| Contents |
Foreword -- Music on my mind -- Mind and soul get together -- The old stamping ground -- The piano starts talking -- Hot towns are calling me -- Big ears in New York City -- I went to the gypsy -- A Lion in forty-nine days -- Interlude one: Harlem stride piano / by George Hoefer -- Low it, and take charge -- Those crazy blues -- Interlude two: Pre-prohibition Harlem / by George Hoefer -- A taste of the road -- Chicago, Chicago, that swingin' town -- Interlude three: Harlem during the twenties / by George Hoefer -- Reduce it to a low gravy -- Payin' the rent with chitterlings -- The Lion roars and breaks down the door -- With my cubs at Pod's & Jerry's -- Silvertop -- Interlude four: Willie the Lion, pianist / by George Hoefer -- The Lion goes downtown -- Fifty-Second Street beat -- The climate doesn't fit my clothes -- Partying on Park with Fats -- Camp Unity -- On a park bench -- Willie the Lion, cantor -- Cognac and cakes: Willie the Lion, teacher -- Slow down, Lion -- Jupiter in my house -- Those everlasting Saints -- Get me a cab -- Always play the melody. |
| Abstract |
"The Lion is here, William Henry Joseph Bonaparte Bertholoff Smith. Takes in French and Jewish. What I'm going to tell you is all the true facts." Thus begins one of the most low-down, up-beat, free-swinging, charming, and shocking (sometimes) memories ever written. Of the four great kings of Harlem "stride piano--Thomas (Fats) Waller, James P. (The Brute) Johnson, Ferdinand Joseph (Jelly Roll) Morton, and the author--only The Lion remains. And Mr. Smith is exactly what he thinks he is: a very important personality in the history of jazz and show business in general. Not only is he still a mean tickler who'll take on anybody, he is a composer of note, a major influence on the likes of Duke Ellington, Joe Bushkin, and Artie Shaw, and a verbal historian of considerable authority, wit, and gentleness. In addition Mr. Smith takes his astrology seriously and is a from-the-hip sociologist, as well as a Hebrew Cantor of deep faith. He is a man who has seen the bottom and come out on top. He is also the perfect guide to take you on a phenomenal crawl through the dives, cellars, speak-easies, brothels, on the tours and into the caves that spawned much of ragtime, stride, boogie-woogie, swing, and modern piano. Willie tells of vanished places, The Jungles, Baron's, The Rat-Skeller, The Garden of Joy, Goldgrabbin's Blind Pig, and Basement Brown's (knock three times and blow your nose). In addition to Fats, The Duke (who does the Introduction), and vanished people, he rambles on about Bechet, Raskin, The Count, Satchelmouth (Satchmo), Stephen the Beetle, Abbalabba, and Walter One-Leg Shadow Gould. And you'll follow the "stride" from its turn-of-the-century beginnings as gut-bucket ragtime played only in sporting houses, through its Prohibition heyday in the speaks, to the Thirties and beyond. The Lion also adds a few grace notes to the score on today's ultra-modern, mathematical, no left-hand jazz men who blunder off-key and call it a new chord, and on rock and roll's monotony (in the truest sense of the word). Mr. Smith got his nom de piano as a ferocious and deadly-accurate gun crew captain during "the number one war"; if anything, The Lion's aim has improved with age. |
