In the 1920s Willie "The Lion" Smith ranked among the three leading stride pianists alongside James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, even though he barely recorded until the mid-1930s. His mother worked as both organist and pianist, and he began taking piano lessons at six. By his teenage years he was already supporting himself through club work; his World War I service earned him the nickname "the Lion," and once discharged he quickly became a featured performer at the after-hours rent parties that flourished across Harlem. Although he traveled briefly with Mamie Smith and supplied the piano accompaniment for her landmark 1920 release "Crazy Blues," Smith spent most of his career as an independent musician. He left a strong impression on the young Duke Ellington, who later composed "Portrait of the Lion," as well as on nearly every other rising pianist based in New York during the 1920s and 1930s. Outwardly boastful and visually imposing in his ever-present cigar and derby, Smith proved far more vibrant than intimidating and played with refined elegance and a notably delicate touch. The sides he cut with his Cubs beginning in 1935, together with the solo Commodore sessions of 1939—most memorably "Echoes of Spring"—secured his historical standing. Remaining active well into the early 1970s and publishing his autobiography Music on My Mind in 1965, Smith served for decades as a direct connection to the earliest triumphs of jazz.
