Behind Every Great Man: Lil Hardin and Louis Armstrong

Listen to Lil Hardin’s recollections about her career in music and her married life with Louis Armstrong in rare audio excerpts from Satchmo and Me, recorded by Riverside Records in 1963.

  Lil talks about her first job, at age 15, demonstrating sheet music at a music store in Chicago. There, she meets and is inspired by the great Jelly Roll Morton.

  Still a teenager, Lil is hired by the New Orleans Creole Jazz Band to be their pianist. She works out a compromise and pursues her budding musical career over her mother’s objections to her working in a “vulgar, no-good cabaret.”

  Shortly after Lil and Louis are married in 1924, the King Oliver Band begins to fall apart. Lil encourages her new husband to leave the band and go out on his own.

  While Louis is headlining at the Vendome Theater in Chicago, Lil finds a way to help him overcome his self-doubts.

  Lil recalls listening to Louis hit “high notes” on a radio show broadcast from Sebastian’s Cotton Club in Los Angeles.

  In June of 1931, Louis returns to New Orleans for the first time since 1922, and is billed as the “King” of trumpet players. Louis and Lil decide to go their separate ways soon after.

 All photos copyright and used with permission of The Frank Driggs Collection