He may not be a household name, but anyone who’s heard his recordings—or his player-piano rolls—will tell you that James P. Johnson was one of the all-time greats of early jazz piano. Picking up where Scott Joplin left off, he developed “Harlem Stride,” the freewheeling style later popularized by one of his pupils, Fats Waller, and Willie “The Lion” Smith. Johnson was Bessie Smith’s and Ethel Waters’s favorite accompanist. He was also a top songwriter on Broadway, and one of his tunes, “Charleston,” became the defining song of the Roaring Twenties. Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Art Tatum, and Thelonius Monk are just a few of the musicians Johnson influenced.

By the 1930s and ’40s, Johnson was composing orchestral works like “Yamenkraw” and “Harlem Symphony,” and a one-act opera, “De Organizer,” done with poet Langston Hughes. But changing tastes and failing health took their toll, and when Johnson died in 1955, he was buried in an unmarked grave at the Olivet Cemetery in Queens, New York.

Now, the James P. Johnson Foundation, Smalls Jazz Club in New York City, and the Johnson family are throwing a “rent party” to raise money for a monument for Johnson’s grave. On Sunday, October 4, Smalls will be celebrating “The Father of Stride Piano” with nonstop performances by Dick Hyman, Tardo Hammer, Terry Waldo, and other musicians. The day kicks off with a talk by Scott E. Brown, author of the biography James P. Johnson: A Case of Mistaken Identity, at 1:30; the music starts at 4:00 and runs until 9 p.m. Donation of $20 or more. For more information, check the James P. Johnson Foundation site or Smalls Jazz Club

Above Photo:Gjon Mili/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.