1938 LIL HARDING ARMSTRONG Orch Knock Knee'd Sal/ Everything's wrong DECCA 2542

$

30

A series of great Jazz recordings from Ragtime to Be Bop:

Great recording of Lil Armstrong, wife of Louis and her Orchestra
with hot trumpet solos

10" 78 rpm record

Condition:

EXCELLENT close to pristine, rare scuffs,, plays E very quiet

A SUPERB COPY

Lil Hardin-Armstrong was the most prominent woman in early jazz. She played piano, composed, and arranged for most of the important Hot Bands from New Orleans. While working at a music store in Chicago, she was invited to play with Sugar Johnny's Creole Orchestra, from there she went to Freddie Keppard's Original Creole Orchestra, and then led her own band at the Dreamland Cafe at 3520 South State Street in Chicago. In 1921 she joined King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band where she met Louis Armstrong. They were married in 1924. Lil was Louis Armstrong's second wife and she is generally credited with persuading Louis to be more ambitious, and leave King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. Lil was a major contributor to Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings. She played piano and sang occasionally, and composed several of the groups major songs, including "Struttin' with Some Barbeque." Lil was the leader of several other recording groups, including Lil's Hot Shots and the New Orleans Wanderers. She and Louis were separated in 1931 and were divorced in 1938, although they remained friends for life. Lil appeared in several Broadway shows including "Hot Chocolates" and "Shuffle Along". In the late 1930s Lil recast herself as a Swing vocalist and cut 26 vocal sides for Decca records. In the 1940s she moved back to Chicago and played as a soloist in nightclubs. She continued to record sporadically up until 1963, often with the old gang of New Orleans/Chicago musicians like Johnny Dodds, Red Allen, Zutty Singleton, Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon, Lonnie Johnson, Buster Bailey, Natty Dominque, Lovie Austin, and Sidney Bechet. Lil kept active in the music business for the rest of her life, although far from the limelight. Strangely enough, Lil died while taking part in a Louis Armstrong Memorial Concert in Chicago while playing "St. Louis Blues", just two months after Louis had died.

By the mid 1930s Lil Hardin Armstrong had successfully established her own solo career as singer, pianist, songwriter, and bandleader.  She was a dedicated music professional frequently recording, broadcasting and performing.  She even led one of the first all-female jazz bands in Harlem in 1931 and again in Chicago in 1934.

Along the way Lil Hardin Armstrong completed formal music studies earning a diploma from the Chicago Musical College and a postgraduate degree from the New York College of Music.  She appeared in succesessful Broadway music reviews like “Hot Chocolates” and, “Shuffle Along.”  Throughout her career Lil was in the company of the most inventive and original talents of jazz.  Besides King Oliver and Louis the list includes:

    * New Orleans-born masters like: clarinetist Johnny Dodds, Sidney Bechet; trumpeters Red Allen and Freddie Keppard; and drummer Zutty Singleton;

    * pioneers of swing like bassist Wellman Braud of Ellington fame, saxist Chu Berry, and trombonist J.C. Higginbotham.

In the late 1930s Lillian was house pianist at Decca Records accompanying blues and jazz singers and encouraging new talent.  Lil Hardin was variously known as “Miss Lil” or “Miss Lillian” or Lil “Brown Gal” Armstrong -- and it’s fitting that she kept her last name Armstrong, because she had so much to do with nurturing Louis’ talent and making him a star.

ON HER OWN

Lil Armstrong was a strong independent woman who really knew how to take care of herself.  As her marriage to Louis faded she may well have had “man friends” of her own. But her professional dealings with Louis continued even as she was left behind by Louis’ meteoric rise.  She said she was: “standing at the bottom of the ladder holding it, and watching him climb. My feelings for him haven’t changed in spite of all the marriages.”  While they separated in 1931, their divorce was not official until 1938.

Lil Hardin Armstrong was without doubt a great jazz musician who made an indelible mark on early classic Jazz.  She was an independent woman who forged her own path through the male-dominated world of early jazz  and the race segregated culture of America before integration.

Ms. Hardin was a fashionable woman: the best-known publicity photographs of her in Louis and Oliver’s bands with bobbed hair and a flapper dress are not particularly flattering; however, later photos from the ‘30s are portraits of a handsome woman with style and presence.  In fact its little-known that she actually studied fashion and mounted a fashion show in New York in 1942.  However she was disappointed that people still perceived her only as a performer and she didn’t continue that course.

Originally from Nashville, Tennessee Lil studied music at Fisk college there which was one of the first advanced schools for blacks in the country.  In Chicago her path crossed that of another young musician from Nashville, Doc Cheatham whom she helped get started in the music business there.

There are surprising African musical influences in some of Lil’s compositions from this period.  Apparently she was by this time looking into the roots of jazz because a dramatic example is found in “Perdido Street Blues” which is based on an old, old traditional rhythmic pattern: a West Aftrican shuffle dance known from Congo Square (aka Congress Square) in New Orleans from before the turn of the year 1900.

Lil continued to play little clubs and occasionals, writing music, performing, recording occasionally and spent four successful years in Europe in the early 50s.

Her last recording session was put together by Chris Albertson for Riverside Records in 1961 with a 10 piece band: 3 trumpets and two trombones.  Albertson said that Lil was one of the liveliest entertainers he ever worked with.