Willie The Lion Smith

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Willie The Lion Smith · Willie Smith, nicknamed The Lion, was born in Goshen, New York, in 1893 and grew up in Newark. As a child his mother taught him songs on a broken organ, and with a prize won in a competition he got a piano of his own. From the early 1910s he played in clubs in New York and Atlantic City. In the First World War he served as an artilleryman in France, and his nickname is said to date from that time: his colonel called him a lion with his gun.

Music and breakthrough

After the war he played in the clubs and at the rent parties of Harlem. Together with James P. Johnson and Fats Waller he developed stride piano, a style that grew out of ragtime, with a leaping left hand and fast, ornamented improvisations in the right. In the 1940s he found a wider audience and until 1971 he toured North America and Europe. In 1964 his memoirs Music on My Mind were published. Duke Ellington wrote Portrait of the Lion in 1939 as a tribute to him and called him a great influence.

Influence

For the history of pop, Smith is important as one of the voices of the Harlem piano school, from which swing and modern jazz later emerged. He died in 1973.

Listening

• 
  Echoes of Spring · Willie The Lion Smith, 1939

Discography

Studio albums

• 1958Luckey & the Lion: Harlem Piano
• 1966Music on My Mind
• 2001Music on My Mind
• ?Grand Piano Duets

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Magazine: Rent parties en stride^NL Magazine