Listening to King Oliver's and Louis Armstrong's 1923 Recordings, Part 3: Lil Hardin's Fine Piano Solo, A Blooper,+Bonuses

(Paying Subscribers, your gifts are at the very bottom as usual. You’ll find some great reading on Lil Hardin Armstrong, one with music notation.)

In Part 1, I provided quite a bit of background on the King Oliver band with Louis Armstrong, who recorded 100 years ago. And in Part 2, we took a close listen to one of my favorite recordings by the band. Today, let’s focus on the pianist in the band. We’ll hear one piece that features her piano, and one where she makes an embarrassing blooper that has never been mentioned before.

We’re talking, of course, about Lillian “Lil” Hardin Armstrong (1898-1971). She was from Memphis, and her family moved to Chicago in 1918. She and Oliver worked together in clarinetist Lawrence Duhe’s band that year. She was also with Oliver for the first few months of his California tour, from about June through September or October 1921. She went back to Chicago when work became scarce, and she was replaced by Bertha Gonsoulin (aka Bookman, her married name) for the remainder of the California tour. Gonsoulin went with them back to Chicago in late May or early June 1922 and stayed through about November. At that point she went back to her San Francisco home. (Her only known recordings are from her work there with Bunk Johnson in 1943.) Hardin returned to the band and met Louis, who had joined in July 1922.

At the time of these 1923 recordings they were both separated from their first spouses, and were starting a relationship with each other. They each got divorced, and Lil and Louis were married to each other in February 1924. They were separated by 1931 and finalized their divorce in 1938. But Lil continued to use the surname Armstrong and remained devoted to Louis for the rest of her life. In fact, she died just seven-and-a-half weeks after he did, right after she shockingly collapsed at the piano during a televised memorial concert for him.

Here is Lil in a publicity photo from the Maurice studio in Chicago, probably from the mid-1930s:

(Thank you to Jens Hultgren for correcting two serious errors that I found on Lil’s Wikipedia page! The page looks good now.)

Let’s listen to Lil’s piano solo from “I’m Going Away to Wear You Off My Mind,” written by pianists Clarence Johnson and Lloyd Smith, with Lloyd’s saxophonist brother Warren. These three Black men owned a well-known musicians’ shop in Chicago. Their song was registered at the Library of Congress in July 1922, and was soon recorded by various artists. Then the Oliver band recorded it at their first recording session, April 5, 1923. Here is Lil’s solo, a full 32-bar ABAC chorus, accompanied by the woodblocks of Baby Dodds. (It is not true that the full drum set was never used in recording studios in those days. In fact, Dodds’ drums can be clearly heard behind the clarinet solo on “Mandy Lee Blues,” recorded earlier on the same day. But let’s discuss that later.) Notice how Dodds complements the rhythms of the piano. And note that Lil plays in the tradition of Jelly Roll Morton. She saw him play once in Chicago and said he had a huge impact on her music:

In 1984, I published the first article, and still one of the only ones, about women in jazz that used music notation. I asked my late pianist friend Lou Terricciano to transcribe three excerpts of Lil’s solo. (I don’t recall why they are written in Db. The recording is in Eb!)

Here are the excerpts in the order that one hears them:

Fig. 3 below can be heard at 0:12 in the audio above. She repeats it at the corresponding place in the form, at 0:32. It’s a tricky ragtime-style passage where the right hand is in a pattern of three eighth-notes against the 1,2 of the left hand.

Fig 1, heard at 0:27, is a passage in double octaves (octaves in both hands) that connects the first and second half of the chorus (the return to A in the middle).

Fig 2 happens right near the end, at 0:44. Notice how independent her hands are, with the left descending while the right plays tricky rhythms up high.

So, now you know that I am an advocate for Hardin Armstrong, but I must let you hear a pretty bad blooper that nobody has ever noticed in the century since it was recorded. The point is not to make fun of her, of course! It’s part of my overarching aim to always get deeper into the music, to listen to all the instruments in a band, and to emphasize realities of the music life that are usually overlooked.

What is the reality in this case? Well, before tape recording became available by the late 1940s, there was no such thing as editing a recording. If someone made a mistake, you either had to throw out the recording and make another, or decide that it’s “good enough” and live with it. These decisions were made by the producer, with or without input from the leader of the band.

Remember, this was the first recording session for all of the artists involved. They had driven down from Chicago, and they recorded on April 5, stayed somewhere locally, and then came back to record more on April 6. It’s not known whether they originally planned to take two days, or whether that was decided at the end of the first day of recording. I would guess that it was the latter, as you’ll see.

“I’m Going Away..,” from which you just heard her featured solo, was the fourth number recorded that day. At the time, the only existing format for recordings (except cylinders, which were not used after 1929) was the two-sided 78 rpm record. So musicians usually recorded even numbers of tunes, most often four tunes.

So why did they continue on to record a fifth number, “Chimes Blues”? My guess is that Oliver as well as the producer had hoped to record even more numbers. After all, it was the band’s recording debut, and they clearly had a lot of pieces in their “book” (their repertoire). Further, it was to the advantage of Gennett Records to get as much recorded at each session as possible. So after four numbers they just kept going—at first.

But they had driven from Chicago to the studio in Richmond, Indiana, which takes 4 hours with today’s modern cars and highways, so it must have taken much longer then and they probably left Chicago early in the morning. And the major resource on Oliver to date, the 1987 book by Walter C. Allen, Brian Rust and Laurie Wright, shows that they had already had a grueling day, with many takes rejected, that is, not considered releasable. (You can see that they are listed as “destroyed.” Many were kept for a while, but were destroyed in May 1929.) On this page from the Oliver book, you can see all the takes listed. In each case, the one that was issued is the one followed by Ge and a 78 rpm catalogue number such as Ge 5133 (A and B indicate the two sides of each disc).

By the time they decided to try “Chimes Blues,” a 12-bar blues written by Oliver, I’m sure that they were all getting tired. They had been up since early morning. Hardin had just played her lively solo on “I’m Going Away..” four times (assuming none of the takes was cut short and broke down before her solo). And “Chimes Blues” had an exposed written piano solo, so the pressure was still on Lil.

Here is her complete solo, two blues choruses. The blooper occurs at 0:24 when she just hits a bunch of notes. Believe me, I totally relate, as this has happened to me and many other musicians when playing a written part under pressure—especially after recording for several hours. Your eyes glaze over for a second and you just grab any notes. (Hey, it even happened to Vladimir Horowitz on occasion in concert.) Let’s listen:

And here is the error, by itself, right at the beginning of this excerpt (after a few seconds of silence):

(“Chimes Blues” is famous because right after the piano, Louis plays his first recorded solo. We’ll get to that another time.)

Lil was an excellent musician, and there is no doubt that she knew she had screwed up. Notice that the take that was released—the one we’re listening to—was the middle of three. That means that the one after this that had more serious problems. And that doesn’t mean that it was Lil’s fault again—it could have been Louis or anyone else in the band. So they were left with one usable take, the second one.

I’m sure Lil said that she wasn’t happy with that second take, and I imagine that Oliver or the producer replied, “Everybody’s tired, and it’s not going to get any better if we keep doing more takes. We’d better stop for tonight and continue tomorrow when we’re all refreshed.” There was no way to play back recordings at that time, but after a night’s sleep they probably talked about “Chimes Blues,” and said “You know what? I don’t think it was so bad. Nobody will ever notice.” And they were right—until I, the trouble-maker, came along 100 years later! (I noticed this many years ago, but never wrote about it before.)

The second day they did four more, for a total of nine pieces. Why? My guess is that they weren’t certain yet how many of these performances would be good enough to release. Not only did “Chimes Blues” have an error, but it’s possible that Oliver or the producer weren’t quite satisfied with one or more of the other recordings. So they recorded an extra tune as a kind of safety measure.

And what happened to that ninth tune? Eight titles were released on four 78s in July 1923, but “Snake Rag” (from April 6, the second day) was not released until September 1923, as the B side of a 78. The A side is “Choo Choo Blues” by Art Landry's Syncopating Six, a white group. Landry’s group had had a session on June 16 where they only managed to complete one releasable take. So this was a way to get both of these “orphan” takes released. You can see the A and B labels here.

If you want to read more about Lil Hardin Armstrong, there is a 200-page biography by James Dickerson. As mentioned there, Lil had been working on a memoir, at first with the late jazz historian Chris Albertson, but she never finished it. Ethan Iverson, pianist and author of another Substack newsletter, transcribed and discussed some of Lil’s piano solos here.

Did you notice that I did not say anything about how important Lil was to Louis Armstrong’s career? That’s because I am so sick of reading that over and over, where there is zero mention about her own career and musical abilities. My focus is on her own excellent musicianship.

All the best,

Lewis

P.S. Paying Subscribers, your gifts are at the very bottom as usual. You’ll find some great reading on Lil Hardin Armstrong, one with music notation.