David Booker Mojo Excello: The Best of David Booker (CD Review) David Booker, Mojo Excello: The Best of David Booker, 2003, DWM Music DWM806 Find him filed under blues—but that’s only a courtesy for the record-buying public. As this “best of” affair, culled from various previously released and unreleased outtakes reveals, Booker’s hardly the one-dimensional roots artist. Musically speaking, he has gone through more periods than Picasso, stepping reverently across every genre imaginable with equal aplomb. Unlike so many of his younger comrades who failed to realize the importance of such good grounding, Booker can cite southern tradition in all its multifaceted forms, the Friday night fish frys, raucous house rent parties and even the bal de maison without the slightest hesitation. No collection of tracks has ever made light of Booker’s breadth and depth quite the way this one does, which makes the naturalized American roots musician one of the Mile High’s most coveted treasures. A litany of infectious swing numbers (“House Wreckin’,” “Fan It”) kick off the proceedings, replete with Booker’s jazz-tinged guitar riffs, slappin’ drums, muted horns and Ralph DaFermo’s crazy piano stylings. No doubt they’ll appeal to the zoot suit set, aging hipsters and even the blue-haired contingent who still recall a more youthful heyday. About the time you expect Booker to stay with all things swing, he strays into a Professor Longhair “Rum & Coke”– inspired boogie, “Gin & Coconut Milk”—and that’s followed by something that wiggles a little more like Elvis (Buddy Holly’s “Reminiscin’”). “Mojo Boogie” shakes with its rock-and-roll rhythms and Dan Treanor’s wicked harmonica wailings; “Juke Joint Blues” (one of the disc’s bluesier cuts), features guest Mary Flower’s growling slide on this unresolved murder tale. Ostensibly, Booker leaves nothing out, even western swing (“Bring Back My Cadillac”) and some sexy-swaying calypso (“Poor Joe”). The lyrics are often hilarious, such as “You Got to Do Better” (“before another mama comes in”), with its rantings of ill-cooked food that “would make a hound dog sick.” On Fats Waller’s “Your Feets Too Big,” Booker suggestively hints at his companion’s well-endowed anatomy only to deceivingly disclose that it’s her big feet that’s stamping out the relationship. “Your pedal extremities are colossal,” he quips. “To me, you look like a Jurassic fossil.” Recommended? Totally. Booker’s mojo is working in fine fashion here. Dan Willging HOLLER Magazine, April-May 2004 Click here for order information