Later, when I showed up in New York, I found him [James P. Johnson] there, and I met Lippy, too, his dear friend, his pal… James was doing pretty good [but] he never lost contact with his foundations, with the real, wonderful people in Harlem. Harlem had its own rich, special folklore… So there in that atmosphere I became one of the close disciples of the James P. Johnson style. Some nights we'd wind up--James, Fats Waller, Sonny Greer, and I--and go down to Mexico's to hear The Lion… So we would sit around, and during intermission I would move over to the piano. Then it would be Fats. Perhaps he'd play "Ivie." (He dedicated that to Ivie Anderson, I think.) Afterwards, he'd look over his shoulder jovially at James and call, "Come on, take the next chorus!" Before you knew it, James had played about thirty choruses, each one different, each one with a different theme. By then The Lion would be stirred up. James had moved into his territory and was challenging. "Get up and I'll show you how it's supposed to be done," he'd say. Then, one after the other, over and over again they'd play, and it seemed as though you never heard the same note twice… They played some impossible things, toe to toe, a saber in each hand-En garde! << less