| Artist: Lil Armstrong |
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| Discography: Lil Armstrong |
| Black Biography: Lil Hardin Armstrong |
jazz musician; pianist
Personal Information
Born Lillian Beatrice Hardin on February 3, 1898, in Memphis, TN; died on August 27, 1971, in Chicago, IL; daughter of Dempsey Martin and William Hardin; married Jimmy Johnson (divorced); married Louis Armstrong (a jazz musician), February 5, 1924 (divorced, 1938)
Education: Fisk University, college preparatory classes, 1915-16; Chicago College of Music, diploma, 1928; New York College of Music, diploma, 1930.
Career
Lawrence Duhé and his New Orleans Creole Jazz Band, pianist, 1917; toured as ensemble pianist with various jazz bands, 1917-21; King Oliver's Creole Band, pianist and arranger, 1921-24; Lil's Dreamland Syncopators, pianist and composer, 1925-28; Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, pianist and recording artist, 1925-28; Hot Shots, pianist and band leader, 1930s; New Orleans Wanders, pianist and band leader, 1930s; Decca Records, house pianist and recording artist, 1931-40; Lil Hardin Armstrong and her Swing Orchestra, singer, songwriter, and recording artist, 1935-40; solo pianist and performer, 1940-71.
Life's Work
Lil Hardin Armstrong was a pianist, composer, singer, and band leader who helped introduce America to jazz music. She was married to Louis Armstrong, the famous jazz trumpet player, and she was largely responsible for his successful career. She not only wrote songs and performed with her husband, but she also managed his career and helped make him an international star. Aside from promoting her husband's musical career, Armstrong was a renowned musician in her own right. She established a reputation as "Hot Miss Lil," one of the few female band ensemble members of her time. Armstrong played on many of the first jazz recordings ever made and she wrote many of the early songs of the jazz era.
Mother Deterred Early Interest in Music
Lil Armstrong was born Lillian Beatrice Hardin on February 3, 1898. Her grandmother, Priscilla Thompson, was born into slavery in 1850 in Lafayette County near Oxford, Mississippi. Thompson married Taylor Martin in 1870 and the couple had 13 children together, seven of whom had died by 1900. One of these children, a daughter named Dempsey, married William Hardin in Memphis. This couple had two children together, although the first child died soon after birth. The second, and thereafter only, child was Lillian, affectionately known as Lil.
Dempsey and William Hardin separated when Armstrong was very young. As a young child Armstrong lived with her mother in a boarding house in Memphis. Dempsey worked as a cook for a white family. They lived a few blocks from Beale Street, a bustling nightlife area for blacks where much of blues and jazz music was beginning to take shape. Dempsey Hardin, however, was interested in exposing her young daughter only to religious music.
Armstrong began playing the organ at a young age and she began taking music lessons from her schoolteacher at age six. By the time she was nine years old, she played the organ for Sunday school at Lebanon Baptist Church. At the age of 16, Armstrong won a music contest at her music school. It was this contest that made her realize she had a future in music.
Dempsey Hardin was concerned that her daughter's passion for music would lead her to the infamous Beale Street, which was notorious not only for the music life, but also for drugs, violence, and prostitution. Hardin was determined to provide a better future for Armstrong so she sent her to Fisk University in Nashville. The school was founded in 1865 with the intent to provide African Americans with a solid Christian education. Hardin drew upon her life savings to pay $36.50 per semester for tuition, room, and board. Armstrong began taking classes in the fall of 1915. She enrolled in a college preparatory program and took high school courses in English, science, Latin, and home economics in preparation for college courses.
Exposed to Jazz in Chicago
Armstrong returned to Memphis in 1916 and continued to play the piano. However, when her mother discovered that she was playing the blues, what Hardin considered to be "devil's music," she decided once again that Lil would have to leave Memphis and all of its negative influences. In 1917 Hardin and Armstrong moved to Chicago. A year later Armstrong landed her first job as a piano player at the Jones Music Store on Chicago's South Side. Armstrong worked afternoons at the store for $3 a week. Although the salary was meager, Armstrong was eager to have a store filled with sheet music at her disposal.
One day while working at the music store Armstrong met Jelly Roll Morton, a famous ragtime pianist whom some credit with inventing jazz. Armstrong was mesmerized by Morton's loud and energetic performance. "I don't know what he played--what pieces they were, but they were loud and the place was rockin' and the people were jumping up, keeping up with him, and I was jumping higher than anybody," Armstrong was quoted as saying in James L. Dickerson's biography Just for a Thrill.
Although Armstrong was determined to build a career in music, it was difficult for her to find a band willing to include a female piano player. Armstrong coaxed her employer, Mrs. Jones, to help her find a band with which to play. Her lucky break came when Lawrence Duhé and his New Orleans Creole Jazz Band came to play in Chicago and they wanted to add a piano to their ensemble. They hired Armstrong at $22.50 a week. Armstrong tried to keep her job a secret from her mother, but Hardin eventually heard the news. She was not happy with her daughter's career choice, but she decided that it was better than being a cook or a housekeeper.
Armstrong became known as "Hot Miss Lil" and was immediately popular on the nightclub scene. "With her hard-pounding hands on the piano, youthful face, and slender body, she was an attraction all unto herself. She played like a man, but dressed like a Sunday school teacher," James L. Dickerson explained in Just for a Thrill. During her early years as a nightclub performer Armstrong played with some of the greatest performers of that time, including legendary cornet player Joe "King" Oliver and singer Alberta Hunter, who was the first black woman to record the blues. Armstrong was a novelty among jazz bands. While it was common for women to front blues and jazz bands as a vocalist, it was unusual for them to play as part of the ensemble.
Armstrong followed King Oliver to San Francisco for six months, but she was soon homesick and wanted to return to Chicago. She was also married at that time to a singer named Jimmy Johnson and her travels were hard on her marriage. Armstrong returned home to her mother and husband and went to work at the Dreamland nightclub. Eventually King Oliver returned to Chicago with his band and he invited a New Orleans cornet player named Louis Armstrong to join him in Chicago. He also asked Lil to return to the band.
Navigated Rocky Career and Marriage
Louis Armstrong was smitten with Lil when he first saw her, but Lil was not as impressed and she was still married to her first husband. However, Armstrong and Jimmy Johnson soon separated and a romance began between Louis and Armstrong. Louis Armstrong was also becoming a musical sensation in Chicago, taking some of the spotlight away from Lil. Their personal relationship grew as their musical careers blossomed. Louis and Lil Armstrong married on February 5, 1924, after dating for about two years.
Lil and Louis Armstrong continued to play with King Oliver's jazz band. They even began recording their music, creating one of the first jazz records ever. The band also toured the Midwest, traveling to Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Armstrong was concerned that her husband's considerable talents were wasted playing second cornet to King Oliver, so she eventually persuaded him to leave the band. In 1924 Louis Armstrong landed a job as first trumpeter with Fletcher Henderson's Black Swan Troubadours in New York City. Lil followed her husband to the East coast, but she was not well received in the musical community. No one was eager to hire a female pianist, so she returned to Chicago by herself.
While her husband played in New York, Armstrong came up with a way to showcase Louis' talents and bring him the fame and recognition that she felt he deserved. Armstrong returned to the Dreamland nightclub and put together her own band which featured her husband on lead trumpet. The group was called Lil's Dreamland Syncopators and Louis was the main attraction. He earned $75 a week to perform at Dreamland, which was a huge sum of money for a black performer at that time. As James L. Dickerson aptly described in Just for a Thrill, "Louis was the incomparable leader on the bandstand, especially when he played his horn. Lil was the leader when it came to taking care of all the business that got him on the bandstand."
Performed Heavily During Marriage Breakdown
In 1925 Lil and Louis Armstrong recorded an album for OKeh Records with their Hot Fives orchestra. The album included four songs written by Lil. A year later they produced a second album. However, while their careers were flourishing, their marriage was deteriorating. Louis had had several affairs while married to Armstrong, and in 1925 he moved in with his girlfriend, Alpha Smith. He also left Armstrong's band at Dreamland and led a new band called Louis Armstrong and His Stompers at the Sunset Café. Despite their strained personal relationship, Lil and Louis Armstrong continued to write songs and record together and she continued to work as his manager. Lil also decided to return to school to get a formal music education. She enrolled in the Chicago College of Music and earned a degree in 1928.
In 1929 Chicago's nightclubs suffered from a federal crackdown on organized crime, so Louis moved to New York to record for OKeh Records. Armstrong followed and enrolled in the New York College of Music. After procuring her postgraduate degree Armstrong returned to Chicago, for she no longer worked as Louis' manager. For the next two years Lil and Louis had an on and off relationship and she accompanied him to California and New Orleans. However, in 1931 Armstrong had tired of Louis' infidelities and his business connections to organized crime gangs, and she separated from him. While Louis toured Europe, Armstrong formed two all-female bands in Chicago in 1931 and 1932. From 1933 to 1935 she led an all-male band based in Buffalo, New York, but the group suffered because audiences were not very receptive to a female band leader.
In 1935 Armstrong returned to Chicago and formed another nightclub and recording band. Instead of playing the piano, Armstrong arranged the music, wrote songs, and sang. In 1936 Lil Hardin Armstrong and Her Swing Orchestra recorded an album and five out of six songs were written by Armstrong, including one of her most popular songs called "Just for a Thrill." She continued to write songs and record albums for Decca Records for the next several years.
Lost Passion for Music
In 1938 Lil Armstrong finally agreed to divorce Louis. She recorded her last session with Decca Records in 1940 and she seemed to lose her passion for music after her divorce. She took a sewing class offered by the Works Projects Administration and pursued a career as a clothes designer. She began designing and sewing clothes for Louis to wear while performing. However, her career as a designer never took off because America was not receptive to a black designer at that time. Armstrong also briefly owned a soul food restaurant in Chicago called Lil Armstrong's Swing Shack.
By the 1950s Armstrong had a new vocation as a piano and French teacher. In 1952 and 1953 she traveled to Europe to perform again. Her warm reception in Europe convinced her to return to Chicago to renew her performing career. However, by that time the music scene had changed dramatically, as had race relations in America, and Armstrong was unable to rebuild an audience. Armstrong recorded one more album in 1961 when she was invited to participate in a series of recordings called Chicago--The Living Legends.
Armstrong spent the last decade of her life giving occasional performances and following her ex-husband's career. Louis Armstrong died on July 6, 1971, after suffering from heart and kidney problems. Lil Armstrong died just seven weeks later during a performance at a memorial concert for Louis in Chicago. "Throughout all her success and failures, she remained true to her own moral vision and, in doing so, she became a role model for how to achieve goals in life while remaining true to one's self," James L. Dickerson summarized Lil Armstrong's life in his biography of her called Just for a Thrill.
Works
Selected discography
Further Reading
Books
— Janet P. Stamatel
| Wikipedia: Lil Hardin Armstrong |
| Lil Hardin Armstrong | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Lillian Hardin |
| Born | February 3, 1898 |
| Origin | Memphis, Tennessee, United States |
| Died | August 27, 1971 (aged 73) |
| Genre(s) | Jazz |
| Occupation(s) | Singer pianist Composer Bandleader |
| Associated acts | Louis Armstrong King Oliver |
Lil Hardin Armstrong (born Lillian Hardin) (February 3, 1898 – August 27, 1971) was a jazz pianist, composer, arranger, singer, and bandleader, and the second wife of Louis Armstrong with whom she collaborated on many recordings in the 1920s.
Hardin's compositions include "Struttin' With Some Barbecue", "Don't Jive Me", "Two Deuces", "Knee Drops", "Doin' the Suzie-Q", ""Just For a Thrill" (which became a major hit when revived by Ray Charles in 1959), "Clip Joint", and "Bad Boy" (a hit by Ringo Starr in 1978).
Contents |
She was born in Memphis, Tennessee. During her early years, Hardin was taught hymns, spirituals, and Classics on the piano. She was drawn to popular music and later blues, but could only listen or play these styles occasionally and covertly, because her mother, Dempsey (she called her "Decie"), a deeply religious woman, considered them "sinful."[1]
Hardin first received piano instruction from her third grade teacher, Miss Violet White, then her mother enrolled her in Mrs. Hook's School of Music. "I later learned that they had taught me all the wrong things," Hardin recalled in 1971, "but they meant well."[1]
It was at Fisk University that Hardin was taught a more acceptable approach to the instrument. How long Hardin stayed at Fisk is unclear, but she never returned after the 1918 summer break. In August of that year, she moved to Chicago with her mother and stepfather. By then, she had become proficient in reading music, a skill that landed her a job as a sheet music demonstrator at Jones Music Store.[2] The proprietor, Jennie Jones, also ran an employment and booking agency, which attracted many performers to the store. A visit by Jelly Roll Morton would profoundly affect Hardin's musical education. "He sat down," she wrote in her unpublished biography, "the piano rocked, the floor shivered, the people swayed while he attacked the keyboard with his long skinny fingers, beating out a double rhythm with his feet on the loud pedal. Oh, was I thrilled and amazed. He finally got up from the piano, grinned and looked at me as if to say, 'Let this be a lesson to you.' Well it was a lesson." When a small crowd urged Hardin to play something for Morton, she did. "I laid Witches Dance and Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C Sharp Minor on him."[1]
Morton's visit had a profound effect on Hardin, who began embellishing the sheet music with her own ideas, much to the delight of customers. She had been on the job for three weeks when clarinetist Lawrence Duhé's New Orleans Creole Jazz Band came in for an audition. Jones booked the band at the Chinese Café, and sent Hardin there when Duhé was asked to add a pianist. "I did my best to be a miniature Jelly Roll Morton," she said, "and Duhé decided to keep me.[1]
The store had been paying Hardin $3 a week, but Duhé offered $22.50. Knowing that her mother would not approve of her working in a cabaret, she made it known that her new job was playing for a dancing school. Three weeks later, the band moved on to a better booking at the De Luxe Café, where the entertainers included Florence Mills and Cora Green. From there, the band moved up to the jewel of Chicago's night life, the Dreamland. Here the principal entertainers were Alberta Hunter and Ollie Powers, and there was no finer night spot in Chicago. When King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band replaced Duhé's group at the Dreamland, Oliver asked Hardin to stay with him. She was with Oliver at the Dreamland in 1921, when an offer came for the orchestra to play a six-month engagement at San Francisco's Pergola Ballroom. At the end of that booking, Hardin returned to Chicago while the rest of the Oliver band went on to Los Angeles.
In Chicago, Hardin went back to work at the Dreamland, as pianist in an orchestra for Mae Brady, a violinist and vaudeville stalwart. While there, she fell for Jimmie Johnson, a young singer from Washington, D.C., whom she married on August 22, 1922. The marriage was short-lived, ending in divorce after Jimmy moved to Petoskey, Michigan, in hopes of getting work and giving their marriage a new start. In the meantime, the Oliver band returned from California and opened at the Royal Gardens, with Bertha Gonzales at the piano, but soon found itself back at the Dreamland, with Hardin at the piano.
His band was enjoying enormous success at the Dreamland when Oliver sent for Louis Armstrong to join as second cornetist. Armstrong was beginning to make a name for himself in their hometown, New Orleans, and regarded "Papa Joe" as his mentor. Some say that Oliver saw Louis as a threat to his jazz throne and decided that having him in his band was a good form of containment, although by all accounts both cornetists enjoyed working together. At first, Hardin was unimpressed with Louis, who arrived in Chicago wearing clothes and a hair style that she deemed to be "too country" for Chicago, but she worked to "take the country out of him" and a romance developed (to the surprise of other band members, some of whom had been trying to woo pretty Hardin for some time with no success). Hardin already had divorce experience and helped Louis get a divorce from his first wife Daisy, from whom he had separated back in New Orleans. Hardin and Louis were married on February 4, 1924.
Hardin took Louis shopping and taught him how to dress more fashionably -- she also got rid of his bangs, and began working on his career. Recognizing his extraordinary talent, she felt that he was wasting it in a secondary role. Louis was happy to be playing next to his idol, but Hardin eventually persuaded him to leave Oliver and go it on his own. Armstrong eventually resigned from Oliver's band and, in September 1924, accepted a job with Fletcher Henderson in New York City. Hardin stayed in Chicago, first with Oliver, then leading a band of her own. When Hardin's band got a job at the Dreamland Café, the following year, she prepared for Louis' return to Chicago by having a huge banner made to advertise him as "The World's Greatest Trumpet Player."[2]
Louis was gaining an impressive reputation when Richard M. Jones convinced Okeh Records to make a series of sessions under his name: the classic Armstrong "Hot Five" recordings. With Hardin at the piano, Kid Ory on trombone, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, and Johnny St. Cyr on banjo, this stellar group rehearsed at Louis and Hardin's residence on Chicago's East 41st Street and held its first session on November 15, 1925. Few recordings are as celebrated as the ones made by the Hot Five (and, sometimes, with Earl Hines replacing Hardin, the "Hot Seven") between then and the end of 1928. Hardin had actually recorded five selections for Vocalion, leading the same group, in April and May, 1926. She also recorded a session for Columbia Records as the New Orleans Wanderers.
In the late 1920s Hardin and Louis grew apart. Armstrong formed a new Hot Five, with Earl Hines on piano. Hardin reformed her own band with Freddie Keppard on cornet (who Hardin considered second only to Louis). Louis and Hardin separated in 1931, when he had begun a liaison with Alpha Smith. Ms. Smith eventually threatened to sue Armstrong for breach of promise, so he begged Hardin not to grant him a divorce. "I felt sorry for Louis," Hardin later recalled, "but he had two-timed me, so I gave him a divorce just to teach him a lesson—and I sued him, too."[1]
In the 1930s, sometimes billing herself as Mrs. Louis Armstrong, Hardin led an "All Girl Orchestra", then a mixed gender Big Band which broadcast nationally over the NBC radio network. The same decade she recorded a series of sides for Decca Records as a Swing vocalist, and appeared as piano accompanist for many other singers. She also recorded with Red Allen.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Hardin worked mostly as a soloist singing and playing piano. In the late 1940s, she decided to leave the music and become a tailor, so she took a course in tailoring. Her graduation project was to make a tuxedo for Louis. It was displayed prominently at a New York cocktail party she threw to announce her new field of endeavor. "They looked at Louis' tux and all the other things I had made and they were very impressed," she recalled, "but then someone asked me to play the piano. That's when I knew that I would never be able to leave the music business." Louis wore Hardin's tuxedo and she continued to tailor, but only as a sideline and then only for friends. Her shirts, which friends received regularly on birthdays, proudly bore a label with her mother's name, "Decie," and beneath that, "Hand made by Lil Armstrong."
Hardin eventually returned to Chicago and the house on East 41st Street. She also made a trip to Europe and had a brief love affair in France, but mostly she worked around Chicago, often with fellow Chicagoans. Collaborators included Red Saunders, Joe Williams, Oscar Brown, Jr., and Little Brother Montgomery.
In the 1950s, Hardin recorded a biographical narrative for Riverside's Bill Grauer, which was issued in LP form. She would again appear on that label In 1961, participating in its "Chicago: The Living Legends" project as accompanist for Alberta Hunter and leader of her own hastily assembled big band. At that time, her favorite living pianists were Thelonious Monk and Billy Taylor, which helps to explain why, when Riverside producer Chris Albertson approached her about these recordings, her immediate reaction was, "Who's going to listen to that old stuff?" The Riverside recordings led to her inclusion in a star-studded 1961 NBC network special, "Chicago and All That Jazz," and a follow-up album released through the Verve Records imprint. In 1962, Hardin began writing her autobiography, in collaboration with Albertson, but she had second thoughts when she realized that such a book could not be done properly without including material that might discomfit Louis Armstrong, so the project was shelved with only five chapters written.
When Louis Armstrong died, in 1971, Hardin was deeply shaken by the loss. She traveled to New York for the funeral and rode in the family car. "I think Louis would have found a way getting back at me if I hadn't put Hardin in that car," his widow, Lucille, told Albertson.[3] Returning to Chicago, Hardin felt that work on her autobiography could now continue, but the following month, performing at a televised memorial concert for Louis, Hardin Armstrong collapsed at the piano. She died an hour later.
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