Moravian College

Who Was the Real LILLIAN HARDIN?
Jazz crept up on Brandi Fogel ’06. First she took up the saxophone; next, she found herself in the high school
jazz band. And, she says, she listened to a few CDs now and again. It was for a time a tepid relationship.
But a passion was budding and it came to fl ower when
she took Neil Wetzel’s jazz class during her fi rst year
at Moravian. She fell for jazz and for jazz history. As
a sophomore, she says, she borrowed a half dozen
CDs a week, delving into Stan Getz, John Coltrane,
Charlie Parker, and other stellar performers.
Louis Armstrong also belonged in her pantheon.
She had been indifferent to Dixieland jazz, but
Armstrong won her over to it. In the eight or nine
biographies of jazz greats she had read, two were
about Armstrong. But when it came to choosing
a subject for research in her senior year, her choice
wasn’t Armstrong but the remarkable African-
American woman who had existed in his shadow:
Lillian Hardin.
The more she uncovered about Hardin, the
more she was astonished at the woman’s talents and
character. For a time, Hardin had been Armstrong’s
wife. She was always in his train of admirers and
supporters. But her close ties with him (they both
died in the same week of 1971) had largely eclipsed
her own genius. At various times since she played
the church organ as a young girl, she had been a
jazz pianist, a bandleader, a songwriter, a scholar, a
band manager, and a fashion designer. The songs
she wrote were popular and widely played, though
seldom recorded, largely for lack of adequate
equipment. She was, as Brandi discovered, nothing
short of a phenomenon.
Among her credits, Brandi found, was a gig in
King Oliver’s renowned jazz band, which had a
fanatical following across America. Never known as
an innovative soloist at the piano, Hardin played
the supportive chords to round out the sound. In
that band was an up-and-coming second trumpet
player named Louis Armstrong. They became a
couple, marrying in 1924. Though the marriage
lasted only three years, the friendship continued
and the yoking of the two in the public mind went
on as well. For Hardin it was a bittersweet
connection. She adored Armstrong but, as Brandi
learned, “one of the things she struggled with was
that she was in the shadow of Louis Armstrong.” It
was probably unavoidable. Armstrong was perhaps
the most electrifying, brilliant musician of his time,
whose versatility as an instrumentalist, vocalist, and
stage personality upstaged everyone around him.
Hardin was not one to sulk, however. She studied
classical music, designed clothes that showed in New
York, toured Europe, and had started a book about
her life by the time she died. She also preserved
the music of her time. “Without her,” Brandi says,
“we wouldn’t have much of the music of that age
written down.”
An uncommon woman by Brandi’s lights or
anyone’s lights. Brandi’s search for the real Lillian
Hardin has left her with a profound admiration
for this woman and also a mission. “I am a crusader,”
she says, “to bring Lil out of the shadow of
Louis Armstrong.”