Music: The Lion

For a man who has acted with Al Jolson, led a band, served as the Ward McAllister of Harlem and bills himself on his calling card as the greatest pianist on earth, obviously the name Willie Smith is an insufficient handle. Accordingly, Harlem’s Willie Smith calls himself The Lion*and habitually refers to himself in the third person. His entrance into a Harlem hotspot is nothing short of imperial. “The Lion is here,” is his simple greeting, and it gets plenty of respectful attention. For Willie may not be the greatest piano player on earth, but he is hard to beat between 110th Street and the Yankee Stadium.

Willie was taught to play by his mother, herself a pianist and organist of some local repute, and he attracted his first large audiences when, aged 20, he joined the 350th Field Artillery and banged his way from Camp Dix to France and back. On the strictly military phase of his service with the 350th, The Lion’s recollections sound like a blend of Caesar’s Gallic Wars and Alice in Wonderland. “Very few soldiers volunteered to go up to the front and fire a French 75,” he declares, “and of those who did—few returned. The Lion stayed up at the front 33 days without relief, scoring several direct hits on the enemy. As a result of his bravery, he was known as Sergeant William H. Smith, The Lion.”

Back home in Manhattan, Sergeant Smith was soon in the big time, playing at Reisenweher’s (as did the famed Original Dixieland Jazz Band), accompanying the great Mamie Smith on Okeh records, traveling the Keith Circuit with a band. Prohibition led him prosperously underground, and lovers of hot music flocked to hear him at Harlem’s Pod’s and Jerry’s saloon as eagerly as early Christians to their interdicted devotions. So eminent a white jazz player as Saxophonist Bud Freeman has since declared him to be the best groove pianist a band could have, and France’s Hugues Panassie (Hot Jazz), the dean of swing critics, goes considerably further:

“Here we have one of the finest and most original of pianists. His playing is entirely different from that of others, with an extraordinary mixture in it of power and delicacy.”

Last week The Lion’s art was stacked up for posterity when Milton Gabler’s Commodore Music Shop produced a Willie Smith album of seven discs recording 14 of his solos. Besides his own Echo of Spring, Morning Air, Fading Star, The Lion plays six numbers written by others. Two of these represent him at his very best and worst. On Tea for Two the briskness and sprightliness, as they must occasionally to all improvising pianists, get way out of hand. His sincerest admirers will play oftener the solider, more artfully imaginative passages of The Boy and the Boat, a number which should make even plain listeners’ feet pat as rapidly as their cheeks would blush if the meaning of its title were generally known.

Other popular records of the month: Day |n—Day Out (Artie Shaw; Bluebird). Rube Bloom’s popular-melody-of-the-month played by a sound dance band.

Ding-Dong, The Witch is Dead, Harold Arlen’s most appealing peal from The Wizard of Oz, gets by far its best record production (verse and all) from Tenor Ralph Blane and Franklyn Mark’s band (Liberty Music Shop).

Earl Mines Album (Hot Record Society) does for “Father” Hines what Commodore has done for The Lion but metronomic, implacably austere Pianist Hines does not do quite so well for himself.

*Not to be confused with The Lion, a Trinidad Negro and Calypso singer.