Jazz and Blues Vocalist. She was born November 18, 1923 in Prichard, Alabama, one of six children to Sylvester and Maggie Love George. Maggie was a life member of Cedar Grove Baptist Church, Prichard, Alabama where Sylvester was a pastor. It was there where Lil began singing at an early age learning to sing gospel music and where she frequently performed her rendition of the "Precious Lord" hymn. By all accounts, she later went on to perform locally at the two existing nightclubs in Prichard, Alabama.Lillie married Elmer Greenwood (#156399689) on 6 Jan 1943 in Mobile, Alabama; but they divorced in 1981according to divorce court records published in the Mobile Register on 7 Feb 1981. Elmer served in the Army from 1945 through 1948 and died 5 Dec. 2001 with burial taking place at Lawn Haven Cemetery, Mobile County, Alabama. It was reported as well that she was separated from Elmer following his release from the Army in 1948, with Lillie remaining in California and pursuing her career.Lillie attended Alabama State College (now known as Alabama State University) in Montgomery, Alabama and upon graduating became an elementary school teacher at the Josephine Allen Institute in Mobile. In 1947, Greenwood entered and won the Amateur Night competition at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York with her rendition of "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself A Letter." Encouraged by the Mobile County School's music supervisor, she quit her teaching job and boarded a bus to California in 1949 to fully pursue a singing career. Her first job is reported to have been with the Slim Jenkins' Club in San Francisco and later finding her break with bandleader Roy Milton & His Solid Senders. During the three years that shewas a part of his ensemble, she recorded the blues tune "No More Heart Full of Pain", "Boogie All Night Long", "Ain't Gonna Cry", "Come Back Baby" and her duet with Little Willie Littlefield titled "Monday Morning Blues." The scores became her most prolific recorded body of work. In 1956 while performing at San Francisco's Purple Onion, Greenwood was hired by an impressed Duke Ellington to be a soloist for his orchestra. After Mercer Ellington took over as bandleader following his father's death in 1974, Greenwood remained a member until the late-1970s, when she retired from the music industry and returned to Mobile to care for her ailing mother who passed in 1981. Her singing career led to an acting role in the TV-movie "My Father's House" (1975) and an episode in the series "Good Times."According to a news account in 2002 "she would continue to perform locally, her past fame largely lost on hometown audiences. And the songs recorded during her time in California would be lost so thoroughly that it would be almost as if they were never recorded". However in 2002 Ace Records of England released the 21 track "Lil Greenwood: Walking and Singing the Blues" album which was said to be a "tour de force, a tutorial in the kind of blues singing one might have heard at an upscale West Coast club in the 1950s". She returned to public view in 2003, when then Alabama governor Bob Riley honored her for her lifetime achievements by declaring July 28, 2003, as Lil Greenwood Day in Alabama. She was honored as well by the City of Prichard (Outstanding Citizen Award), City of Mobile and Mobile County with Lil Greenwood Day proclamations. A tribute to Lil Greenwood based on these proclamations was also read into the US Congressional Record by then Senator Jeff Sessions from Alabama. At that time she was also inducted into Mobile's Gulf Coast Ethnic and Heritage Jazz Festival Hall of Fame. In 2007, Greenwood spent two days recording the album "Back to My Roots" with composer David Amram. It received wide critical acclaim but would ultimately be her last. In 2010, Greenwood suffered a stroke and was thereafter unable to perform or make public appearances. On July 17, 2011, a tribute concert to Lil Greenwood's career was held at the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science in Mobile. According to accounts of the time she was unable to attend owing to health issues and passed away just two days later, on July 19, 2011.