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Live review: Henry Butler
New Orleans native Henry Butler brought a little slice of Jazzfest ambiance to the Austin City Limits Festival on Saturday afternoon: Rain pouring down outside the tent, a genuine Crescent City “piano professor” holding forth inside. Any Jazzfest habitue would have felt right at home.
Butler is not as well known as other Louisiana keyboard maestros, such as Allen Toussaint, Dr. John or Austin’s own Marcia Ball. But he is clearly their equal in dexterity and power. Playing with precision and strength at a head-turning velocity (and, at times, hammering the bass registers with the edge of his hand), Butler’s playing evoked an image of a guy with a tackhammer nailing down roofing shingles at 78 rpm.
Through the course of his nearly hour-long set, Butler — who has been blind since birth and began playing piano at age 6 — led a winding tour that featured stops at the blues, soul, stride piano, boogie-woogie, New Orleans R&B and jazz. At times he has recorded them all, to the ongoing frustration of record companies who have tried to market him. After an introductory jazz/soul instrumental workout, Butler worked his way into a jacked-up version of “Iko Iko,” followed by a strutting original, “Jump To the Music.”
A playful little lick on the bass end of the keyboards eventually resolved itself (after taking the long way around the barn) into Fats Domino’s “Hello, Josephine,” while another long blues vamp and singalong took too long to get to its point.
Butler brought things back to earth with a slow and soulful version of Jerry Butler’s “I Stand Accused” before releasing the crowd back to the elements with a peppy take on Billy Preston’s “Will It Go Round In Circles.”
In point of fact, it is Butler’s music that goes round, circling past all the history and stylistic stops of the piano in American popular music (he’s been known to tackle the Broadway songbook, too). An hour was just enough to wet (no pun intended) an aficionado’s whistle.
Ricardo B. Brazziell photo
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