Born to Swing: Lil Hardin Armstrong's Life in Jazz by Mara Rockliff (review)

The pastor didn't know what to make of his young organist who put a beat into the church hymns, but it shouldn't have been too surprising given her Memphis roots and the coming of the jazz age in the early twentieth century. By the time little Lil's family joined the Great Migration north to Chicago, she was in her element: "Chicago! State Street was like Beale Street, only better. They called it the Stroll. I called it heaven." A job in a music store led to showroom performances and a gig with the New Orleans Creole Jazz Band, which led her to the Dreamland venue and an up-and-comer named Louis Armstrong. Hard as it may be for kids who know Satchmo to believe, it was Lil (who later married Armstrong) who primed his career in Chicago, where her prominence gave weight to her endorsement of the new guy in town. Rockliff casts this picture-book biography in Lil's imagined voice, and her posthumous account of dying at the piano following a long and distinguished career (complete with post–World War II comeback) is surprising and happily uplifting. Wood's heavily brushed acrylics are sassy and vibrant, and the relatively realistic faces mounted on stylized bodies rivet readers on the human drama, not just the musical genre. Photographs of "Hot Miss Lil," a note, timeline, listening suggestions, and bibliographies of primary and secondary sources are included.