Biography
Historians and critics alike have rendered factual details on Lillie Delk Christian unusually hard to locate, since nearly every writer felt compelled to insert personal prejudice when faulting her vocal timbre or even deriding its failure to match an “authentic” jazz singer. No comparable attacks appear to have targeted her fair-skinned peers Ruth Etting and Annette Hanshaw. The three performers worked in an analogous jazz-pop idiom, applying feminine warmth and a touch of sweetness that lent each tune an approachable honesty seemingly at odds with prevailing late-’20s notions of proper jazz delivery. While “girl next door” Hanshaw produced the most uniformly accomplished interpretations and “gangster’s moll” Etting projected a theatrically saccharine surface composure, Lillie Delk Christian offered a gentle, sweet delivery whose soft parlor vibrato meshed ideally with much of her pop-centered material. Between 1927 and 1928 she recorded more than fifteen selections for the Okeh label. Contemporary listeners voiced few dismissive remarks about her precise method, and several leading Chicago jazz players readily accompanied her on disc. Cornetist Louis Armstrong, clarinetist Jimmie Noone, and pianists Richard M. Jones and Earl Hines all found her worthy of studio support. The eight titles she made with Armstrong’s Hot Four secured her place in jazz history and have kept her work featured on countless early-jazz anthologies. Among her Okehs, “Too Busy!” is especially valued for Satchmo’s scat contributions, yet the more pop-oriented tracks—particularly the widely disparaged yet haunting waltz “Was It a Dream?”—let Lillie linger over melodic lines and radiate a distinctive glow.
Singles