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Billy Strayhorn (1915 - 1967)
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 Lush
Life : A Biography of Billy Strayhorn by David Hajdu
A 1996
nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award, this
perceptive, meticulously researched biography rescues from
obscurity the gifted Billy Strayhorn (1915-67), Duke Ellington's
arranger and composer of many popular Ellington Orchestra tunes,
including "Take the `A' Train." Worshipped by jazz
aficionados as the creative power behind the Ellington throne,
Strayhorn preferred to live quietly while his friend/boss took the
bows. In clear prose and with careful attention to nuance, David
Hajdu documents Strayhorn's contributions to the Ellington magic
and delineates an attractive personality who found good in almost
everyone he met.
Although he composed some of the most brilliant
American music of this century, Billy Strayhorn spent his entire
career as Duke Ellington's right-hand man and seldom escaped
Ellington's conspicuous shadow. To a great extent, this was a
willed obscurity: as an uncloseted gay man, Strayhorn preferred to
avoid the spotlight. Toward the end of his life, however, this
trade-off began to weigh more heavily on him. David Hajdu's
account is a model of the witty, elegant, and deeply sympathetic
biography.
 Lush
Life: The Billy Strayhorn Songbook Various Artists -
Jazz - Vocal, Billy Strayhorn (Tribute)
...Brilliant
performances that honor a brilliant man. -- Entertainment
Weekly
...An Ellingtonian by trade but an individual at heart,
Strayhorn's music had Ducal ebullience, but never without his own
voice....[Compilation producer David Hadju has] shown wisdom and
good musical sense in his choices, which range from the famed to
the all-but-unknown... -- Down
Beat
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From schirmer.com
Excerpt:
Born in Dayton, OH, on 29 November 1915, the
young composer and pianist Billy Strayhorn offered his composition
Lush Life to Duke
Ellington in 1938; less than a year later Strayhorn had become
an arranger and pianist with the Ellington band, a collaboration
that was to last until Strayhorn's death in 1967...
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From the Duke
Ellington Society
Excerpt:
During his lifetime, William Strayhorn
(1915-1967) was generally regarded of as merely the most
prodigious of Duke Ellington's small staff of assistants. However,
facts that have come to light since the death of both men reveal
that Strayhorn was a full musical partner in every way of the
greatest bandleader and composer in all American music...
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Billy Strayhorn Manuscript Editions is an
initiative of Billy Strayhorn Songs, Inc., and musicologist Walter
van de Leur. Part of our mission is to provide orchestras and
researchers with authoritative scholarly editions of Billy
Strayhorn's music, drawn directly from his original handwritten
scores, rather than transcribed from existing recordings.
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By Charles J. Gans, Associated Press
Excerpt:
During his nearly 30-year association with
Ellington, Strayhorn was jazz's invisible man, living in the giant
shadow cast by the Duke. Although a highly regarded pianist in his
own right -- whether filling in for Ellington with the orchestra
or taking part in the 1940s Harlem jam sessions where bebop was
born -- Strayhorn made only a handful of recordings under his own
name.
Why couldn't Strayhorn enjoy the fame and fortune his talents
should have earned him? Being a triple minority -- black, gay and
open about his homosexuality in an intolerant society -- meant he
could not be a public figure as a bandleader or composer, as
author David Hajdu suggests in the recently published "Lush
Life," the first biography of Strayhorn...
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Names Index:
A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P
Q R
S T
U V
W X
Y Z
| Authors
Index | Scholars
Index |
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