"Towards the end of 1955, fresh off his first hit “All Around the World”, Little Willie John, the 5ft 4in singing dynamo from Detroit – now considered to be the missing link between big band-era rhythm and blues and the performer-driven soul music of the 60s – came to play the Roseland Ballroom in Holyoke, Massachusetts. “My mama was going with the band leader,” says Lithofayne. “So that’s how I met Willie. My first kiss and everything. And his daddy was travelling with him. I remember he had a silver streak through his hair. Teenager, and his daddy had a silver streak through his hair, so he had a silver streak through his hair.” He was 17, she was two years younger. “I bragged to everybody I knew him,” she says. When her cousin in Dirty Spoon told her Willie John was going to be playing nearby, she contrived a reason to travel south to see him again. It was Little Willie John who stole her heart: “He was totally uninhibited. Super free spirit. Wasn’t scared, didn’t feel threatened by anything or anybody. Totally streetwise. And he could sing his ass off.” John would provide her entry into another world, just like Dirty Spoon but bigger – Harlem."