, too. Now that’s a feat!

Harry Connick Sr, the former DA of New Orleans, shared his first memories of Booker- though he’d seen him play around town for years, once Connick was elected DA, Booker came to his office and declared that he wanted to write Connick’s biography. Ha! [note- I've heard various rumors that Booker was writing his auto-biography. If anyone has any leads on that, let me know!]

We also interviewed Vernel Bagneris, the playwright of One Mo’ Time and theatre manager at the time Booker was playing the Toulouse Theatre. In addition to being articulate and witty (he is a playwright, after all. I guess it comes with the territory.), Vernel gave us a wonderful description of what the French Quarter was like in those days, and placed Booker in a chronological continuum of the African-American musical and cultural evolution in the 20th century. I could have listened to him talk forever..

So now I have the long task of sorting through all the interviews and footage we’ve captured in the past couple weeks and making sense of it all. My hope is to cut together some highlights from some of the interviews and put them on this website for yall to see. Guess we all know what I’ll be doing for summer vacation!

Readers of this blog will already know that I’m working on a feature-length video documentary on New Orleans piano player James Booker. So far, I have 40+ people lined up to interview- friends, contemporaries, musicians, schoolmates. I’ve recently launched my first Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to pay for the process of filming these interviews. My plan is to shoot two days a month for 6 months (June-Nov), getting 3-4 interviews per day. At that rate, I’ll be able to stay on my target timeline of finishing production by December 2010.

For those of you unfamiliar with Kickstarter.com, it’s an arts-based fundraising website. The premise is: you set the amount you need to raise and the number of days you need to raise it. If your goal is reached, you receive all the money that has been  pledged to you. If you fall short, you get nothing (and no one’s credit card is charged). It’s a great impetus to make sure you goal is reasonable! (Check the Kickstarter page for what sorts of lagniappe you get at different levels. So far there’s Booker notebooks and post cards available, plus hand silkscreened prints of Bunny Matthew’s original Bayou Maharajah poster. Rumors has it that T shirts are on the way.)

The money I’m raising will go solely towards paying my crew (camera and audio) and covering the additional but necessary costs of production (gas, food, water, batteries). I will not be paying myself out of this money, nor will it go towards buying equipment, taking folks out to fancy dinners, fiscal agents, or other mysterious third parties. Each set of two-day shoots will cost me $1,500 dollars. Rather than raise money for all 6 months of shooting, I’ve decided to  focus on one month at a time.  Please view my budget breakdown on the Kickstarter page. Obviously, I’m pretty excited about this project. If any of yall are able to pledge anything at this time: fantastic! If not, please pass along this email or the project information to friends and music lovers you think might be interested.

The link to the project is: http://kck.st/c0mhkd

And, of course, be sure to check back here for updates..