Whenever Joe Lee--our local Art Tatum [at the Blind School] --showed up in the dorm, all the kids started yelling: "Wow! It's Joe Lee! We gonna be hearing somethin' hot!" He came through the door and right away he'd be thumping and singing like a bass fiddle--"boom boom boom boom." Sure 'nough, he'd start working out tunes and have us all jumping, dancing, and carrying on like lunatics. Not long after that I found myself doing the same thing, playing "Honky Tonk Train" or "Beat Me Daddy" while the kids got up and slid around. All this, you understand, was done after hours, on the sly, in the practice rooms when the teachers were nowhere to be found. << less