of the dancers. As soon as the customer was on the dance floor, the floor manager approached them and urged them to order either a whiskey, cigar, or beer. Using a token or a dance-ticket to buy a dance from a female employee is the hallmark of taxi dancing, and indeed taxi dancing was first invented in San Francisco during this era. Oftentimes the band played as many as 30 songs in an hour. Because of the rigorous performing schedule, it was not unusual to find piano players whose fingers were protectively taped, and the pianists often wore out a piano in just a year's time. Dancing was a major attraction of Terrific Street, and Purcell's management understood that its audience wanted to see the newest, most thrilling varieties of dance and music such as ragtime, blues, Turkey Trot, and the Texas Tommy. Gene Harris, a white pianist at the nearby Thalia dance hall stated "All the new dances came from Purcell's which hired the best colored entertainers from coast to coast." During pianist Sid LeProtti's first time at performing at Purcell's, club owner Sam King noticed his special talents and immediately made Sid LeProtti the house band's new leader. Sid LeProtti became a major jazz influence on Terrific Street, and his extensive interviews left behind one of the better documented descriptions of the district during its heyday. By 1915, Sid LeProtti had rebuilt the So Different Jazz Band into one of the finest performing groups of the San Francisco Bay Area. They are said to have been the first band in America to use the new term 'jazz' in its name. His house band consisted of a clarinet, baritone sax, flute, piano, string bass, and drums. LeProtti's grandmother was a famous contralto of San Francisco, and around 1860 she became the first African American woman to sing on a stage in California. Also fluent in German, LeProtti's grandmother arranged for him to take piano lessons from a German music teacher who trained LeProtti in classical music and encouraged him to memorize songs—something that later helped his skills in jazz improvisation. LeProtti later evolved from musician to composer, and like other Barbary Coast musicians freely shared many of his arrangements with others (one pianist later falsely claimed LeProtti's "Sid's Rag" as his own work, and it became in modified form, part of the popular tune "Canadian Capers"). Despite its sophistication