Right after James P. heard Fats Waller playing the pipe organ, he came home and told me, "I know I can teach that boy." Well, from then on it was one big headache for me. Fats was seventeen, and we lived on 140th Street and Fats would bang on our piano till all hours of the night--sometimes to two, three, four o'clock in the morning. I would say to him, "Now go on home--or haven't you got a home?" But he'd come every day and my husband would teach. Of course, you know the organ doesn't give you a left hand and that's what James P. had to teach him. Then finally Fats got his first job--it was at Leroy's Cabaret on 135th Street and Fifth Avenue, and I was working there then. Fats was afraid to perform and so I taught him to play for me. That's how he started. << less