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Exploring Left Hand Styles of James Booker

In this clip, I'm going to give you a little taste of some of the amazing left hand styles played by the New Orleans pianist James Booker. James Booker is universally worshipped by all blues pianists for the amazing variety and complexity of his left hand patterns, some of which make it sound like he's got three hands.

Left Hand Patterns

We're not going to explore this in any great depth, but I could mention that a lot of these patterns have in common is:

• The movement from the 9th up to the 3rd.

For example:

• In C, the 9th is D, and then it rises chromatically and becomes a third.

Opposite Movement

Sometimes it goes the opposite way, like in Pixie.

• We have it on the bottom.
• That's in E flat.

May I remind you that we did a piece called Sad Blues in lesson seven? We had that same movement at the bottom:

• Root
• 9
• Flat 3
• 3

This will happen in the left hand of this piece all the way through. The fifth is in the middle, acting as a pivot throughout.

Learning Process

However, I suggest that you start by learning this piece without that left hand, using our old friend the Barrel House and focusing on the right hand.

Blue Third and Fifth

Now, we're also going to revisit the idea of playing the blue third and the blue fifth, like we did in Sad Blues.

• If we change that to C, any thirds' idea can be turned into a sixth idea by playing the bottom note on top.
• Instead of starting on C and E, start on E and C. This is the equivalent of the thirds version we did in Sad Blues.

Introducing Barrel House Left Hand

With Barrel House Left Hand, here's Blues for Book. That's basically the melody, but it's going to sound much more New Orleans-y when we incorporate the Booker left hand.

The Turnaround

Before we do that, let's look at the turnaround.

C Left Hand

Here's the C left hand. Notice that kick on the fourth on the four. This is a really common aspect of all these New Orleans patterns, especially Booker's.

• The one is on the bottom
• We put a kick on the octave above.

Distinctive Turnaround

The distinctive thing about this turnaround is that it sounds like the beats have swapped over. I'll play the last two bars for you.

• You'll see those octaves coming up from G, with the accent on top, but then we flip it back onto the accent on the bottom.

I would loop those two bars until you've really got the hang of them.