An eccentric and flamboyant piano player and singer from New Orleans.

The son and grandson of Baptist preachers, he spent most of his childhood on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where his father pastored a church. After returning to New Orleans in his early adolescence, he started playing organ in his father's churches. He was classically trained as a youth and developed an ability to imitate other player's styles. His own style combined elements of blues, boogie woogie, Latin-Caribbean and classical piano. Professor Longhair was among Booker's important influences.

Booker toured Europe in 1976 and 1977, including playing at the 1978 Nice and Montreux Jazz Festivals. He also performed with the Jerry Garcia Band in January of 1976.

He struggled with drugs most of his life, at one point serving a prison sentence at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, Louisiana for heroin possession. His problems with drug use held back his career; places that hired him regularly understood that it could not be known if the unreliable Booker would be giving a brilliant virtuoso performance or show up in an incoherent distracted state. He died in New Orleans from liver failure.