written by
Molly Sweet
“I was just born to
swing, that’s all.”
-Lil Hardin Armstrong
(1898 – 1971)
B
efore there was Esperanza, before there was Nina and Ella, and even before there was Billie, there
was a jazz musician who, despite her immense contributions to the jazz world, never quite received the credit she
deserved. Lil Hardin (February 3rd 1898 – August 27th, 1971) was an American jazz pianist, composer, singer,
bandleader and the second wife of Louis Armstrong.
Born Lillian Hardin, in Memphis Tennessee, she grew up in a household with her grandmother and deeply
religious mother, Dempsey. At a young age, Hardin showed promise in music so Dempsey enrolled her in Mrs.
Hook’s School of Music to learn piano. Her instructor taught her hymns and spirituals but Lil yearned for something
more stimulating. She was drawn to the blues and jazz but her mother would not allow her to play “Satan’s music”. One afternoon, when Lil brought home the sheet music for “St. Louis Blues,” Dempsey, the worried mother that
she was, beat the devil out of Lil with a broomstick.
In 1918 she moved to Chicago where her pianistic artistry led her to cross paths with Louis Armstrong, who
she would later marry. King Oliver, of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, invited Hardin to play piano in his jazz
band and shortly after, Louis Armstrong joined the band as a second cornetist. Lil and Louis fell in love and were
married on February 4th, 1924. They collaborated together and eventually formed their own band, The Hot Five,
with Kid Ory on trombone, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, and Johnny St. Cyr on banjo. The band was immensely
prolific and recorded some of the most lauded recordings in jazz history. Some of Hardin’s most well-known
compositions include “Struttin with Some Barbeque,” “Perdido Street Blues,” “Just for a Thrill,” “Brown Gal,” “Doin’ the
Suzie-Q,” and “My Hi-De-Ho Man.”
By the late twenties, however, Lil and Louis’s relationship had deteriorated and when Lil found out that
Louis had been unfaithful, she divorced and sued him. “I felt sorry for Louis, but he two-timed me so I gave him a
divorce just to teach him a lesson—and I sued him too,” Lil recalled.
Lil continued to perform, compose and lead bands throughout the rest of her career but never again
collaborated with Armstrong. They remained close friends however, and when Armstrong died in 1971 and Lil was
so deeply rattled by the loss that while performing “St. Louis Blues” at a televised memorial service for him, she
collapsed at the piano and died.