Kevin Whitehead

James P. Johnson on Rosetta, 1939.

In the 1920s, Johnson was the foremost proponent of stride piano, the style that transformed rag times, oompa beats, and tidy syncopations into more flexibly propulsive jazz piano.

His buoyant touch and phrasing influenced Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Earl Hines, Art Tatum, Count Basie, Thelonious Monk, and many of their admirers.

Johnson wrote songs for Black Broadway, was king of Harlem's legendary Rent Party piano gladiators, was blues singer Bessie Smith's best accompanist, and composer of 1920's signature tune, The Charleston.

This is from a player piano roll James P. Johnson cut.

He never bothered to record his biggest hit.

Scott Brown's very good new biography, Speakeasies to Symphonies, the Jazz Genius of James P. Johnson, answers the question, given all Johnson had accomplished, why isn't he as well-known as his disciples?

In hindsight, we know it's recordings that cement a musician's reputation.

But making records paid poorly in the 20s, and Johnson didn't take them so seriously.

He wasn't a natural showman like his protege, Fats Waller, had no interest in leading a working band to promote his tunes, and didn't always feature his virtuoso piano enough.

He did have a comeback in the 1940s, working in traditional jazz bands, but that made him seem like a relic of an earlier era.

Starting in the 1920s, James P. Johnson also composed blues rhapsodies for orchestra that symphonic gatekeepers ignored.

But in recent decades, his African-American classical music has brought him renewed attention.

Revivals include a new modernized revamp of Johnson's Sweet Yamakraw by pianist Marcus Roberts.

The world may finally be catching up.

Today's other biographical subject also gets more respect now that she's gone.

Alice McLeod started out playing piano in church as a girl in Detroit, but became famous as harpist Alice Coltrane, wife and widow of saxophonist John.

From the first, there could be something oddly harp-like about Alice's swirly, sweeping piano moves, a tendency that grew more pronounced when she joined her husband's band in 1966.

John Coltrane was fascinated by the shimmering, angelic sound of the harp and had ordered one built for Alice, which arrived only after his untimely death in 1967, as if harp was his bequest, a directive on how to proceed.

Alice Coltrane took to it right away, pursuing orchestral ideas she and John had discussed.