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almost exhausting. I mean, my uncle sent me “Organ Grinder Swing”, and I love it, but
sometimes Jimmy McGriff is a little more the sweet spot for me, where it's just always

groovy and funky.

BiTS: I understand what you mean. Occasionally, Smith tended to go off into the
atmosphere.

JI: Yeah, yes. I love Groove Holmes
Groove Holmes that way too. Groove Holmes, I think
is the best bass player of all the organ

players. His left hand is just on fire,
just he plays so fleet, and he's not the
most inventive and dazzling right

hand organ player, but his autopilot
on left hand, I learned a lot from it

from a young age. I always use Groove
Holmes as the principal argument for
my saying I have, which is, when in
doubt go out, because I went out one

rainy night in New York City when I
almost didn't go out. I really wasn't

going to go out, but I did, and one
thing led to another, and I joined the
Junior Wells band because I just went
to a bar. There was a short-lived blues

jam there and then the guy who was
running it used to play with Junior

and took me to see him. He happened
to be coming to New York City a couple of days later and I didn't know that, and they
still didn't have a keyboard player and I got to try out live. But Groove Holmes and

Dizzy Gillespie are two artists in Philadelphia that when I was a kid, I had a chance
to go see and I just got lazy and didn't go, and then they died.

BiTS: What a shame.

JI: If you're ever considering going out to see music or really do much of anything,
go out, don't stay home. Don't sit home. Go out.

BiTS: I've beaten you there because I saw Dizzy Gillespie twice [laughs].

JI: Oh yeah [laughs]. You went out.

BiTS: Let me ask you a kind of personal question. I know that your real name is Brian
Berkowitz, but why did you choose a name like Johnny Iguana as the stage name, so

to speak?