James Carroll Booker III (December 17, 1939 – November 8, 1983) was a New Orleans rhythm and blues keyboardist born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Booker’s unique style combined rhythm and blues with jazz standards. Musician Dr. John described Booker as “the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano genius New Orleans has ever produced.” Flamboyant in personality and having an extraordinary technical facility, he was known as “the Black Liberace”.

Booker was the son and grandson of Baptist ministers, both of whom played the piano. He spent most of his childhood on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where his father was a church pastor. Booker received a saxophone as a gift from his mother when he was 10. He had wanted a trumpet, but mastered the saxophone even though it was bought by mistake. Booker’s proficiency on the saxophone and piano gave him a local reputation as a child prodigy. Yet he focused on the piano and mastered Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias, performing such pieces at a professional level by the age of 12. He also played the organ in his father’s churches. He aspired, however, to become a Catholic priest. He decided against this path with the idea that music would be his means of spiritual expression.

In 1949 at age 9, Booker was struck by an ambulance that he said was traveling about 70 miles an hour. According to Booker, it dragged him for 30 feet and broke his leg in eight places, nearly requiring its amputation. He was given morphine, to which he attributed to some extent his eventual drug addiction. The accident left him with a permanent limp.

Having returned to New Orleans in his early adolescence, Booker attended the Xavier University Preparatory School on Magazine Street. At Xavier he was an excellent student, especially in math, music, and Spanish, and graduated from the high school in 1957.