LENNY was still on a high. It had been about a week since he had taken an early morning A train up to Harlem to pay his respects to James Brown, then lying in state at the Apollo Theatre.
As Lenny talked to the lady he had bumped into outside the laundromat in Brooklyn, it was obvious the event had had quite an impact on him.
"Oh, that was a day alright," he said, remembering the reverends and ordinary Joes who were in the throng. "James Brown, he was quite a cat."
It's a random eulogy which thousands of people worldwide will endorse.
After all, Lenny and his lady-friend, recounting the who and the what of the turnout like two gnarly Tipperary farmers at a busy removal, were not the only ones who thought this way about the 73-year-old musical innovator, who died on Christmas Day.
The music and moving pictures which Brown left behind will tell a mighty tale about this extraordinary entertainer for many years to come. Here was a performer who electrified concert halls year in and year out with his screams and shrieks and shimmies.
During a glorious decade from the mid-'60s to mid-'70s, Brown revolutionised soul music by putting a new spin on the sound. He assembled all-star bands and fired them on to new and greater heights on every outing.
Few others got on the good foot like Brown - and no-one else kept it going as long as this tough-as-
nails band-leader.
Crowds still flocked to see Brown in the last couple of years. Yes, there was an element of shape-throwing to many of the performances, but what shapes they were. Brown prowled the stage like a heavyweight boxer keen to show he could still handle the ring and go toe to toe when it mattered most.
It was all in the feet, you see, and Brown was the lord of that dance.
Brown had little to do with his most extraordinary rebirth of all. Thanks to a generation of producers recasting his grooves and breaks as samples for hip-hop's first great golden age, Brown found himself back in the musical spotlight again during the 1980s. No better man to make prime use of that opportunity. "Hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown," he rasped in one interview. "You hear all the rappers, 90 per cent of their music is me."
Walk into Rock & Soul Records in midtown Manhattan, longtime happy hunting ground for New York's beat-hungry producers, and you'll find much of Brown's back-catalogue prominently racked on vinyl waiting to be plundered.
In the week after his death, this shop was surely not the only one finding there was brisk business in the Brown trade.
Of course, there was another Brown, and this one was no angel. There are many who will remember him just as well as the deranged shotgun-toting loon, high on PCP, getting chased by the police through a couple of states in 1988, or the man accused multiple times of using his fists on the women in his life.
Trouble seemed to be as much a part of the Brown mix as that hair or those teeth. South Carolina officials publicly pardoned him for his crimes in 2003, but, come the following January, he was back again in front of police cameras in the state getting his mugshot taken on another charge.
It will be interesting to see what tack Spike Lee takes when he comes to shoot his biopic of Brown. Lee's a hugely able director, especially when it comes to articulating black America's rage and anger (see When the Levees Broke, his extraordinary requiem for black New Orleans, for the definitive take on that tale of woe). Getting the balance right between the music, the myths and the misdemeanours will be hugely important.
In the end, it's the music which will continue to keep Mister Superbad in our affections. From Please Please Please to the rumble of Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud, Brown was the one to make you stomp your feet and yell "hell, yeah". Just ask Lenny.
