‘One-Leg’ Willie Joseph: Black Piano’s Missing Link

The term “missing link,” was once used to describe a hypothetical being which, if found, would exhibit traits common to otherwise dissimilar ancestors and descendants. While it has passed out of favor among anthropologists (along with the “Great Chain of Being” theory that inspired it), the concept is still useful for exploring gaps in our knowledge of evolving forms of activity—such as music. One curious case that lends itself to analysis along these lines is the African-American pianist William Joseph, better known—to the extent he is known at all—as “One-Leg” Willie. Joseph is mentioned in scattered sources, but he is omitted from many others. He is said to have played boogie-woogie, but his name doesn’t appear in the lengthiest consideration of that style, A Left Hand Like God: A History of Boogie-Woogie Piano by Peter Silvester. He is not mentioned in John Chilton’s Who’s Who of Jazz, Leonard Feather’s Encyclopedia of Jazz, or Hugues Panassié and Madeleine Gautier’s extensive discussion of ragtime in their Dictionary of Jazz. Nor does he appear in the chapter titled “Boogie Woogie” by Max Harrison in Nat Hentoff and Albert McCarthy’s Jazz. Willie the Lion Smith said that he picked up ideas listening to Joseph in “The Jungles,” a West Side neighborhood of New York that pre-dated Harlem as the center of Black life in that city. Joseph was, a