Louis, Lil, and the little gangster

When Louis Armstrong passed away in 1971, Lil Hardin Armstrong came to New York for the funeral. Given the circumstances, it was no surprise to find that she was not her peppy self, but she also looked tired and drawn. I attributed some of that to the fact that New York was experiencing hot and humid weather, but Lil was also obviously shaken by the event. "I can't believe that Louis is gone," she said, more than once.

As you will see in the old article that ends this post, the bond that remained between Louis and Lil was indeed of the "'til death do us part" variety.

No one resented the long-lived friendship that existed between Louis and Lil more than Joe Glaser, Louis' longtime manager, who made continuous attempts to keep them apart. I was staying with Lil in 1962 when she received a phone call asking if she would be willing to participate in Disneyland's planned reunion of the Hot Five. Most of the members were still alive and playing well at the time, so it sounded like an interesting idea, but I heard Lil tell the man that, while she was interested, she was also certain that Glaser would never allow it.

Of course, she turned out to be right. Glaser feared anyone who might threaten his hold on Louis, and Lil was someone with whom he could not compete for Louis' attention.

When I mentioned Lil's Disneyland call to Earl Hines (who took over her piano bench for the Hot Seven recordings), he told me that Glaser's insecurities led to his creating animosity between members of the All-Stars group. To this end, he once had Hines' personal belongings placed in Louis' dressing room, and had his go-fer spread among the band members false stories that were designed to antagonize them against each other and prevent unity within the group. Glaser, once a low-level gangster, never really rose out of the gutter. He found a gold mine in Louis and worked it well, making sure that Louis never needed money. Thanks to Louis, Glaser was able to build and attract great artists to his Associate Booking Corp., but while he could rely on his star client's unshakable loyalty, he knew that there was one person, Lil, who always had Louis' ear. The bond between Louis and Lil was permanent, and she had a more realistic take on Glaser and how he operated. Consequently, Louis and Lil always met without his knowledge. Earl Hines shared Lil's view of the manager-client relationship—both felt that Louis ought to assert himself. "If Joe [Glaser] told Louis that he should sleep on the lawn in front of his house, Louis would have obeyed," Hines once told me.

I will eventually get around to posting here some correspondence between Glaser and Columbia Records, incredible documents that fell into my hands almost by accident—that is a story in and of itself.

In the summer of 1971, less than two months after Louis’s death, Lil Hardin Armstrong performed in Chicago at a memorial concert for her former husband. In the middle of a lively number, she threw her arms in the air and collapsed. It was a fatal heart attack that the public witnessed on the news that night. Minutes after it aired on New York channels, I received a rare call from Lucille Armstrong. "Did you see that?" she asked. When I replied that I had, she told me that Lil rode to Louis' funeral in the family car. "I had to put her in there," she added, "because Louis would have found some way to get back at me if I hadn't."

Lil in 1962, at the entrance to her house, holding one of Louis' old trumpets. This is where Lil lived out her life, the house in which the Hot Five and Hot Seven groups rehearsed.

When I interviewed the Armstrongs' former maid shortly after Lil's death, she had very little of positive nature to say about Lucille. I told her that some people believed Louis' marriage to Lucille had been on shaky ground for a long time. "Oh yes," she replied. "Did they tell you that she wanted a bigger house out on Long Island?" I had heard about that, and that Louis told her she could have it, but he was staying in Corona. She also told me that a highlight of her time with the Armstrongs came when Lil arrived for the funeral. "I went upstairs to Lucille's room and told her that Mrs. Armstrong had arrived. She didn't like that much.

A few days after Lil's death, The Saturday Review asked me to write a remembrance. Here it is:

LIL ARMSTRONG - A FOND REMEMBRANCE
Saturday Review, September 1971.

In September of 1961, I met for the first time the young lady who so often had stared back at me through shadowed eyes on a faded photograph of King Oliver’s famous Creole Jazz Band. Thirty-eight years had then passed since Oliver’s band posed for that picture; there remained only a handful of rare old records and two surviving members to tell the story.

Louis Armstrong and Lillian Hardin had met in the Oliver band, married in 1924, and gone on to make those extraordinary Hot Five recordings. Through ten years of marriage, Lil had not only contributed musically to Louis’s career, she had been its guiding force. Their marriage ended in the early Thirties, as Louis embraced world-wide fame, but Lil’s love and admiration for him remained with her for the rest of her life. She still wore the rings he had given her; she preserved with the devotion of a museum curator his old cornet, letters, photographs, and earliest attempts at writing music; she spoke of him with an indifference belied by the spark in her eyes.

As we sat in the living room of the house Lil and Louis had purchased in the mid-Twenties, I felt a sense of history: it was here that the famous Hot Five rehearsed; upstairs was the guest room King Oliver frequently occupied. Though she surrounded herself with such reminders of bygone days, Lil Hardin Armstrong refused to live in the past. I told her that I had come to Chicago to produce a series of recordings and that I wished to devote one album to her. Her response was surprising, but—I soon found out—typical: “Tell me,” she said, “who would want to listen to that old stuff?” Then she laughed as if the thought of her doing an album were a joke and walked over to a small collection of records. “This,” she said, holding up albums by pianists Billy Taylor and Thelonious Monk, “is what I like to listen to. I only wish I could play that well.”

I got to know Lil better during the next two weeks. She really meant what she said; her playing was in the old style, but her musical taste was thoroughly modern. I introduced her to a Gil Evans arrangement of her own tune, Struttin' with Some Barbecue, featuring Cannonball Adderley—she was ecstatic. Two weeks later when we finished her album she was quite pleased with the result, but she still found it hard to believe that anyone would actually buy it.

From those two weeks in Chicago, a friendship developed. On one of her numerous trips to New York, Lil told me she was preparing her autobiography and asked me to write it with her. For almost a year, sheets of neatly typed manuscript arrived regularly from Chicago. Lil turned out to be an excellent writer and storyteller; all she really needed was an editor. As the book began to take form, an agent [the late Anne Curtis-Brown] produced a publisher’s contract, but Lil had last-minute reservations: the book, she felt, offered too personal a picture of Louis and their relationship. Rather than change anything, she decided to shelve the manuscript. This did not impair our relationship; her concern was understandable.

Later, in those early Sixties, Lil learned through friends that I was out of a job and not doing at all well financially. She immediately sent me a round-trip airline ticket to Chicago with firm instructions to “come out and be properly fed and cared for.” I stayed three weeks, gained several pounds, and returned to New York with my morale considerably boosted. I shall always remember that visit. Lil introduced me to some of her many friends, not once hinting at her charity; she borrowed a tuxedo so that I might escort her to a cotillion dance; she sat up nights when I was out, and there was always a snack ready in the refrigerator; she entertained me at the piano, laughing at past mishaps, sometimes fondly mimicking Louis, and often extracting from her remarkable memory an anecdote she knew I would enjoy.

Once, in the Forties, she had tried to retire from music. Having graduated from a school of tailoring, she staged a fashion show in New York, complete with champagne, prominent guests, and as many people from the press as she could summon. This debut in the world of fashion was to have been her farewell to the music profession. The invited marveled at her creations and drank up her champagne, but when the evening drew to a close and someone said, “Now, play some piano,” Lil knew that no one would take her new ambition seriously. Fashion design and tailoring became a hobby, the fruits of which she reserved for close friends.

Although she spent over fifty years at the piano, playing, singing, and composing, Lil never really took her music seriously. She had originally played marches in grade school and hymns in church, but at Fisk University she studied classical piano, and one of her proudest possessions was a faded program from a Bach recital she had given in her youth. Framed, it was prominently displayed on her living room wall. She used to laugh when I told her of hours spent in my hometown, Copenhagen, with groups of jazz record collectors listening to her old records. “You people were listening to Louis,” she said, “because I know you couldn’t have been taking my playing seriously.”

In recent years, much of Lil’s time was spent in Idlewild, a Michigan lake resort where she had built a small, comfortable house on land purchased by her during the early years of her marriage to Louis. She had planned to sell the old house in Chicago and retire to Idlewild. I suspect she would have done this a few years ago had it not been for the fact that the old house formed such an important part of her memorabilia. She would never admit it, but it was hard for her to part with any reminder of Louis. The love she tried to conceal but couldn’t was very much in evidence a few months ago when she called me after learning that Louis was in the hospital; she wanted to know what reports I had heard of his condition. “If I know Louis,” she said, “he’ll just keep going,” but it was clear that she didn’t really believe that. In July she came to New York for the funeral.

She stayed with a friend who lived in a Harlem housing project, and asked me to drop by on the following day. New York was hot and humid that afternoon, and Lil did not look well. I attributed this to the sweltering heat in the un-airconditioned apartment and the ordeal of the funeral, but she told me, with unconvincing disconcern, that her blood pressure was too high and that her doctor advised her to give up work for a while. It was hard to believe that Louis was gone, she said. “I guess I’m the only one left of the old Oliver bunch.” A few minutes later her characteristic vivacity returned, but it no longer seemed natural. She spoke of her new piano, a bedroom she had added to her house in Idlewild, and a summer shirt she was planning for me, but every once in a while she shook her head and said she couldn’t imagine Louis’s being dead. It was the last time I saw Lil, but she called me from Chicago toward the end of August. The time had come, she said, to seek a publisher for her autobiography.

Two days later my television screen cruelly showed her dying at the piano during a memorial concert for Louis.

Chris Albertson

September, 1971

Please click on images to enlarge them.

Tailoress Hardin

Sometimes we are surprised to discover that people whom we hold in high regard for one talent are also to be admired for another. Of course, some people are so creative that they simply don’t recognize genre boundaries. My long-time friend, Geoffrey Holder, comes to mind. I bring this up because I was thinking of Lil Armstrong, as I often do, and a decision she made in the 1940s. Her career in music had gone beyond the success most performers enjoy: Her participation on the historic recordings of King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and the celebrated Louis Armstrong Hot Five sides would have been enough to secure for her a prominent place in the history of American music, but the creativity did not end there. Following her divorce from Louis, Lil continued to write enduring compositions and she made noteworthy recordings with her own bands. She kept the famous name, but—as you will see in a future post—not just for its obvious commercial value.

In the 1940s, when the popularity of big band swing was cresting and music magazines like Down Beat and Metronome showed increased interest in the past, Lil's musical career did not seem likely to reach a dead end. Thus it came as a surprise to her friends and admirers when she put away her baton, closed the lid on her piano, and dragged out the old Singer: Lil Armstrong enrolled in a school for tailoring.

When she graduated, Lil threw a party to make it known that seamstress Armstrong was ready to take orders. Her piece de resistance at school, the garment that earned her the graduation diploma, was a tuxedo for Louis. It was displayed prominently at the party, among several other samples of her work.

Many people came to help Lil celebrate. They sipped their champagne, nibbled on their canapes, and admired the displayed fashions, but it wasn’t long before someone suggested that Lil “play some piano”. That’s when she realized that she would never shake off the music. Of course, I don’t think she really wanted to.

Some twenty years later, I asked Louis if he still had that tux. That brought a big grin to his face and he seemed surprised that I even knew about it. “No,” he said, patting himself on the stomach, “but it was a perfect fit.........back then.” No surprise there, for I had by then experienced on my own how meticulously Lil too measurements—a custom-tailored shirt from Lil became something I could look forward to each year on my birthday.

So, Lil did not totally abandon that side of her talent, but she only created clothes for friends and never for profit. Lil’s desire for good, fancy clothes went back to her childhood, but she had to wait a few years before she could indulge herself.

The door to that indulgence opened wide around the end of WWI, when Lil became a member of the New Orleans Creole Jazz Band (her description of its members will be a future post). After a three-week engagement at a Chinese Restaurant, the band was booked into the the Southside’s De Luxe Café, on State Street and Lil started making a good salary that was augmented by tips. Decie, Lil’s mother was deeply religious, so Lil told her that she was playing accompaniments at a dancing school, but the charade only lasted until a neighbor spotted the young girl at the club and told Decie the truth. Lil was as persuasive as she was determined, so she managed to calm her mother’s fears with the promise of adult supervision. One of the musicians would bring her to and from the De Luxe every night.

"A Mr. Quinn came in the place once a month and he had the unusual habit of tearing a $20 bill in half, giving me one half and keeping me worried all through the rest of the night for fear that he’d get too drunk to remember to give me the other half, but he never forgot. With all these tips and my salary, I began to get new ideas as to how to dress after Decie had seen the 'dump' I was working in and given the go sign to keep working. I discarded all my midi blouses and started to spend all my money on clothes. The girls remarked that I sure did cultivate in a hurry, little did they know that I had always had expensive taste and all I needed was the money to satisfy it.

Mr. Schorr, my boss, really help me satisfy my expensive taste by sending me to Madame Marguerite, a place where his wife bought her clothes. The first suit I bought there was a French import, mustard-colored wool, trimmed in navy blue pure satin. I didn’t even bat an eye when she said that the price was $200! I knocked ‘em cold when I came to work in the outfit and from then on I sure made up for all the time I had to wear middies to work to fool Decie. Every week, I had something delivered to the house C.O.D."

I still have some of the shirts Lil made for me. My initials were always either sewn into the lining or onto a breast pocket, and every shirt bore Lil’s own label, with her beloved mother’s name.

The King Oliver band heads for Frisco

Text is from an unpublished copyrighted manuscript

Lil Hardin had not yet met Louis Armstrong when she joined King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in Chicago. She was still very young and new to the entertainment world and all that it brings with it. Here she talks recalls the days before the band made its historic trip to California. A subsequent post will contain her California memories. I hope you find this interesting and don't hesitate to post a comment. (The above photo was taken during the band's San Francisco engagement. Click on it for a better look)

Ollie Powers, Billy Ledman and Ralph Delaney were working with us at the Dreamland and Snow Fisher, the greatest of all the cakewalking dancers, often came in and broke up the house. Olive Hickman, a singer from Denver, Colorado, came to work with us later on. She was a nice-looking mulatto girl with a high soprano voice. She sang with such keys and she could be heard above all the noise in the room. It was her singing that inspired me to write My Heart Will Always Lead Me Back To You, a ballad that Louis later recorded, cutting the title so that it is now known simply as My Heart. It was a beautiful ballad in waltz tempo and I can't say that I like it as much in the form that was recorded by Louis. I also wrote Sweet Lovin’ Man while I was at the Dreamland, and Alberta Hunter sang that one for me.

No matter how smoothly things were going, somewhere a problem would always creep in. Johnny, my boyfriend, was my biggest problem. He was very possessive and wouldn’t allow anyone to even take me to a show. Everyone thought this was a shame and people began to tell me things about him that I hadn’t known. It turned out that he not only had as many prostitutes is the other pimps around there, but he also had a wife and three children! When I heard that, I immediately began to figure out some way of getting from under this guy.

I couldn’t tell Decie for she would have made a scene and then there would have been serious trouble. I must admit that Johnny was just what I needed at the beginning, but by now I knew my way around and all the education that I had gotten from the musicians had just about given me all the answers. In a way, I think my romantic life was ruined forever in those days. I never really believed what any man said, probably because I was in constant contact with older people and I saw all the different methods that men used to get women, and how they discarded them soon after getting them. The musicians used to say that they pitied the man that married me, probably because they didn't think I'd be an understanding wife. Nearly all of them had back-door romances and some of them were even keeping two households going. I remember one time asking Joe about his love for his wife, and when he indignantly replied that he loved his wife, I asked him how he could have an outside woman, rent a house for her, and lead such a double life. He just laughed and said that I didn't understand. Dewey and Ed Garland weren’t as gullible, they both had prostitutes and thought that guys like Joe were crazy.

Things were really in the groove at Dreamland when we got an offer to go to San Francisco and play for six months at the Pergola Ballroom at 949 Market Street. Joe accepted the offer and now I had to figure out how to go without Decie and Johnny being able to figure out where I was going, or for how long. I finally told them both that we were going to New York to make some records, and I told the guys in the band to tell the same story. I was a nervous wreck those last two weeks before we left, but Johnny Dodds was the most worried of all the guys in the band. He told Joe that he was a fool to think that I could pull such a stunt, but I made it. On May 30, 1921 we left for San Francisco and I was one happy and relieved gal when the train finally pulled out.

Johnny and Joe brought their wives along on the two women snored so loud on the train that no one else got much sleep. When we arrived in Frisco, we were met by a misty penetrating cold that froze our very livers. You never heard such mumbling and complaining about the weather. Joe yelled, “Sunny California, hell, this must be Alaska,” and all of them made a beeline for the store to buy warm coats, having left their heavy coats in Chicago, because we were going to “sunny” California. Well, it never got warm or sunny enough for me, I stayed cold all the time and had to sleep with a hot water bottle at my feet. I also bought a camel hair coat and an oil stove for my room, but the real trouble was that I was anemic and had poor blood circulation.

After a few weeks I was sure that I had TB, and so I went to a doctor to be examined for an awful pain in my chest. This pain turned out to be nothing but a form of indigestion and the doctor prescribed toast, stale bread, and lots of fruit and vegetables from then on.

Lil talks about the band's stay in San Francisco in the September 4, 2009 post—Lil Hardin's Memories.

Lil Armstrong interview - 1 of 3

As anyone who has given my blog a modest going-over knows by now, Lil Hardin Armstrong and I were good friends in the last ten years of her life. We met in September of 1961, when I was in Chicago producing a series of session for Riverside Records' "Living Legends" series, a continuation of a project started in New Orleans nine months earlier. I have posted my recollections and reflections on both trips elsewhere on this blog. You will find links at the bottom of this one.

This time I am posting the first of three tape reels containing a very casual audio interview with Lil, done in 1968 as an initial step in our collaboration on her autobiography. As you may know, unforeseen circumstances halted that project and I have already posted a few excerpts from the manuscript here. I recently came upon this tape and thought it might be of interest, although Lil reminisced about some of the same things for Bill Grauer in 1956. That became a Riverside LP called "Satchmo and Me," which may be difficult to obtain today. Anyway, the Grauer interview was heavily edited and it had unnecessary narrative bridges. A transcript of that release has since been made available for $14 by someone trying to cash in on it. This interview, on the other hand, is unexpurgated and free.

Here is a link to Part 2 of this three-part interview.

Additional links that pertain to Lil:

The Jones Music Store, Jelly Roll, and Handsome Men
Louis, Lil, and the Little Gangster

King Oliver

King Oliver and Lil Hardin in SF, 1921

A knowledgeable member of the Organissimo forum started a thread on King Oliver, one of the jazz pioneers about whom we don't know nearly enough. That said, I thought I'd quote an illuminating recollection by Lil Armstrong, who was a very dear friend of mine and with whom I collaborated on a book.

Sad to say, our project was shelved in 1971, when Lil passed away. She was performing at a memorial for Louis, a man she never stopped loving. Much more to come about Lil, whom I met in 1961 while producing Chicago sessions for the Riverside label. Anyway, here is her hitherto unpublished observation on Oliver.

"Joe appeared quiet and reserved, but he could keep you in stitches saying funny things under his breath. He sat next to the piano and, at intermission or between sets, would tell me jokes--nasty ones, clean ones, and some true ones. He got a big kick out of shocking me and my modesty with the nasty ones. I resented the nasty ones he told me, but said not a word to him about it—I’d just listen to everything he said, all the time learning about men and their ways. I soon found out that New Orleans men were as great in philandering as they were in music… Joe took me into his confidence, later I figured out why he had done so. Whereas he was a sensational cornetist, his musical knowledge was limited; when it became necessary for us to learn a new tune, Joe had me go over it with him alone. Consequently, when the band rehearsed together, he already knew it, and no one was the wiser. I didn’t mind at all, in fact, it made me feel important to be of real service to the King. I never failed to ask him anything I wanted to know about anything, he really ‘put my boots on'."


Here's more about Oliver.

The New Orleans Creole Jazz Band

World War I was still raging in Europe and Lil Hardin was 16 when she found a $3-a-week job demonstrating sheet music at Mrs. Jennie Jones' music store on 3409 1/2 South State Street. She had no experience playing jazz, but that would soon change. Mrs. Jones also ran a booking and employment agency, and she rented space for rehearsals.

During her first two weeks at the store, Lil had a brief but meaningful encounter with Jelly Roll Morton, so she was ready for the New Orleans Creole Jazz Band when it arrived in Chicago and auditioned for Mrs. Jones. This band truly deserves the over-used "legendary" tag. We know little about this group, because it simply arrived on the Chicago scene too soon, never recorded, and was quickly overshadowed by better groups and individuals, most notably King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band.

Lil's career was given an early start by the New Orleans Creole Jazz Band:

When they auditioned for Mrs. Jones, I nearly had a fit when they started out on the Livery Stable Blues. I had never heard a real jazz band before and their music made goose pimples break out all over me. They played loud and long, weaving in and out of the melody was a cheese and rhythm, and seemingly enjoying every minute of it. They also obviously enjoyed to fit that I was having over their music. Mrs. Jones didn’t have a fit, but she liked them and immediately booked him into a Chinese restaurant.

The band had six pieces: violin, cornet, clarinet, trombone, bass and drums. They didn’t have a piano but they found out that to play for the entertainers at the Chinese café they would have to add one. They tried out all the available male pianists but were not satisfied with any of them. One night, just for fun, Mrs. Jones sent me over to play with them and I remember grinning and giggling all the way to the place because I was so thrilled at the thought of playing with a real jazz band.

When I sat down at the piano, I asked for the music but they told me that they didn’t use sheet music. Then I asked them in which key they were going to play and they told me just to listen and then “hit it” after hearing two knocks from the leader. I listened and fell right on in with them. When I heard the two knocks, I struck as many the keys as I possibly could at one time, because, that way, I thought to myself, whatever they’d be in, I’d be in it, too! After a few measures, I began to feel a chord changes and I was “in the groove”—and in the band. I remember hearing Eddie Garland, the bass player, say “Listen at that little old gal,” as I grinned and did my best to be a miniature Jelly Roll Morton.

A later Creole Jazz Band w. Freddie Keppard and Jimmy Palao.

When we finished the first number, they asked me how old I was, and all of them nearly fainted when I told them. “They’ll put us all in jail,” one of them said, but they still wanted to keep me, so they just told me to say that I was 21 years old if anyone asked. Lawrence Dewey, the clarinet player, who was also the leader, told me not to report to the music store the next day, because they intended to keep me with them at a salary of $22.50 a week.

Now is really time for me to start worrying. I was afraid that Mrs. Jones would tell Decie that I was working in a cabaret and then it would be all over for me. I didn’t know what to do, but I finally decided that I just couldn’t go back to work in the music store, so I told Decie that I had a new job, playing for a dancing school in the evenings. When I told her that I was to get $22.50 a week she laughed and said that I must have misunderstood them, she had never heard of such a salary.

There was no misunderstanding when I brought home my first pay and Decie counted the money. She and Mr. Miller gasped and stared for they couldn’t believe their eyes. Now I was really walking on clouds, all that money plus the thrill of being with the band.



Things went very smoothly at the Chinese place but I do remember one night when “Dovey,” one of the entertainers gave me a rough time. She rehearsed her song in one key, telling me that it was just right, but when she got out on the floor, she yelled back for me to “drop it.” I became very nervous and I dropped a key for sure, I dropped is so low as she was singing bass! Well, she couldn’t very well yell “raise it,” so she just kept singing. When she finished and came off the floor, she called me every name in the book, words that I had never heard before.

Everybody tried to shame her by telling her that I was nothing but a child. She would answer, “If she’s old enough to be playing here, she’s old enough to be cursed.” I was scared stiff and quiet as a mouse, but the musicians assured me that no one was going to touch me as long as I was with them. A few nights later Dovey apologized and she treated me swell from then on. Somehow I always seem to be to make friends with people, even after getting off to a wrong start.

The other members of the Creole Band were Sugar Johnny on cornet, trombone player Roy Palmer, Jimmy Palao on violin and Tubby Hall on drums. The piano was considered to be a solo instrument in New Orleans and so they had never used one there, but a fellow by the name of Louis Keppard had played guitar with them.

Sugar Johnny never had much to say to anyone, he was ill and always coughing and sneezing between sets the fellows said that it was tuberculosis and I think that’s probably true. I personally didn’t get to learn anything about him or his personality, but I do remember that he played a growling style of cornet. Finally, he became too ill to continue with the band and so he was replaced by Freddie Keppard who growled a little louder and had a better tone.

Freddie, a tall, beefy light-skinned guy, was conceited. He just knew that he was the best cornet player that ever hit the sidewalks of Chicago. Whereas Johnny never drank, Freddie drank all night, and the more he drank the better he played. All he was conceited, he was actually a real good-natured fellow, always laughing and joking on the bandstand between sets. I remember how he used to strut in and out of the place, like a peacock, and he always dressed better than the other fellows—there was no counting all the suits he had. The applause from the patrons would bolster his ego and help to make the place really jump to the surefooted maneuvering that he performed on his horn.

Jimmy Palao, the violinist, was a Creole. He was fair and had straight hair, I rarely understood what he said. They all simply murdered the English language and I often wondered if any of them had ever gone to school. I never asked them though, I was too glad to be a member of the band. Jimmy was undoubtedly the worst violinist ever to hit Chicago and the people didn’t take to him, because, at that time, Chicago was seething with such fine violinists as Elliott Washington, Clara Jones and Clarence Black. This made no difference to the New Orleans guys for they were very clannish stuck with each other, so Jimmy stayed on with the band.

Eddie Garland was also the band’s business manager. He was short, brown, a little stoop-shouldered, and full of fun all the time. The band had kind of adopted me and Eddie took the trouble to explain a lot of things to me, not only about playing in bands but also the facts of sex, love and the different relationships between men and women. Decie hadn’t told me any of these things, but Eddie was a good teacher for, in a couple of months, I knew all I needed to know and then some.

I was always anxious to find out how the guys happen to get into this music game and Eddie delighted in telling all that he knew. He was born in New Orleans and had started playing guitar when he was 14—he and his brother, Johnny, and a four piece band that played for parties around New Orleans. Once while substituting in the famous Imperial band, the trombonist, a fellow by the name of George Fields, suggested that Eddie join a promising young outfit from La Place, in John’s Parish. That was Kid Ory’s band, which also featured Lawrence Dewey, Eddie Robinson on drums, a guy by the name of Stone on guitar, and a cornetist called “Chip.” Eddie, or “Montudi,” as everyone called him, told me that he was the first one to introduce slap bass to Chicago, with George “Pops” Foster and Wellman Breaux following close behind.

Lil and Jimmy Johnson on their wedding day in 1922.

Dewey was a skinny, brown skinned guy who coughed almost as much a Sugar Johnny. I would have sworn that he had the TB, too. Truly the playboy of the band, he had two or three chicks supplementing his salary with money that they made from men that came in the place. He hardly ever spoke to me, so I never found out much about his background.

Tubby Hall was an excellent drummer. He was mild-mannered and real fat. Everyone thought he was too fat for the Army, but Uncle Sam thought he was just right, so it wasn’t long before he was off to do his stint. His brother, “Minor” Hall came to take his place, and he was also a good drummer who never missed a beat. He wasn’t quite as fast as Tubby, but he was a little shorter and he had a violent temper. I remember he was always threatening to beat up somebody.

Roy Palmer was a jolly, carefree sort of guy. The fellows said that he wasn’t too good a trombone player. They accused him of being lazy and kidded him about sliding a note in every other bar. He was actually the band’s great gambler and he was caught in a raid one night at the Pioneer club. He had to slide down a gutter to escape arrest and he tore the seat out of his pants. He came to work without changing clothes and we laughed and kidded all-night. He also thought it was very funny and the incident never dimmed his desire for gambling nor revisiting the Pioneer, club which was quite a gambling joint.

When I look back over those years it seems uncanny that we were able to play for hours without any sheet music. The only time we used music was when it came to accompanying the entertainers. That’s where I was boss, because I could read their music and, from playing at the music store, I knew nearly all the songs they sang. I learned about orchestrations and transposing music for singers once when Mrs. Jones sent me on a gig with Curtis Mosby. He asked me if I could read orchestrations and I answered “If it’s music, yes.” Actually, reading orchestrations is much more difficult than reading music written out for just one instrument, but somehow I picked it all up naturally in that one night.

Life on the road after Louis

Just in case you wondered how Lil Hardin Armstrong passed the time after she and Louis split, here is the 1932 to 1960 overview she sent me. The photo is from a 1950s appearance in France. She had a great time in France, saw a lot of Sidney Bechet, and carried on a brief romance with a Frenchman. Please click on the images to make them readable.

Lil Hardin's memories...

More of Lil Armstrong's recollections (from an unpublished, copyrighted manuscript). This part covers her six-month stay with the King Oliver band at San Francisco's Pergola Ballroom, in the summer of 1921. It is interesting that San Franciscans found it difficult to dance to the band, but rather liked it as a concert attraction.

We were staying at a hotel on the edge of Chinatown and we laughed a lot at the funny music which we heard the Chinese play. Joe and his wife had a room just up the hall from me and I thought nothing of going to the room to talk to Joe, whether his wife was home or not. One day she told me to stay out of the room and not to talk to Joe if if he wasn't home. I was both hurt and humiliated for I had been accustomed to talking to the musicians at any time and it never occurred to me that it should make any difference whether their wives were around or not. It was Johnny Dodds' wife who finally straighten things out. She told Mrs. Oliver how the band men treated me and assured her that I was a nice girl and not Joe's girlfriend.

Mrs. Oliver finally invited me to have dinner with them one day and from then on she proved to be one of my best friends through the years. Joe often gave me a strange look and I knew that he was afraid I'd let something slip about his double life and extra girlfriends, but I never said a word about that. I was so happy to have Mrs. Oliver like me that I hung around her, trying to learn how she coped and did things in general. The only thing I did learn was how to cook rice the way they did in New Orleans.

Minor Hall and I lived in adjoining rooms and we decided to pool our money and eat together. I could only cook bacon and eggs, but one day I made up my mind to have red beans and rice, as I had seen Mrs. Oliver cook. The meal didn't turn out too well, the beans were slimy and the rice wasn't quite right. That meal ended our partnership, Minor told the guys in the band about it and I came to the conclusion that cooks and piano players were miles apart.

Our engagement at the Pergola ballroom didn't turn out too well, either. The people didn't understand our music and claimed they couldn't dance to it. We sounded fine to the boss who had come all the way from Frisco to Chicago to hear us before he hired us. We tried everything to please the people. The boss, who was supposed to be a great authority on music, even at a man bring in a metronome for us to play by! Thinking all of us were musically limited, he began to expound the wherein and wherefores of music tempo and the like, and to tell us just why our music was not right. We let him talk and when he finished, I finally put in a word or two. I let him know that the metronome was no strange or foreign object to me, and I proved my point by playing some Bach and an étude by the metronome. The musicians were elated and the boss we convinced that we were right and that the patrons were wrong. However, business continued to be bad and the boss lost money on us. Still he paid as every week, kept us there for the full six months and then gave us our transportation back to Chicago.

While we were at the Pergola, we got a week's engagement at the Frisco Theatre, where we packed them in and the people really enjoyed the music. It seemed that our music was good to listen to but impossible to dance by. One day, Mrs. Dodds came to the theater to see the show. On her way out, she overheard a man say "call themselves Creoles, ain't nothing but plain niggers." We all laughed when she told us about it, we couldn't have cared less.

Johnny Dodds constantly kept an eye on me to see if I erred socially. I claimed to be such a nice girl at all times, but once he thought he'd caught me wrong. A comedian named Brown, who was playing the theater in Frisco, took me out to dinner. After dinner he insisted that I go by his hotel and have a drink with him. I told him that I didn't drink, so he told me that he'd have one and then take me home. I felt that he had other plans, but I also knew that Jimmie Palao and "Montudi" Garland lived in the same hotel as he did, so I felt safer. Sure enough, as soon as we got to the hotel, he became all chummy and lovey-dovey. I pretended to like it and I asked him to show me where the bathroom was. He told me that it was down the hall and I asked him to leave the door open. Then, down the hall I went and up the steps to Montudi and Jimmie's room. They were surprised to see me, but I told them what was up and that I intended to spend the rest of the night with them! Well, they were both upset but it didn't bother me, I just slept with them, on the outside of the bed. Later, they told me what a hectic night it had been for them, and when I came to work the next night, Johnny was waiting for me. "So, where did the nice girl spend the night?", he said, "don't tell us you stayed at home." I let him finish and then told him what had really happened. It was a big laugh on Montudi and Jimmie, but Joe said I was crazy and that I must never do a thing like that again. I saw nothing wrong with staying with a member of the band, but staying with a rank stranger was definitely out. They all gave up on me and said that I was sure "way off".

With the place empty, everybody's nerves were getting on edge. One night, Joe and Minor got into an argument, because Joe had decided to replace Jimmy with another instrument. Minor gave in his notice and Joe sent for Baby Dodds, Johnny's brother, to come and play drums with us.

Baby started playing the drums and doing the shimmy at the same time, he may quite a hit when he joined the band. Business picked up a little and, for a while, we thought we had it made, but Baby wasn't enough and business didn't improve enough. I was fascinated by Baby's drumming and watched him very closely. I thought he was the cutest and youngest looking of the New Orleans fellows, but I also noticed that he was stuck on himself, so I decided to keep him at a safe distance. It wasn't hard to get him to talk about himself, he told me that he had wanted to play the drums when he was a kid, so he stripped three rungs from a chair to make drumsticks, which he played with on tin cans. It didn't take him long to find out that the base board of the Dodds family's outhouse had the sound of a bass drum, so that kept him busy. When his father bought a clarinet for Johnny, annoy insisted on a drum for himself. His first job was with a guy named Willie Hightower and they played it various white folks' homes on Sundays. They weren't paid any money, just ice cream and cake. Later, they had a chance to work at St. Catherine's Hall and then Baby got to play with the Eagle Band and Celestine's Tuxedo Band. He was still a minor when he finally had a chance to play in a cabaret, but he just put on long pants.

Baby got around to playing all the tonks and saloons, and he told me some pretty tall tales about them. Some places had gambling and tonk on the second floor, to piano and drum accompaniment, while there was a saloon on the first floor. He played in one saloon that was famous for its oyster loaves and girls. The chicks ordered the loaf, the customers paid for it, then shoved it to one side and finished their business.

Years later, Baby played with Fate Marable on the steamer "Capitol", out of St. Louis. He was playing there when Joe sent for him to join us in Frisco. His arrival turned into quite a reunion, for Johnny and Baby hadn't seen each other for a long time. Johnny had no idea that his brother's drumming had improved so much, and Baby seemed to think that Johnny was annoyed because of it. That I couldn't understand, and I still think that Baby was wrong on that score.

David Jones came along with Baby Dodds, to replace Jimmie. He played a mellophone, which to me was a new instrument, but he played it real well and it added a nice new sound to the band. He was a fairly good musician and he could read music real well, so, naturally, we started to talk about music, and the like. Soon he told Joe that he was going to be my sweetheart and Joe told him to just go ahead and try it. Well, he didn't get any more consideration from me than the other musicians had. I just felt that they were all my big brothers and I love them in that way.

Finally, our six months at the Pergola Ballroom were up and I returned to Chicago while the rest of the band went on to Los Angeles, where they stayed another six months.