Roger Williams obituary: Pop pianist Roger Williams dies - latimes.com: "The son of a Lutheran minister, he was born Louis Weertz on Oct. 1, 1924, in Omaha and grew up in Des Moines.
At 3, he toddled toward the piano and just started playing, Williams often recalled.
While majoring in piano at Iowa's Drake University, he began developing a style that was a fusion of jazz, classical and pop.
When a school official overheard him playing the show tune "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," he was expelled because the school had a "classics only" policy, Williams later said."
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GJ - Roger Williams was an LCA member originally, a member of St. John's in Des Moines. The pastor at the time--Henry Opperman--was later my supervisor in Canada, returning to Kitchener, Ontario. At St. Peter in Kitchener, the largest Lutheran congregation at the time, we always had a liturgical service and stood for every verse of every hymn.