At Onkel Po’s Carnegie Hall Hamburg 1976

James C. Booker’s performance was exceptionally marvellous and just what blues should be all about. All the talk about his problems and the creation of legends which immediately started after his early death in 1983 (in the waiting room of a rehabilitation clinic!), seemed so unimportant and irrelevant that day, just as irrelevant as the timetable of the Hamburg metro; because it does not matter if the last train has already departed (as on that particular evening) with an artist performing many of his own creations but also several blues-classics with so much devotion while being deeply rooted in the spiritual soil of this special city located between Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain. “Send me someone to love“– who cares if it is a handsome young man or not. Nothing is out of the ordinary that evening at “Onkel Pö”, which James C. Booker seemed to have enjoyed as well; there will be a follow-up to this CD (incl. the finale of the concert). The police could return home, the gossip reporter had nothing to gossip about. Those of us who love blues and consider it to be the source of so many later developments in the world of music, including the first steps in the direction of soul and rock, will be astonished and delighted by the crystal-like clarity of this concert. Just wait for James C. Booker, the man with the eye-patch from New Orleans, to intone “My bonnie“ without any hint of sentimental “bring back my bonnie to me” -three-fourth conventions. You will stop your CD-player to listen to the piece right from the start once more.