No recording of him survives, and his name and death are contested -- yet two pianists who left records called Joseph the best they ever heard. "I don't see no difference in One-Legged Willie playing the piano, and Leopold Godowsky," Eubie Blake told American Heritage in 1976. Raised in Boston, Joseph learned piano on his mother's employers' instrument; caught, they sent him to the Boston Conservatory rather than fire her. He won a blind graduation contest outright, though the dean couldn't award a Black student first prize. A skating accident cost him a leg, then his nickname; cocaine, per Blake, killed him around 1908 -- others say later, in Virginia. Blake, hardly neutral, insisted Willie "The Lion" Smith's prized broken-bass trick came from Joseph. Luckey Roberts, per his biographer, "never failed to name him among the all-time greats." No teacher is documented; he survives only as a source.