Loading details…
Artist
Lil Armstrong
12+ albums
oldiesjazzvocal jazzacousticRIP
about
Lil Hardin Armstrong (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 minor hit for Ringo Starr in 1978), her composition "Oriental Swing" was sampled heavily to create Parov Stelar's 2012 retro-song "Booty Swing," which in turn gained notoriety when it was used in a 2013 Chevrolet commercial. She was born as Lillian Hardin in Memphis, Tennessee, where she grew up in a household with her grandmother, Priscilla Martin, a former slave from near Oxford, Mississippi. 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 to or play these styles occasionally and covertly, because her mother, Dempsey (Lil called her "Decie"), a deeply religious woman, considered them "sinful". 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." It was at Fisk University, a college for African Americans
