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. February 3 is the 34th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1898 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... August 27 is the 239th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (240th in leap years), with 126 days remaining. ... 1971 is a common year starting on Friday (click for link to calendar). ... Jazz is a musical art form characterized by blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms, and improvisation. ... A pianist is a person who plays the piano. ... A composer is a person who writes music. ... In music a singer or vocalist is a type of musician who uses his or her voice as an instrument to make music. ... A Bandleader is the director of a band of musicians. ... Louis Armstrongs stage personality matched his flashy trumpet as captured in this photo by William P. Gottlieb. ... Sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or primarily in North America as the Roaring Twenties. // Events and trends Technology John T. Thompson invents Thompson submachine gun, also known as Tommy gun John Logie Baird invents the first working television system (1925) Charles Lindbergh becomes the first person to fly...

Hardin was born as Lillian Hardin in Memphis, Tennessee. In her youth she learned hymns, spirituals, and Classics on the piano. She was drawn to popular music and later blues, but could only listen or play these styles occasionally covertly, as her mother, a deeply religious woman considered them "sinful". While she sometimes claimed to be a valedictorian graduate of Fisk University, records show that Hardin actually attended for less than a year without receiving a degree. City nickname: The River City or The Bluff City Location in the state of Tennessee County Shelby County, Tennessee Area  - Total  - Water 763. ... A hymn is a song specifically written as a song of praise, adoration or prayer, typically addressed to a god. ... A spiritual is a African-American song, usually with a religious text. ... Classical music is music considered classical, as sophisticated and refined, in a regional tradition. ... This article is about the modern musical instrument. ... For the emotional state, see Depression (mood). ... Sin has been a term most usually used in a religious context, and today describes any lack of conformity to the will of God; especially, any willful disregard for the norms revealed by God is a sin. ... In the United States and Canada, the title of valedictorian is given to the top graduate of the graduating class of an educational institution. ... Fisk University is a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. It is the oldest college in the state. ... This article is about academic degrees. ...

Lil Hardin moved to Chicago in 1917. Her ability to read music, landed her a job demonstrating sheet music at Jones Music Store. Her third week on the job Jelly Roll Morton walked in the store and played the piano, making jazz variations on the tunes Lil had been playing. This had a profound effect on Lil, who now began exploring jazz style by creating variations on the sheet music. Her performances at the music store began to draw crowds, and she was offered a job at a Chinese Restaurant with clarinetist Lawrence Duhé's New Orleans Creole Band. Three weeks later, the band moved on to a better booking at the De Luxe Café, and from there to the jewel of Chicago's night life, the Dreamland. When King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band replaced Duhé's group at the Dreamland, Oliver asked Lil to stay with him. She was with Oliver at the Dreamland when an offer came for the orchestra to play a six-month engagement at San Francisco's Pergola Ballroom. At the end of that booking, Lil returned to Chicago while the rest of the Oliver band went on to Los Angeles. Chicago (officially named the City of Chicago) is the third largest city in the United States (after New York City and Los Angeles), with an official population of 2,896,016, as of the 2000 census. ... 1917 - Wikipedia /**/ @import /w/skins-1. ... Sheet music is written representation of music. ... Ferdinand Jelly Roll Morton (September 20, 1890 - July 10, 1941) was a virtuoso pianist, a bandleader, and a composer who some call the first true composer of Jazz music. ... In music, variation is a formal technique where material is altered during repetition; reiteration with changes. ... Lawrence Duhé (30 April 1887 - 1960) was an early jazz clarinetist and bandleader. ... San Francisco skyline. ... The Downtown Los Angeles skyline as seen from Hollywood. ...

In Chicago, Lil went back to work at the Dreamland, as pianist with violinist Mae Brady's orchestra. While there, she fell for Jimmie Johnson, a handsome young singer from Washington, D.C., whom she married on August 22, 1922. The marriage was short-lived, ending in divorce after Jimmy moved to Petosky, Michigan, in hopes of getting work and giving their marriage a new start. In the meantime, the Oliver band returned from California and opened at the Royal Gardens, with Bertha Gonzales at the piano, but soon found itself back at the Dreamland, with Lil at the piano. Jimmie Johnson (born September 17, 1975 in El Cajon, California) is a NASCAR Nextel Cup race car driver who currently drives the #48 Lowes Kobalt Chevrolet Monte Carlo owned by teammate Jeff Gordon and operated by Rick Hendricks Hendrick Motorsports. ...

His band was enjoying enormous success at the Dreamland when Oliver sent for Louis Armstrong to join as second cornetist. Armstrong was beginning to make a name for himself in their hometown, New Orleans, and regarded "Papa Joe" as his mentor. Some say that Oliver saw Louis as a threat to his jazz throne and decided that having him in his band was a good form of containment, although by all accounts both cornetists enjoyed working together. At first, Lil was unimpressed with Louis, who arrived in Chicago wearing clothes and a hair style that she deemed to be "too country" for Chicago, but she worked to "take the country out of him" and a romance developed (to the surprise of other band members, some of whom had been trying to woo pretty Lil for some time with no success). Lil already already had divorce experience and helped Louis get a divorce from his first wife Daisy, whom he had separated from back in New Orleans. Lil and Louis were married on February 4, 1924. Louis Armstrongs stage personality matched his flashy trumpet as captured in this photo by William P. Gottlieb. ... In Greek mythology, Mentor (sometimes Mentes) was the son of Alcumus and, in his old age, a friend of Odysseus. ... Jazz royalty is a term that reflects the many great jazz musicians who have some sort of royal title in their names or nicknames. ... February 4 is the 35th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1924 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Lil took Louis shopping and taught him how to dress more fashionably--she also got rid of his bangs, and began working on his career. Recognizing his extraordinary talent, she felt that he was wasting it in a secondary role. Louis was happy to be playing next to his idol, but Lil eventually persuaded him to leave Oliver and go it on his own. Armstrong eventually resigned from Oliver's band and, in September of 1924, accepted a job with Fletcher Henderson in New York City. Lil stayed in Chicago, first with Oliver, then leading a band of her own. When Lil's band got a job at the Dreamland Café, the following year, she prepared for Louis' return to Chicago by having a huge banner made to advertise him as "The World's Greatest Trumpet Player." Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, Jr. ... Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the United States, and is at the center of international finance, politics, communications, music, fashion, and culture. ... You might be looking for: Dreamland (amusement park), Brooklyn, New York Dreamland, Michigan Dreamland (radio program) (on XM Satellite Radio) Area 51 (nickname; it is ostensibly said to stand for Data REpository And Management LAND) The album by Robert Plant. ...

Louis was gaining an impressive reputation when Richard M. Jones convinced Okeh Records to make a series of sessions under his name: the classic Armstrong Hot Five recordings. With Lil at the piano, Kid Ory, trombone, Johnny Dodds, clarinet, and Johnny St. Cyr, banjo, this stellar group rehearsed at Louis and Lil's house on Chicago's East 41st Street and held its first session on November 15, 1927. Few recordings are as celebrated as the ones made by the Hot Five (and, sometimes, with Earl Hines replacing Lil, the Hot Seven) between then and the end of 1928. Lil had actually recorded five selections for Vocalion, leading the same group, in April and May, 1926. Richard M. Jones, Richard Marigny Jones, (13 June 1892 - 8 December 1945) was a jazz pianist, composer, band leader, and record producer. ... Okeh Records began as an independent record label based in the United States of America in 1918; from the late 1920s on was a subsidiary of Columbia Records. ...

In the late 1920s Lil and Louis grew apart. Armstrong formed a new Hot 5, with Earl Hines on piano. Lil reformed her own band with Freddie Keppard on cornet (who Lil considered the second best jazz trumpeter after her husband). Louis and Lil separated in 1931, though they remained friends. Earl Kenneth Hines, better known as Earl Hines or Fatha Hines (28 December 1903 - 22 April 1983) was a prominent jazz pianist. ... Freddie Keppard (sometimes rendered as Freddy Keppard) (February 27, 1890 - July 15, 1933) was an early jazz cornetist. ... 1931 is a common year starting on Thursday. ...

In the 1930s Lil Hardin Armstrong led an "All Girl Orchestra", then a mixed gender Big Band which broadcast nationally over the NBC radio network. The same decade she recorded a series of sides for Decca Records as a Swing vocalist, as well as appearing as a piano accompaniest for many other singers. She also recorded with Red Allen. // Events and trends The 1930s were spent struggling for a solution to the global depression. ... Gender, for the purposes of this article, is the perceived or projected (self-identified) masculinity or femininity of a person. ... A big bang, also known as a jazz orchestra, is a large musical ensemble that plays jazz music, especially Swing. ... The National Broadcasting Company or NBC is an American radio and television broadcasting company based in New York Citys Rockefeller Center. ... A Radio network is a network system which distributes radio programming to multiple radio stations. ... Decca Records is a British record label established in 1929. ... Swing music, also known as swing jazz, is a form of jazz music that solidified as a distinctive style during the 1930s in the United States. ... Henry Red Allen (January 7, 1906 - April 17, 1967) was an influential jazz trumpeter. ...

In the late 1940s and early 1950s she worked mostly as a soloist singing and playing piano. In a move to leave the music in the late 1940s, Lil took a course in tailoring. Her graduation project was to make a tuxedo for Louis, which she displayed prominently at a New York cocktail party that was held to announce her new field of endeavor. "They looked at Louis' tux and all the other things I had made and they were very impressed," she recalled, "but then someone asked me to play the piano. That's when I knew that I would never be able to leave the music business." Louis wore Lil's tuxedo and she continued to tailor, but only as a sideline and then only for friends. Her shirts, which friends received regularly on birthdays, proudly bore a label with her mother's name, "Decie," and beneath that, "Hand made by Lil Armstrong." Lil eventually returned to Chicago and the house on East 41st Street. She also made a trip to Europe and had a brief love affair in France, but mostly she worked around Chicago, often with such felow Chicagoans as Red Saunders, Joe Williams, Little Brother Montgomery, and Oscar Brown, Jr. Events and trends The 1940s were dominated by World War II, the most destructive armed conflict in history. ... Millennia: 1st millennium - 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium // Events and trends The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the... This article is about the musical term solo; for other uses, see solo. ...

In the 1950s, Lil recorded a biographical narrative for Riverside's Bill Grauer, which was issued in LP form. She would again appear on that label In 1961, participated in its "Chicago: The Living Legends" project as accompanist for Alberta Hunter and leader of her own hastily assembled big band. At that time, her favorite living pianists were Thelonious Monk and Billy Taylor, which helps to explain why, when Riverside producer Chris Albertson approached her about these recordings, her immediate reaction was, "Who's going to listen to that old stuff?" The Riverside recordings led to her inclusion in a star-studded 1961 NBC network special, "Chicago and All That Jazz," and a follow-up Verve album. The following year, Lil began writing her autobiography, in collaboration with Albertson, but she had second thoughts when she realized that such a book could not be done properly without including material that might discomfit Louis Armstrong, so the project was shelved with only five chapters written. Chris Albertson (born Christiern Gunnar Albertson in Reykjavík, Iceland on October 18, 1931) is a New York City-based jazz journalist, writer and record producer. ...

When Louis Armstrong passed away, in 1971, Lil was deeply shaken. She traveled to New York for the funeral and rode in the family car. "I think Louis would have found a way getting back at me if I hadn't put Lil in that car," said his widow, Lucille. Returning to Chicago, Lil felt that work on her autobiography could now continue, but the following month, as she performed in a televised memorial concert for Louis, Lil Armstrong collapsed at the piano and died an hour later.

Lil Hardin Armstrong'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 wen revived by Ray Charles in 1959), "Clip Joint", and "Bad Boy" (a hit by Ringo Starr in 1978. Ray Charles at the piano. ... Ringo Starr as photographed by John Kelley for the 1968 LP The Beatles (aka The White Album). Richard Starkey, MBE (born July 7, 1940) known by his stage name, Ringo Starr, is a popular British musician, best known as drummer for The Beatles. ... 1978 was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ...