Talk:Lil Green

Birth year

This article, and many other articles like this, this, this, etc., state that she was born in 1919. However, Eagle and LeBlanc - normally a reliable source - here give her birth year as 1901. That is a very big difference - 18 years! I haven't seen any discussion anywhere of that discrepancy - Eagle and LeBlanc don't explain it. StefanWirz - or anyone else - do you have any explanation? Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:51, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

PS: Eagle and LeBlanc also give her birth name as Lillie May Johnson, born near Port Gibson, Mississippi - based on Social Security information. Ghmyrtle (talk) 22:19, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

PPS: A brief May 1954 obit in Jet magazine - here - gives her age at death as 40, suggesting birth in 1913/14. Ghmyrtle (talk) 22:38, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

PPPS: From Bob Riesman's book on Broonzy: "According to Lil Green, after she had been orphaned at age ten in Clarksdale, Mississippi, she had moved in 1929 to Chicago, where she dropped out of high school." A footnote refers to her 1940 Social Security application (also cited in E&leB) which gives a birth date of Dec. 22, 1910. It may be a complete coincidence, but the identical birthdate was used on a different SS application by an (apparently) entirely different Lillie Green who was born in Arkansas and died in 1995. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:01, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

According to note #1036 of Eagle and LeBlanc, p. 455, she, age 8 [sic], lived with her father [Elias Johnson] and siblings in Port Gibson (source: 1910 census, April 21) - hope this helps! StefanWirz (talk) 08:16, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Just found an info that Elias Johnson married Ida Crocket [sic-not Crockett, as in Eagle and LeBlanc] on May 17, 1885 in Claiborne County --- supposed those two actually were Lil Green's parents, her mother would have been in her ~ early fifties [supposed she was around twenty when they married] if she would have given birth to Lil as late as 1919 - I find that highly unlikely! StefanWirz (talk) 08:31, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

@StefanWirz:. Sorry for the belated reply. This photo of her was taken in 1942 by Carl Van Vechten. I don't think it looks like someone who was 40/41, but I agree that 1919 is almost certainly too late. If her publicity people said on her death in 1954 that she was 40, in my view that makes it highly likely that she was born no later than 1914. Could it be that the information that she was born in 1901 relates to a different person? I don't think we can resolve the issue so far as the article is concerned until there has been some further research into the apparent inconsistency - but, I'm coming to the view that the discrepancy should be mentioned in the main text, rather than as a footnote. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:23, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

PS: If her mother was born circa 1870 (perfectly likely), it's quite possible that she could have been born around 1913/14. However... I've looked at Ancestry.com, which indeed shows Lillie May Johnson, born 1901/02, in the 1910 and 1920 censuses - at both dates living in Port Gibson (not Clarksdale, which is over 150 miles away). In 1910, it shows her putative father Elias Johnson as widowed, aged 53. Looking at the user-generated content on that site, there is a record that she was born (c.)1902, married Herod (or Herrod) "Gus" Banks (before the 1920 census), and had three children in the early 1920s. Info on Herod Banks is accessible here; by 1940 he was fathering children with a different wife/partner (named Hazel); and he died in Memphis in 1996, aged 97. Does this match what we know from other sources about her life? If, so, it would go some way to confirming what E&LeB say - though I am still not convinced. Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:20, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

With the 1919 birth year, the article currently makes a somewhat preposterous claim. It says that she "honed her craft in the church performing gospel, she sang in Mississippi jukes, before heading to Chicago, Illinois, in 1929…" (at the age of nine) "…where she would make all of her recordings." Did she really hone her craft singing gospel, then sing in Mississippi jukes, before turning ten? —MiguelMunoz (talk) 01:54, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Of course this subject is likely to run and run. However, the recently added Mississippi Blues Trail Marker to this article states she was "born Lillie Mae Johnson in or near Port Gibson in 1901, she lived with her family in the College Street area as a child". Is the Mississippi Blues Commission a reliable source ? Put it another way, it seems somewhat ludicrous to continue to state 1919 was her birth year when other information, such as outlined by another editor immediately above, and the Trail Marker, tend to suggest otherwise. - Derek R Bullamore (talk) 20:55, 2 November 2023 (UTC)