Living History

March is National Women’s History Month! We’ll be sharing stories about some of the most accomplished women in jazz, both nationally and locally. We hope you enjoy this tribute to the women of jazz. 

Lil Hardin’s life played out against a backdrop of historic social and economic change. She was born in 1898 in Memphis, Tennessee. Her grandmother, who took care of her, had been a slave in Mississippi. Of course, there was no television or radio, automobiles or airplanes – yet, during her lifetime,  Hardin’s music became known around the world. She gained fame as a jazz pianist, composer, arranger, singer and bandleader – and, notably, as the second wife of Louis Armstrong. She is credited with recognizing his talent and moving him from a second chair cornetist to the front of the stage.

As a child, Hardin was taught hymns, spirituals and the classics on the piano, and took her first formal lessons from her third grade teacher, Miss Violet White. Her mother sent her to a local music school and then Fisk University and, after graduating in 1918, Hardin moved to Chicago. Her first job was as a music sheet demonstrator at Jones Music Store, where she earned $3 per week.  She was discovered there by a bandleader who offered her $22.50 a week. Needless to say, Hardin enthusiastically accepted the job. A few years later, Louis Armstrong came to town from New Orleans and joined Hardin’s band.  Initially, she was unimpressed – she thought he was “too country.” But after a style makeover and whirlwind courtship, they two married in 1924. It was the second marriage for both. When Armstrong rejoined her Chicago band after a stint in New York, Hardin put up a huge banner declaring him “The World’s Greatest Trumpet Player.” During those Chicago years in the mid-1920s , the couple recorded some of  history’s most celebrated jazz recordings, which still stand the test of time.  Known as the Hot Five, the group consisted of Armstrong and Hardin, Kid Ory on trombone, Johnny Dodds on clarinet and Johnny St. Cyr on banjo. They rehearsed at the Armstrong home on E. 41st Street in Chicago, where today a neighborhood community park is named in Hardin’s honor. Despite the sweet music they made together, the Armstrongs divorced in 1931 – but their lives never fully disentangled. Hardin continued to sometimes bill herself as “Mrs. Louis Armstrong.”

Each went on to individual acclaim. Hardin formed an all-girl orchestra, then a mixed-sex big band, whose music was broadcast over NBC radio. She was also a swing vocalist for Decca Records and made the leap to television in a 1961 special called “Chicago and All That Jazz.” One month after the death of Louis Armstrong in 1971, she was performing in a televised tribute to him when she collapsed at the piano and died on the way to the hospital. Sadly, her private papers, including a biographical manuscript, were stolen from her Chicago home right after her death and never recovered, leaving a void that jazz lovers still lament.

But even without her written autobiography, it is easy to see that Hardin lived an extraordinary life — 73 years that were witness to some of history’s greatest changes, and resulted in an important musical footnote about the accomplished life of jazz legend Lil Hardin Armstrong.