Sam Allen

Although some movie patrons reacted in horror to the idea, thinking it was some kind of prank, the ten-year old Sam Allen was actually employed as a pianist for silent films, allowed to sit at the instrument and extemporize as the action unfolded on screen. He had already been playing for three years when he got this job, and in the next few years seemed to have absorbed plenty of slapstick hi-jinx and derring-do from the Hollywood sagas he accompanied. This would all come in handy when he began playing piano years later with the madcap jive jazz duo of Slim Gaillard and Slam ...