A sonic exploration and tonal analysis of contemporary creative music in a myriad of improvisational/composed settings, textures, and expressions.
Welcome to Sound Projections
I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
Thus this magazine will strive to critically question and go beyond the conventional imposed notions
and categories of what constitutes the generic and stylistic definitions of ‘Jazz’, ‘classical music’, ‘Blues.’
'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual
artists and ensembles do cretively to challenge and transform our ingrained ideas and attitudes of what
music is and could be.
So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay
homage to the endlessly creative and uniquely magisterial dimensions of MUSIC in all of its guises and expressive identities.
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, songwriter, arranger, conductor, ensemble leader, producer, and teacher
An extravagantly gifted composer, arranger, and pianist -- some considered him a genius -- Billy Strayhorn toiled throughout most of his maturity in the gaudy shadow of his employer, collaborator, and friend, Duke Ellington. Only in the last decade has Strayhorn's profile been lifted to a level approaching that of Ellington, where diligent searching of the Strayhorn archives (mainly by David Hajdu, author of the excellent Strayhorn bio Lush Life) revealed that Strayhorn's contribution to the Ellington legacy was far more extensive and complex than once thought. There are several instances where Strayhorn compositions were registered as Ellington/Strayhorn pieces ("Day Dream," "Something to Live For"), where collaborations between the two were listed only under Ellington's name ("Satin Doll," "Sugar Hill Penthouse," "C-Jam Blues"), where Strayhorn pieces were copyrighted under Ellington's name or no name at all. Even tunes that were listed as Strayhorn's alone have suffered; the proverbial man on the street is likely to tell you that "Take the 'A' Train" -- perhaps Strayhorn's most famous tune -- is a Duke Ellington song.
Still, among musicians and jazz fans, Strayhorn
is renowned for acknowledged classics like "Lotus Blossom," "Lush
Life," "Rain Check," "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing," and "Mid-Riff."
While tailored for the Ellington idiom, Strayhorn's
pieces often have their own bittersweet flavor, and his larger works
have coherent, classically influenced designs quite apart from those of Ellington. Strayhorn
was alternately content with and frustrated by his second-fiddle
status, and he was also one of the few openly gay figures in jazz, which
probably added more stress to his life.
Classical music was Strayhorn's
first and life-long musical love. He started out as a child prodigy,
gravitating toward Victrolas as a child, and working odd jobs in order
to buy a used upright piano while in grade school. He studied harmony
and piano in high school, writing the music for a professional musical,
Fantastic Rhythm, at 19. But the realities of a black man trying to make
it in the then-lily-white classical world, plus exposure to pianists
like Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson, led Strayhorn toward jazz. He gigged around Pittsburgh with a combo called the Mad Hatters. Through a friend of a friend, Strayhorn gained an introduction to Duke Ellington when the latter's band stopped in Pittsburgh in 1938. After hearing Strayhorn play, Ellington immediately gave him an assignment, and in January 1939, Strayhorn moved to New York to join Ellington
as an arranger, composer, occasional pianist, and collaborator without
so much as any kind of contract or verbal agreement. "I don't have any
position for you," Ellington allegedly said. "You'll do whatever you feel like doing."
A 1940-1941 dispute with ASCAP that kept Ellington's compositions off the radio gave Strayhorn his big chance to contribute several tunes to the Ellington band book, among them "After All," "Chelsea Bridge," "Johnny Come Lately," and "Passion Flower." Over the years, Strayhorn would collaborate (and be given credit) with Ellington
in many of his large-scale suites, like "Such Sweet Thunder," "A Drum
Is a Woman," "The Perfume Suite," and "The Far East Suite," as well as
musicals like Jump for Joy and Saturday Laughter, and the score for the
film Anatomy of a Murder. Beginning in the '50s, Strayhorn also took on some projects of his own away from Ellington, including a few solo albums, revues for a New York society called the Copasetics, theater collaborations with Luther Henderson, and songs for his friend Lena Horne. In 1964, Strayhorn
was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus, aggravated by years of
smoking and drinking, and he submitted his last composition, "Blood
Count," to the Ellington band while in the hospital. Shortly after Strayhorn's death in May 1967, Ellington recorded one of his finest albums and the best introduction to Strayhorn's work, And His Mother Called Him Bill (RCA), in memory of his friend.
If you are familiar with the jazz composition, “Take the A Train,”
then you know something about not only Duke Ellington, but also Billy
“Sweet Pea” Strayhorn, its composer. Strayhorn joined Ellington's band
in 1939, at the age of twenty-two. Ellington liked what he saw in Billy
and took this shy, talented pianist under his wings. Neither one was
sure what Strayhorn's function in the band would be, but their musical
talents had attracted each other. By the end of the year Strayhorn had
become essential to the Duke Ellington Band; arranging, composing,
sitting-in at the piano. Billy made a rapid and almost complete
assimilation of Ellington's style and technique. It was difficult to
discern where one's style ended and the other's began. The results of
the Ellington-Strayhorn collaboration brought much joy to the jazz
world.
The history, of the family of William Thomas Strayhorn (his
mother called him “Bill”) goes back over a hundred years in
Hillsborough. One set of great grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. George Craig,
lived behind the present Farmer's Exchange. A great grand-mother was the
cook for Robert E. Lee. Billy, however, was born in Dayton, Ohio in
1915. His mother, Lillian Young Strayhorn, brought her children to
Hillsborough often. Billy was attracted to the piano that his
grandmother, Elizabeth Craig Strayhorn owned. He played it from the
moment he was tall enough to reach the keys. Even in those early years,
when he played, his family would gather to listen and sing.
In
1923 Billy entered the first grade in a little wooden school house,
since destroyed. Soon after that, however, his mother moved her family
to Pittsburgh to join Billy's father, James Nathaniel Strayhorn. Mr.
Strayhorn had gotten a job there as a gas-maker and wire-puller.
Charlotte Catlin began to give Billy private piano lessons. He played
the piano everyday, sometimes becoming so engrossed that he would be
late for his job. He also played in the high school band.
His
father enrolled him in the Pittsburgh Musical institution where he
studied classical music. He had more classical training than most jazz
musicians of his time.
Strayhorn lived a tremendously productive
life. He influenced many people that he met, and yet remained very
modest and unassuming all the while. For a time he coached Lena Horne in
classical music to broaden her knowledge and improve her style of
singing. He toured the world with Ellington's band and for a brief time
lived in Paris. Strayhorn's own music is internationally known and
honored. It has been translated in French and Swedish.
Some of
Strayhorn's compositions are: “Chelsea Bridge,” “Day Dream,” “Johnny
Come Lately,” “Rain- check, and “Clementine.” The pieces most frequently
played are Ellington's theme song, “Take the A Train” and Ellington's
signatory, “Lotus Blossom”. Some of the suites on which he collaborated
with. Ellington are: “Deep South Suite,” 1947; the “Shakespearean Suite”
or “Such Sweet Thunder,” 1957; an arrangement of the “Nutcracker
Suite,” 1960; and the “Peer Gynt Suite,” 1962. He and Ellington composed
the “Queen's Suite” and gave the only pressing to Queen Elizabeth of
England. Two of their suites, “Jump for Joy,” 1950 and “My People,” 1963
had as their themes the struggles and triumphs of blacks in the United
States. Both included a narrative and choreography. The latter Strayhorn
conducted at the Negro Exposition in Chicago in 1963. Another suite
similar to these two was “A Drum Is a Woman.” The “Far East Suite” was
written after the band's tour of the East which was sponsored by the
State Department.
In 1946, Strayhorn received the Esquire Silver
Award for outstanding arranger. In 1965, the Duke Ellington Jazz Society
asked him to present a concert at New York's New School of Social
Research. It consisted entirely of his own work performed by him and his
quintet. Two years later Billy Strayhorn died of cancer. Duke
Ellington's response to his death was to record what the critics cite as
one of his greatest works, a collection titled “And His Mother Called
Him Bill,” consisting entirely of Billy's compositions. Later, a
scholarship fund was established for him by Ellington and the Julliard
School of Music.
The young pianist and composer Billy Strayhorn was introduced to Duke
Ellington, already a major international star and leader of one of the
world's most popular bands, for the first time backstage at an Ellington
Orchestra performance at the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh in December
1938. After a brief audition, which consisted of Strayhorn playing a few
of his own compositions as well as interpretations of Ellington
numbers, Duke hired him on the spot - even though there was no specific
role for him in the band, which already had a regular pianist. The
partnership between these two immensely talented musicians would
continue for the next twenty-five years, until Strayhorn's death from
cancer and alcoholism at the age of 52, and produce some of the most
beautiful, exciting, and important American music of the century.
While
Strayhorn, who rarely performed in public and recorded infrequently,
has long been respected in jazz circles as an arranger and as the
composer of such classic songs as "Take the 'A' Train," "Chelsea
Bridge," "Lotus Blossom," and "My Little Brown Book," he has never
really received his due as an independent artist. In his tremendously
moving book "Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn," David Hajdu
goes a long way towards remedying this historical oversight by focusing
long overdue attention on this shy, modest man who always shunned the
spotlight during his lifetime.
An aspiring classical pianist,
Strayhorn's musical interests as a young man ran more towards Stravinsky
and Ravel than Louis Armstrong or Fletcher Henderson, however he saw in
Ellington an ambitious popular composer who had already experimented
with longer works in a semi-classical vein. Equally as important, Duke
was the personification of Strayhorn's youthful daydreams of urban
sophistication and elegance, a milieu Strayhorn was only able to imagine
in songs like "Lush Life," the ultimate paean to cafe society, penned,
amazingly, when he was just twenty-one. "Ellington," writes Hajdu,
"projected an air of Continental polish that meshed exquisitely with
Strayhorn's own infatuation with townhouse culture: jazz and cocktails
in the very gay places on the wheel of life. Billy Strayhorn read the
New Yorker; Duke Ellington was one, as Strayhorn could become by working
with him." And, indeed, once settled in New York, Strayhorn quickly
became a stylish fixture in the world of New York nightlife, moving
easily between high society parties and Harlem nightclubs like Minton's
Playhouse, where he impressed early beboppers like Dizzy Gillespie and
Max Roach with his piano skills. He also became one of New York's most
notorious drinkers, a habit that would only increase as the years
passed.
Hajdu suggests that the relationship between Ellington
and Strayhorn was as much a familial one as a professional one. Within
days of arriving in New York, after staying unhappily at a Harlem YMCA,
paid for by Ellington, Strayhorn had moved into Duke's palatial Harlem
penthouse along with Duke's sister Ruth, his son Mercer, and Duke's
girlfriend. Never in their long association were Strayhorn's precise
duties within the Ellington organization clearly defined. "Strayhorn had
no job description and no contract," writes Hajdu, "not even a verbal
understanding of general responsibilities and terms of compensation. 'I
don't have any position for you,' remarked Ellington. 'You'll do
whatever you feel like doing.'" Duke never even paid Strayhorn a regular
salary, he simply took charge of all Strayhorn's financial affairs,
paying for housing, food, wardrobe, and living expenses.
Musically,
Ellington granted Strayhorn enormous autonomy. "He left me to my own
devices," said Strayhorn. "He never sat down and said, 'Well, this is
the way you do this.' Never, never - never." The men's personal and
artistic rapport became so strong that Ellington began allowing
Strayhorn to finish writing some of his uncompleted songs or
compositions that he was struggling with, and most observers have a hard
time telling where Duke's work ends and Strayhorn's begins. Strayhorn,
though, was seldom given a publishing credit for these co-writing
duties, and when his own originals became part of the orchestra's
songbook, Ellington often took a co-composer's credit, a practice common
among bandleaders in this period.
Although frequently frustrated
by the lack of recognition for his contributions to the Ellington
Orchestra, an issue that led him to leave Duke briefly in 1955,
Strayhorn himself was disinclined to seek too much public acclaim.
Openly homosexual, Strayhorn, says Hajdu, was a triple minority: "he was
black, he was gay, and he was a minority among gay people in that he
was open about his homosexuality in an era when social bias forced many
men and women to keep their sexual identities secret." If American
society was barely prepared to accord a black man like Ellington, with
all his charisma, poise, and flair for self-promotion, the respect he
deserved as a world-class creative artist, it was far from ready to show
that same respect for a gay black artist like Strayhorn. Had he sought a
higher profile, perhaps leading a band of his own, Hajdu suggests, he
would have had to keep his sexual orientation closeted. "Forsaking
public prominence, Strayhorn sought personal freedom in service to the
Duke Ellingtion Orchestra. Now there might not be a Billy Strayhorn
Orchestra. But there was a Billy Strayhorn."
Within the Ellington
organization, Strayhorn's homosexuality was never an issue. Duke
accepted him as he was. Period. This was undoubtedly an important factor
in Strayhorn's devotion to Ellington. One friend of Strayhorn's said:
"Duke Ellington afforded Billy Strayhorn that acceptance. That was
something that cannot be undervalued or underappreciated. To Billy, that
was gold." Another friend added: "We all hid, every one of us, except
Billy. He wasn't afraid. We were. And you know what the difference
between us was? Duke Ellington."
Hajdu follows Strayhorn from
Harlem to Hollywood to Paris, as he lives out the "lush life" of his
fantasies. We are presented with vivid and memorable portraits of
Strayhorn's friends and associates from various walks of life, including
Lena Horne, Rachel and Jackie Robinson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
and Medgar Evers, as well as Ellingtonians like Ben Webster, Jimmy
Blanton, Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, and most of the major figures in
the jazz world. All of them, it seems, held Strayhorn in extraordinarily
high regard, as a uniquely talented musician and as a man of rare
intelligence and grace. By the end of this extremely personal account of
Strayhorn's life, we have come to know him quite well and the tragic
details of his final months are extremely distressing. David Hajdu has
done an outstanding job of elucidating the complicated life of this
enormously talented and too often overlooked artist. This is surely one
of the best books ever written about jazz.
Shortly after midnight on December 1, 1938, George Greenlee
nodded and back-patted his way through the ground-floor Rumpus Room of
Crawford Grill One (running from Townsend Street to Fullerton Avenue on
Wylie Avenue, the place was nearly a block long) and headed up the
stairs at the center of the club. He passed the second floor, which was
the main floor, where bands played on a revolving stage facing an
elongated glass-topped bar and Ray Wood, now a hustling photographer,
offered to take pictures of the patrons for fifty cents. Greenlee hit
the third floor, the Club Crawford (insiders only), and spotted his
uncle with Duke Ellington, who was engaged to begin a week-long run at
the Stanley Theatre the following day. “As soon as my uncle introduced
us,” said Greenlee, “I turned to Duke and I said, ‘Duke, a good friend
of mine has written some songs, and we’d like for you to hear them.’ I
lied, but I trusted David. I knew Duke couldn’t say no with my uncle
standing there. So, Duke said, ‘Well, why don’t you come backstage
tomorrow, after the first show?’ It was all set.” The next morning, Greenlee arranged (through Perelman) to meet
Strayhorn for the first time in front of the Stanley Theatre before the
1:00 p.m. opening matinee. The day was chilly but still, and a light
snow fell on and off. Strayhorn was collected, Greenlee would recall,
and looked properly ascetic – “He was wearing his Sunday best, but they
were pretty well worn.” They watched the first show, a long set of
Ellington Orchestra numbers peppered with a tap-dance act (Flash and
Dash) and a comedy team (the Two Zephyrs), then found their way through
the baroque old Stanley, eight stories high, with thirty-five hundred
seats and three full floors of dressing rooms. Ellington’s dressing room
was the size of a large dining room and, in fact, was set up like one:
several place settings were arranged on a table, and there was an
upright piano along one wall. Ellington, alone with his valet, lay on a
reclining chair in an embroidered robe, getting his hair conked, eyes
closed. “I introduced Billy, and we stood there,” said Greenlee. “Duke
didn’t get up. He didn’t even open his eyes. He just said, ‘Sit down at
the piano, and let me hear what you can do.'” Strayhorn lowered himself
onto the bench with calibrated grace and turned toward Ellington, who
was lying still. “Mr. Ellington, this is the way you played this number
in the show,” Strayhorn announced and began to perform his host’s
melancholy ballad “Sophisticated Lady,”
one of a few Ellington tunes Strayhorn knew from his days with the Mad
Hatters; as a trio, the group used to play a version inspired by Art
Tatum’s arabesque 1933 recording. “The amazing thing was,” explained
Greenlee, “Billy played it exactly like Duke had just played it
on stage. He copied him to perfection.” Ellington stayed silent and
prone, though his hair work was over. “Now, this is the way I would play
it,” continued Strayhorn. Changing keys and upping the tempo slightly,
he shifted into an adaptation Greenlee described as “pretty,
hip-sounding and further and further ‘out there’ as he went on.” At the end of the number, Strayhorn turned to Ellington, now
standing right behind him, glaring at the keyboard over his shoulders.
“Go get Harry,” Ellington ordered his valet. (Harry Carney, Ellington’s
closest intimate among the members of his entourage in this period, had
played baritone saxophone for the orchestra since 1926, when he was
sixteen years old, and the two frequently traveled together to
engagements.) “Wellll…” proceeded Ellington dramatically as he faced
Strayhorn eye to eye for the first time, Ellington gazing down,
Strayhorn peering up. “Can you do that again?” “Yes,” Strayhorn replied
matter-of-factly, and began Ellington’s ruminative “Solitude,”
once more emulating the composer’s piano style. When Harry Carney
entered the room, Ellington stage-whispered, “Listen to this kid play.”
Again Strayhorn declared, “This is the way I would play it,” and
reharmonized the Ellington song as a personal showcase. Brazenly (or
naively) the twenty-three-year-old artist demonstrated both a crafty
facility with is renowned elder’s idiom and a spirited capacity to
expand it through his own sensibility. The potency struck Ellington,
Greenlee recounted: “Billy was playing. Duke stood there behind him
beaming, and he put his hands on his shoulders, like he wanted to feel
Billy playing his song,” Carney hustled out and returned with two more
members of Ellington’s musical inner circle: alto saxophonist Johnny
Hodges, thirty-two, a premier Ellington soloist since he joined the band
in 1928, and Ivie Anderson, thirty-three, who became Ellington’s first
full-time vocalist in 1931. As this group gathered around Strayhorn, “Things got hectic,”
said Greenlee. “Duke fired off a million questions about Billy’s
background and training and so forth. Billy kept playing from then on,
mostly his own things – ‘Something to Live For,’
which he sang, and a few others” (including a piece so new he hadn’t
given it a title yet). Recalling the occasion in later years, Ellington
focused on that moment: “When Stray first came to see me in the Stanley
Theatre, I asked him the name of a tune he’s played for me, and he just
laughed. I caught that laugh. It was that laugh that first got me.”
However impressed he may have been by Strayhorn’s musical skills,
Ellington was also struck by something visceral. Uncertain how best to use him – Ellington’s orchestra already
had a pianist – Ellington left Strayhorn with an initial assignment to
write lyrics to an instrumental piece. As Strayhorn recalled, “I know
how something-or-other it must have been to meet a young man in a
town like Pittsburgh. I played for him. I played and sang. Uh, he, uh,
he was – he liked me very much, and he said, ‘Well, you come back
tomorrow,’ and he gave me an assignment. He had an idea for a lyric. He
said, ‘You go home and write a lyric for this,’ and I did. I rushed home
and I wrote this lyric.” (The title of the song and the lyrics are
unknown.) Strayhorn returned to see Ellington the following evening and
submitted his work but found that the frantic events of late had taken a
visible toll on him. “Everybody was just so wonderful to me – Ivie
Anderson particularly, because she was worried,” he said. “She said,
‘Lookit, you go out and get yourself a sandwich or something, because
you’re not eating.’ I must have looked a little peaked.” Invited back,
he visited Ellington again at the Stanley three days later, when he was
given a second assignment, this time to apply his evident skill at
harmonization to a vocal selection for Ivie Anderson. As Robert Conaway
remembered, “After the meeting, he said, ‘He likes my work, and he gave
me an assignment to do'” The next evening, Strayhorn worked on his orchestration for
Ellington, polishing it with the help of his friend Bill Esch rather
than returning to the Stanley; Ellington left the theater early that
night anyway and spent the after-show hours at the Loendi, a black
social club in a rambling three-story brick house on the Hill. By the
follwing evening, Ellington’s last at the Stanley, Strayhorn was ready
and returned with his work, and, sharing his good fortune, he brought
along Esch. Ellington, who was between shows, wrapped up dinner in his
dressing room with Thelma Spangler, a striking, soft-spoken young woman
he had met the previous evening at the Loendi. The three musicians
huddled together on their feet, poring over music paper for about five
minutes, discussing aspects of the arrangement animatedly, Spangler
recalled. A chime sounded and Ellington tucked the manuscript under his
arm, pronouncing, “Time to go back on.” Spangler watched the show from the wings. Strayhorn and Esch
stood behind the curtain, near Ellington’s piano, while Ellington passed
parts of Strayhorn’s arrangement to the musicians on stage. “Duke gave
some of the guys some tips,” said Spangler. “Like, he’d hum something to
one guy, or he’d say, ‘You come in here.’ A couple of times he asked
Billy something, and Billy answered him, and then Duke explained it to
the band. It all happened very quickly. Then Ivie came out on stage.
Duke whispered to her and raised his hand, and they did the song, just
like that.” The arrangement was a slow-tempo version of “Two Sleepy
People.” “Oh God, it was pretty, like something in a dream,” Spangler
said. “Ellington smiled all over himself, and he told Billy after the
show how happy he was with his music.” Clearly pleased, Ellington offered Strayhorn work. The kind of
work, however, remained unclear. As Strayhorn recounted, “He said,
‘Well, I would like to have you in my organization. I have to find some
way of injecting you into it. I have to find out how I do this, after I
go to New York.’ He was on his way back east then. So I said, ‘Well, all
right.’ Ellington paid Strayhorn twenty dollars for his orchestration
of “Two Sleepy People” and jotted down subway directions to his
apartment on Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem. “They were packing up – Willy
Manning was getting clothes together in trunks and everything,”
Strayhorn recalled. “And off they went, and off I went back home and
back to the drugstore.”
CAUTION: Users are warned that this work is protected under copyright
laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or
transfer the work via any medium must be secured with Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, LLC.
In Ellington’s Shadow: The Life of Billy Strayhorn
by Scott Ethier |
HUMANITIES, November/December 2006 | Volume 27, Number 6
Bandleader Duke Ellington once described composer Billy Strayhorn as
"my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my
brainwaves in his head, and his in mine." The collaboration between Duke
Ellington and Billy Strayhorn lasted nearly thirty years and produced
some of the most remarkable and enduring American music of the twentieth
century. But while Duke Ellington's name and image are familiar to many
Americans, Billy Strayhorn remains relatively unknown to the public.
With NEH support, filmmaker Robert Levi has brought Strayhorn's work and
life into view with the documentary Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life. The film investigates Strayhorn's legacy through interviews with
friends and colleagues, as well as scholars of his music and his era.
The film features new performances of Strayhorn classics by musicians
such as Bill Charlap, Elvis Costello, Hank Jones, Joe Lovano, and Dianne
Reeves. A portrait emerges of Strayhorn as a sensitive and complex man who had a
deeply ambivalent relationship with his employer, friend, and
collaborator Duke Ellington. Strayhorn was born on November 29, 1915, in Pennsylvania to a
steelworker father and a university-educated mother. He grew up in
poverty; despite not having an instrument in his home, the young
Strayhorn took private music lessons and quickly became a skilled
pianist. While he was still in high school, Strayhorn began writing short
pieces, songs, and even a musical called Fantastic Rhythm. Strayhorn
encountered Ellington for the first time when he was eighteen. On
Thanksgiving Day in 1934 he went to a screening of the movie Murder at
the Vanities in which the Ellington orchestra had a small feature.
Strayhorn recalled, "Ellington played his version of Liszt's Rape of the
Rhapsody, which he called Ebony Rhapsody. He played a chord in the
orchestration that I couldn't figure out. I had a dream that one day I
would ask him about it. But something deeper was happening. Something
inside me changed when I saw Ellington on stage, like I hadn't been
living until then."
Three years later, Strayhorn was working as a soda jerk when he
arranged a meeting to show his compositions to Ellington with the help
of Gus Greenlee, a numbers runner in Pittsburgh. In the film, Ellington recalls that meeting. "A friend of mine, Gus
Greenlee, came to me one day and says, 'I got a young kid. He writes
good music. I'd like you to hear some of his stuff and see what you
think of it.' [I replied], 'Well, there's a piano. Tell him to sit down
and play something.' So, the little boy sat down and started playing and
he sang a couple lyrics and man, I was up on my feet." "I would like to have you in my organization," Ellington told the
younger composer. "I have to find some way of injecting you into it
after I go to New York." Hearing nothing further from Ellington for several months, Strayhorn
set out for New York. Strayhorn tracked down Ellington in Harlem and
soon became like one of Ellington's family. He lived at Ellington's
apartment with Ellington's son Mercer and his sister Ruth. While the
Ellington orchestra was out on tour, Strayhorn stayed behind to write
and to study Ellington's scores. Strayhorn became absorbed in the culture of 1930s Harlem. He was
sometimes a participant in the jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse, which
included many of the early innovators of bebop, including Dizzy
Gillespie, Max Roach, Bud Powell, and Thelonious Monk.
Living in New York allowed Strayhorn to flower as a musician. It was
also the first time he could live his life openly as a gay man, an
option not available to him in Pittsburgh. In the film, historian George Chauncey gives an idea of what this might
have meant to Strayhorn. "There are really two things you've got to
keep in mind about gay life in the forties. On the one hand it was an
incredibly oppressive time. Gay bars were being raided all the time.
Thousands of men were being arrested every year in New York City alone.
And yet at the same time, a very rich, supportive gay world developed in
the context of all this repression. People found each other and built a
life with one another. And so Billy Strayhorn had a large community of
people, of like-minded people, who loved him for who he was and knew
exactly who he was." Strayhorn was introduced to the pianist Aaron Bridges and the two soon
began a romantic relationship. Bridges and Strayhorn found an apartment
together on Convent Avenue in Harlem and remained partners for nearly a
decade. Initially, Ellington gave Strayhorn the task of writing background
arrangements for singers and for the various small groups with which
Ellington recorded. This allowed Ellington to concentrate on writing
original material. Even with this modest platform, Strayhorn was able to
make his mark on the band. His arrangement of the song "Flamingo" was
not only a commercial success but also one of the most adventurous
arrangements for any big band of the time. Strayhorn biographer David
Hajdu describes the song's effect: "Can you imagine what it was like to
walk into a juke joint in the 1940s, press the numbers to hear the new
Duke Ellington song, and hear something that sounded like Debussy or
Ravel behind the voice of Herb Jeffries and the aggressive masculinity
of the Ellington orchestra?" By the time Strayhorn was twenty-two, a generation younger than
Ellington, he had composed songs that would become standards, such as
"My Little Brown Book," "Ugly Duckling" (recorded many years later by
Ellington's orchestra as "Smada"), and the classic song "Lush Life." In
Strayhorn, Ellington found not so much a brilliant protégé but a voice
that could complement and expand his own. In Ellington, Strayhorn found a man who could appreciate his talents
and a leader that could understand and perform his music better than
perhaps any other at the time. An opportunity for Strayhorn to have his own work showcased came in
1940 when ASCAP, the organization that licensed music for broadcast,
attempted to raise its royalties and the radio stations started a
boycott. Radio broadcasts were a crucial source of income for
Ellington's group, so Ellington had Mercer and Strayhorn, who were not
members of ASCAP, compose a substantial body of new work for his band. Among the songs that entered the band's book at the time of the ASCAP
ban was Strayhorn's "Take The 'A' Train," the song that would become the
Ellington Orchestra's signature tune. "Take The 'A' Train" had been
written by Strayhorn after Ellington gave him directions to his Harlem
apartment. At the time Mercer and Strayhorn were working on the new
repertoire, Strayhorn threw away the score, fearing it was too similar
to Fletcher Henderson's style and not enough like Ellington. Mercer
rescued it from the trash and the piece became the theme song for the
Ellington Orchestra. Soon after, the Ellington Orchestra recorded Strayhorn's "Johnny Come
Lately." An uptempo swing number, "Johnny Come Lately" featured a spiky
and dissonant unison melody reminiscent of the pieces Thelonious Monk
would write later in the decade. Another Strayhorn piece of the era was "Chelsea Bridge," a dissonant
and impressionistic ballad. Musicologist Walter van de Leur writes,
"'Chelsea Bridge' is one of those first pieces where Stayhorn steps out
and does something with a jazz piece that comes completely from a
different musical context. . . . At the same time people were commenting
that it was too complex or too far off from what they perceived was
jazz." Strayhorn's music was regularly being performed by Ellington's band,
but through the 1940s he became increasingly upset that Ellington was
receiving most of the credit. "As much as he wanted to use that talent," says composer and scholar
Gunther Schuller of Ellington, "I think he wanted to preserve his
stature, his status, and not have that even in his own mind get mixed up
with Strayhorn's. To put it in another way, he considered Strayhorn to
be not quite at the level that he was. And I think he was, by the way,
right about that." In 1946, Ellington was commissioned to write music for a new Broadway
adaptation of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera called Beggar's Holiday.
Strayhorn ended up writing or cowriting large amounts of the music in
the production, but in the final program he was only credited with
orchestrations. This was too much for Strayhorn. At the opening night
party, Strayhorn said to set designer Oliver Smith, "Let's get out of
here." "But the party's just starting," Smith protested. "Not for me it
isn't," replied Strayhorn as he left the theater alone. It wasn't just his billing on Beggar's Holiday that had upset
Strayhorn. Ever since he had written his first arrangements for
Ellington, much of Strayhorn's work went uncredited or was instead
credited to Ellington. Ellington even was listed as cowriter of the
ballad "Something to Live For," which Strayhorn had written before he
met Ellington. This was not an uncommon practice during the Big Band era. In most of
the bands of the period, including those of Count Basie, Benny Goodman,
Artie Shaw, and Glenn Miller, arrangers were not credited. It was not
unusual for someone else to take credit on a copyright for a song he or
she didn't write. Ellington's manager Irving Mills is listed on the
copyright for many of Ellington's works of the thirties, even though it
is unlikely that Mills ever contributed anything of musical significance
to the works. Van de Leur suggests that some of the copyright confusion
stemmed from the fact that the copyrights were filed by Tempo Music,
Ellington's publishing company, run by Ellington's sister Ruth. "There were hundreds of thousands of pieces which somebody wrote and
the leader of the band got his name on it. It was a custom. Ellington
did not do that very much," says Schuller in the film. "Why he did it in
this case I can only surmise because this was this rather early piece,
which maybe Ellington didn't even know very well."
The amount of recognition Strayhorn did receive in comparison to his
counterparts in other bands at the time was highly unusual. At his
inaugural Carnegie Hall concert in 1943, Ellington devoted a segment of
the concert to Strayhorn's music. One of the pieces performed was
Strayhorn's "Dirge." "Dirge" is a striking piece-slow, quiet, dissonant,
and unlike anything in Ellington's book or in jazz at that point in
time. Few band leaders in 1943 were presenting such a challenging work
or featuring a band arranger so prominently.
During the late forties and early fifties, Strayhorn drifted away from
Ellington and concentrated on some of his own projects, such as writing
songs for a production of the Federico Garcia Lorca play The Love of Don
Perlimpin for Belisa in Their Garden. By the mid-fifties, Strayhorn had
returned to Ellington but with a new understanding: Strayhorn would be
given full credit for the work he was doing. Their reconciliation
initiated a fruitful era in the Ellington-Strayhorn collaboration. Strayhorn and Ellington tended to work separately. This suited
Ellington's new creative direction quite well. For the most part, after
the premiere of his 1943 Carnegie Hall performance Black, Brown, and
Beige, Ellington abandoned long- form pieces in favor of suites of
smaller, contrasting pieces based loosely on an overall theme. Strayhorn
and Ellington could work separately on individual movements and the
contrast between their musical styles would add to the strength of the
overall suite. This was evident in some of the strongest of the
Ellington suites of the era such as Far East Suite (based on experiences
in during the band's tour in Asia), Such Sweet Thunder (based on the
works of Shakespeare), and The Queen's Suite (a tribute to Queen
Elizabeth II of England). The Ellington-Strayhorn collaboration has become part of jazz legend,
and it is often difficult to separate myth from fact. "You've got to be
careful not to make blanket statements about the collaboration," warns
van de Leur. "It had different faces with each different project."
According to popular belief, the two were said to be musical soul mates
who would work side by side on the same piece of music. It was said
that no one-not even the composers themselves-could tell where one left
off and the other began. A 1944 New Yorker profile on Ellington
provided a romanticized account of their musical partnership,
describing an all-night train trip where Strayhorn and Ellington were
throwing out musical ideas to one another for their latest piece. Strayhorn himself was complicit in perpetuating the myth. In a 1962
interview, Strayhorn recalled a recent piece he and Ellington had been
working on together. He said they each worked on a part of the piece
separately and rushed the score to the bandstand without ever having
heard it before. As they listened to the newly completed piece,
Ellington and Strayhorn laughed because of the similarity of the musical
ideas they had come up with independently. Based on his analysis of the
piece in question, van de Leur suspects the veracity of the story. In spite of the tales that grew around their collaboration, Strayhorn
and Ellington were quite different in their backgrounds and in their
musical styles. With the exception of some informal study (which by
Ellington's account was limited to a few cab rides around Central Park
picking the brain of African American composer Will Marion Cook),
Ellington was a self-taught musician who learned jazz by listening to
ragtime and stride piano players. By contrast, Strayhorn was classically
trained and well-versed in classical harmony and repertoire by the time
he met Ellington. While Strayhorn could deftly replicate and employ
many distinctively Ellingtonian musical devices, he was a composer with a
voice all his own. In his book Something To Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn,
van de Leur examined hundreds of original manuscripts written by the
two composers. In addition to isolating a number of harmonic and
orchestral practices that clearly are original with Strayhorn, van de
Leur discovered important differences in their working methods.
Ellington would compose in small blocks of music and often use
rehearsals and recording sessions to construct finished pieces by
stringing together the often unrelated blocks. Since Ellington's goal
was often to develop a piece of music by establishing the maximum
contrast between its various sections, this approach suited him. Strayhorn, on the other hand, would notate his scores fully from start
to finish, complete with introductions, endings, and transitions. For
Strayhorn, melodic and harmonic development was most important. Van de Leur made another discovery: Ellington and Strayhorn rarely
worked simultaneously on a given piece of music. Although it illuminates
a relationship that is usually described in anecdotes, it does not
diminish the musical influence and rapport that the two men shared. Strayhorn died in 1967 at the age of fifty-one after a long struggle
with cancer of the esophagus. When he heard the news, Ellington was
devastated and would not leave his bed for several days. A few months
later, Ellington brought his band into the studio to record . . . and
his mother called him Bill, an all-Strayhorn tribute album. "I know that
Duke loved Billy Strayhorn so deeply that it may well be the deepest
love of his life," says David Hajdu. "He called him his writing and
arranging companion. He saw them as intimates. That defines the
relationship to me." Gunther Schuller suggests that Strayhorn is not as well known partly
because he had not yet said all that he needed to say in his music. "Strayhorn died too young," asserts Schuller. "What if he had lived
beyond Ellington and now he was famous because of his association with
Ellington, and I think the world would have demanded, I would have
demanded, everybody would have demanded, 'Okay, now you're alone. Show
us your compositions. We need to hear your music.' And I think coming
out from the yolk of this particular relationship with Ellington, I
think he might have risen to the challenge. This is what we don't know."
About the Author
Scott Ethier is a composer and writer in New York City.
Funding Information
The New York Foundation for the Arts received $260,000 from NEH for the
production of BILLY STRAYHORN: LUSH LIFE, which will be shown on PBS
this February.
Something to Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn
AllAboutJazz
Something to Live For
by Walter Van De Leur
Oxford University Press, 2002
Legendary
composer/arranger Billy Strayhorn became something of an overnight
success, nearly thirty years after his death, when David Hajdu released
his critically-acclaimed biography Lush Life in 1996. Now, Dutch
musicologist, Walter Van de Leur, has released Something to Live For:
The Music of Billy Strayhorn. Some might ask, “Is the world ready for
another biography of Billy Strayhorn?” Considering the importance of
Strayhorn’s contribution to jazz music, though, a more appropriate
question might be “Why hasn’t there been more written?” Of
course, Something to Live For isn’t exactly a biography. Van de Leur
even admits this in his introduction. One hint to this comes from its
subtitle; this is a study of Strayhorn’s music more than his life. While
Van de Leur does employ biographical elements in his work, he uses them
to underscore the importance and development of Strayhorn’s
compositional style. Another thing to keep in mind is that Van de
Leur approaches the material from an academic standpoint. Something to
Live For aims at an audience more scholarly than mainstream. For
example: “In its most common form, the figure consists of repeated
staccato brass chords built with a combination of mostly sixteenth and
eighth notes—with an incidental triplet or quarter note.” Chances are,
Something to Live For won’t get selected for the Oprah Book Club. It
does, however, offer important information concerning one of America’s
musical legends. Strayhorn
first came to prominence writing and arranging for Duke Ellington. The
image we often have, though, is someone standing in Ellington’s shadow.
Van de Leur, however, provides a different view. Here we see Strayhorn,
not only as a man who formed an integral part of the Ellington sound,
but a composer who remained true to his own musical ideology, as well. His
love of writing and arranging was by no means self-aggrandizing;
Strayhorn spent most of his career behind the scenes. For him, the music
was more important than the spotlight. His musical style developed from
an early appreciation of classical music. He applied this interest to
help bring greater depth to jazz. His collaboration with Ellington forms
a crucial chapter in American musical history. While Ellington was a
great composer in is own right, things might be different historically
had it not been for this partnership. Something to Live For is by
no means an attempt to supercede Lush Life; it is more of a supplement.
A a matter of fact, much of the biographical information comes from
Hajdu’s work. Even with its somewhat academic leaning, Something to Live
For offers a worthwhile portrait of one of American music’s greatest
treasures. It presents an in-depth study of Strayhorn’s unique
contribution to contemporary music, and provides a valuable asset for
anyone wanting to learn more about this great figure in jazz music.
For nearly everyone interested in jazz, the names Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn are, if not synonymous, at least inextricably connected. But the connection is not as close, though it is unique, as might be assumed.
This connection is a corporation, really a co-operation, that has, except when the members are working singly, produced some of the finest music and offered one of the greatest orchestras available in Jazz, in, for that matter, American music.
But for most, even for those closely associated with Jazz, the relationship has not been clear. Who did, does, will do, what? Or, more precisely, how does Strayhorn fit into the Ellington dukedom?
In June, 1962, Down Beat's associate editor Bill Coss spent an afternoon talking with Strayhorn in his apartment. The conversation ranged from the particular to the general and the inconsequential. Strayhorn, as charming as Ellington, never was at a loss for words. The following is a transcription of the pertinent parts of the conversation and it contains perhaps the best description I’ve ever come across of how the musical relationship between Strayhorn and Ellington actually worked.
Coss: How did you and Ellington first get together?
Strayhorn: By the time my family got to Pittsburgh, I had a piano teacher, and I was playing classics in the high-school orchestra. Each year in the school, each class would put on some kind of show. Different groups would get together and present sketches. I wrote the music and lyrics for our sketch and played too. It was successful enough so that one of the guys suggested doing a whole show. So I did. It was called Fantastic Rhythm. I was out of high school by then, and we put it on independently. We made $55.
At that time, I was working in a drugstore. I started out as a delivery boy, and, when I would deliver packages, people would ask me to "sit down and play us one of your songs."
It's funny — I never thought about a musical career. I just kind of drifted along in music. But people kept telling me that I should do something with it. By the1 time I had graduated to being a clerk in the drugstore, people really began to badger me about being a professional musician.
Then, one time Duke Ellington came to Pittsburgh, and a friend got me an appointment with him. I went to see him and played some of my songs for him. He told me he liked my music and he'd like to have me join the band, but he'd have to go back to New York and find out how he could add me to the organization. You see, I wasn't specifically anything. I could play piano, of course, and I could write songs. But I wasn't an arranger. I couldn't really do anything in the band. So he went off, and I went back to the drugstore.
Several months went by; I didn't hear anything, but people kept badgering me.
Finally, I wrote his office asking them where the band was going to be in three weeks. They wrote back that the band would be in Philadelphia.
At the time I had a friend, an arranger, by the name of Bill Esch. At the time he was doing some arrangements for Ina Ray Hutton. He was a fine arranger, and I learned a good deal from him.
Anyway, right then he had to go to New York to do some things for Ina Ray, so he suggested that we go together. He had relatives in Brooklyn, and I had an aunt and uncle in Newark, so we figured at least we would have a place to stay.
By the time I got to Newark, Duke was playing there at the Adams Theater. I went backstage. I was frightened, but Duke was very gracious. He said he had just called his office to find my address. He was about to send for me.
The very first thing he did was to hand me two pieces and tell me to arrange them. They were both for Johnny Hodges: Like a Ship in the Night and Savoy Strut, I think. I couldn't really arrange, but that didn't make any difference to him. He inspires you with confidence. That's the only way I can explain how I managed to do those arrangements. They both turned out quite well. He took them just the way they were.
From then on, Duke did very little of the arranging for the small groups. Oh, he did a little, but he turned almost all of them over to me. You could say I had inherited a phase of Duke's organization.
Then he took the band to Europe only a month after I joined the band in 1939. I stayed home and wrote a few things like Day Dream. When he came back, the band went to the Ritz Carlton Roof in Boston. Ivie Anderson had joined the band, and he asked me to do some new material for her.
After that, I inherited all the writing for vocalists, though not for those vocalese things he wrote for Kay Davis. I think what really clinched the vocal chores for me was when Herb Jeffries came with the band. He was singing in a high tenor range, and I asked him whether he liked singing up there. He said he didn't, so I wrote some things for him that pulled his voice down to the natural baritone he became after Flamingo.
Coss: How do you and Duke work together? Do you have a particular manner of doing an arrangement or a composition? How do you decide who will do the arranging?
Strayhorn: It depends. There's no set way. Actually, it boils down to what the requirements of the music might be. Sometimes we both do the arranging on either his or my composition because maybe one of us can't think of the right treatment for it and the other one can. Sometimes neither of us can.
Sometimes we work over the telephone. If he's out on the road somewhere, he'll call me up and say, "I have a thing here," and, if he's at a piano, he'll play it and say, "Send me something." I do, and eventually we get it to work out when we get together.
That's surprising, you know, because we actually write very differently. It's hard to put into words . . . The difference is made up of so many technical things. He uses different approaches — the way he voices the brass section, the saxophone section. He does those things differently than I do. That's as much as I can say. I'm sure that's as clear as mud.
Still, I'm sure the fact we're both looking for a certain character, a certain way of presenting a composition, makes us write to the whole, toward the same feeling. That's why it comes together — for that reason.
The same thing goes for the way we play piano. I play very differently than Edward. You take Drawing Room Blues. We both played and recorded it at a concert. Then I didn't hear it for about a year. I must admit I had to listen a few times myself to tell which was which. But that's strange in itself, because we don't really play alike. I reflect more my early influences, Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum, whereas Ellington isn't in that kind of thing at all.
It's probably like the writing. It isn't that we play alike; it's just that what we're doing, the whole thing, comes together, because we both know what we're aiming for — a kind of wholeness. You know, if you really analyze our playing, you could immediately tell the difference, because he has a different touch, just to begin with. Still, I have imitated him. Not consciously, really. It's just that, say at a rehearsal or something, he'll tell me to play, and I'll do something, knowing this is what he would do in this particular place. It would fit, and it sounds like him, just as if I were imitating him. . . .
I can give you a good example of something we did over the phone. We were supposed to be playing the Great South Bay Jazz Festival about three years ago. Duke had promised a new composition to the people who ran it. He was on the road someplace. So he called me up and told me he had written some parts of a suite. This was maybe two or three days before he was due back in New York, and that very day he was supposed to be at the festival.
He told me some of the things he was thinking of. We discussed the keys and the relationships of the parts, things like that. And he said write this and that.
The day of the festival, I brought my part of the suite out to the festival grounds. There was no place and no time to rehearse it, but I told Duke that it shouldn't be hard for the guys to sight-read. So they stood around backstage and read their parts, without playing, you understand.
Then they played it. My part was inserted in the middle. You remember I hadn't heard any of it. I was sitting in the audience with some other people who knew what had happened, and, when they got to my part, then went into Ellington's part, we burst out laughing. I looked up on the stage and Ellington was laughing too. Without really knowing, I had written a theme that was a kind of development of a similar theme he had written. So when he played my portion and went into his, it was as though we had really worked together — or one person had done it. It was an uncanny feeling, like witchcraft, like looking into someone else's mind.
Coss: How about the larger pieces — what's the extent of your work on them?
Strayhorn: I've had very little to do with any, of them. I've worked on a couple of the suites, like Perfume Suite and this one. I've forgotten the name of it. That day, it was called Great South Bay Festival Suite.
The larger things like Harlem or Black, Brown, and Beige I had very little to do with other than maybe discussing them with him. That's because the larger works are such a personal expression of him. He knows what he wants. It wouldn't make any sense for me to be involved there.
Coss: You have differentiated between arranging and writing. That can be confusing. As you know, writing can simply be a matter of a melody line; the majority of the work could be the arranger's.
Strayhorn: Not in our case because we do it both ways. We both naturally orchestrate as we write. Still, sometimes you're just involved with a tune. You sit at the piano and write what represents a lead sheet.
It all depends on how the tune comes. Sometimes you get the idea of the tune and the instrument that should play it at the same time. It might happen that you know Johnny Hodges or Harry Carney or Lawrence Brown needs a piece. Or you think of a piece that needs Johnny or Harry or Lawrence to make it sound wonderful. Then you sit down and write it.
After it's done, Duke and I decide who's going to orchestrate — arrange — it. Sometimes we both do it, and he uses whatever version is best.
We have many versions of the same thing. You remember Warm Valley? It was less than three minutes long. But we wrote reams and reams and reams of music on that, and he threw it all out except what you hear. He didn't use any of mine. Now, that's arranging. The tune was written, but we had to find the right way to present it.
I have a general rule about all that. Rimski-Korsakov is the one who said it: all parts should lie easily under the fingers. That's my first rule: to write something a guy can play. Otherwise, it will never be as natural, or as wonderful, as something that does lie easily under his fingers.
We approach everything for what it is. It all depends on what you're doing. You have the instruments. You have to find the right thing — not too little, not too much. It's like getting the right color. That's it! Color is what it is, and you know when you get it. Also, you use whatever part or parts of the orchestra you need to get it.
For example, you have to deal with individual characteristics. Like, Shorty Baker, who has a certain trumpet sound. If you're writing for a brass section and you want his sound, you give him the lead part. The rest follow him. Or if you want Johnny Hodges' color or Russell Procope's color in the reeds, you write the lead parts for either of them.
For a soloist, you just have to look at the whole thing, just like looking at a suit. Will this fit him? Will he be happy with this? If it's right for him, you don't have to tell him how to play it. He just plays it, and it comes out him, the way he wants. If you have to tell him too much how to play it, it isn't right for him.
Here's a good example of writing for characteristic soloists. Duke wrote Mr. Gentle and Mr. Cool. He started off thinking of two people: Shorty Baker (Gentle) and Ray Nance (Cool). The tune wrote itself from his conception of these two people.
We write that way much of the time. Sometimes it doesn't happen right away. A new guy will come on the band. You have to become acquainted with him, observe him. Then you write something.
In Ellington's band a man more or less owns his solos until he leaves. Sometimes we shift solos, but usually they're too individual to shift. You never replace a man; you get another man. When you have a new man, you write him a new thing. It's certainly one of the reasons why the music is so distinctive. It's based on characteristics.
For example, when Johnny was out of the band, we played very few of his solo pieces — well, the blues-type things and Warm Valley, but Paul Gonsalves played that solo. You see we wouldn't give it to another alto to play. We changed the instrument; otherwise, except for things you have to play, we just avoided those songs. Otherwise, you'd spoil the song itself. It was written for him — maybe even about him.
Coss: So many people suggest a question which, I suppose, is the kind you expect when someone gets into a position as important as is Duke's. What it comes down to is that Duke doesn't really write much. What he does is listen to his soloists, take things they play, and fashion them into songs. Thus, the songs belong to the soloists, you do the arrangements, and Duke takes the credit.
Strayhorn: They used to say that about Irving Berlin too.
But how do you explain the constant flow of songs? Guys come in and out of the band, but the songs keep getting written, and you can always tell an Ellington song.
Anyway, something like a solo, perhaps only a few notes, is hardly a composition. It may be the inspiration, but what do they say about 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration? Composing is work.
So this guy says you and he wrote it, but he thinks he wrote it. He thinks you just put it down on paper. But what you did was put it down on paper, harmonized it, straightened out the bad phrases, and added things to it, so you could hear the finished product. Now, really, who wrote it?
It was ever thus.
But the proof is that these people don't go somewhere else and write beautiful music. You don't hear anything else from them. You do from Ellington.
Coss: How about those people who say Duke should stay home? They say, look, he's getting older, he has enough money coming in; why does he waste all his energy on the road when he could be at home writing?
Strayhorn: He says his main reason for having a band is so he can hear his own music. He says there's nothing else like it, and he's right. There's nothing like writing something in the morning and hearing it in the afternoon.
How else can you do it? Working with a studio band isn't the same thing. You have to be out there in the world. Otherwise you can't feel the heat and the blood. And from that comes music, comes feeling. If he sat at home, it would be retreating.
He'll never do it. He'd be the most unhappy man in the world. The other is such a stimulus.
On the road, you find out what is going on in the world. You're au courant musically and otherwise. It keeps you alert and alive. That's why people in this business stay young. Just because they are so alive — so much seeing things going on all over the world.
Coss: Duke is often criticized for playing the same music over and over.
Strayhorn: What else can you expect? Even though that's not a fair criticism, some part of it has to be true merely because he is the talent he is.
Have you any idea how many requests he gets? After he's through playing all of them, the concert or the dance is all over, and he's hardly started with other requests .... That's why he does the medley that some writers criticize.
Actually, there's a great deal of new music all the time. The thing I'm concerned about is that some of that will get to be requested. Then what will happen? What it really comes down to is that there is never enough time to hear an excess of talent.”
IN
THE WEE small hours, after the band had finished another one-nighter
and the musicians were trying to grab three or four hours’ sleep, Duke
Ellington and Billy Strayhorn often would find an all-night eatery that
served black folks and go to work.
Fresh music was essential for the driven Ellington, America's premiere
composer of the 20th century, and music talk came easy between The Duke
and Swee'pea, his equally impassioned protégé.
Strayhorn didn't come to New York to join Ellington until 1939, years
after Duke had become an institution. But alone among Ellington
collaborators, he merged his work seamlessly with that of the master.
He "cracked the code," he liked to joke, and both men said they had
trouble telling who developed which part in some of Ellington's
best-known work.
But before they got to music in the late-night restaurant sessions,
there was first the matter of the menu. Ellington, a tall, elegant man
acutely aware of the figure he cut, would often announce he was on a
diet and order only shredded wheat.
Fine, Strayhorn would say. Five-foot-three with a high metabolism, thick
glasses and no particular vanity, he would order a steak.
As recounted by Richard Boyer in a 1944 New Yorker profile, Duke's diet
would last as long as the shredded wheat, at which point he would gaze
longingly at Strayhorn's plate and order a steak of his own. Then a
second steak. Then a double portion of fried potatoes, a salad, a bowl
of sliced tomatoes and a lobster, followed by a medley of desserts.
Dawn now imminent, he might order ham and eggs and pancakes before
returning to his diet and finishing up with a second bowl of shredded
wheat.
Meanwhile, women would pass by the table, and he would pause to offer
compliments. "You make that dress look so beautiful.
" "I never knew an angel could be so luscious.
"
Only when the meal and the flirtation wound down did Duke lean back and
sing, "Dah dah dee dee, tah tahdle tah boom, deedle dee, deedle dee,
boom.
"
"Why not deedle dee deedle dee, deedle dee deedle dee dee, dumtah dumtah dumtah, boom?
" Billy replied.
"Not right for a trio," said Duke.
"I don't think your strain is melodic enough," said Billy.
"I think it's a nice strain," Duke said.
"It has too many notes for a trio," said Billy. "I'm looking for something small that goes up half a tone.
"From exchanges like this, in hotels, diners and New York living rooms
and over long-distance wires, emerged some of the most durable music
stamped Duke Ellington: "The Perfume Suite," "A Drum Is a Woman," "The
Far East Suite," "My People," the Sacred Concerts.
Strayhorn also arranged Ellington's small-group sessions featuring
Johnny Hodges and wrote "After All," "Day Dream," "Clementine,"
"Raincheck" and "Take the A Train," which so enchanted Ellington that he
made it the band's new theme song.
Ellington, a man sufficiently self-assured that he once said no one
could pay him higher compliments than he paid himself, said Strayhorn's
legacy "will never be less than the ultimate on the highest plateau of
culture.
"ELLINGTON KNEW that turf. He had moved to New York from Washington in
1923, aiming to become a famous musician, and a decade later he was
known around the world for his Cotton Club shows and standards like
"Black and Tan Fantasy," "Mood Indigo," "Sophisticated Lady" and "It
Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing.
"Billy Strayhorn, born Nov. 29, 1915, spent those years growing up in
Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania with a fierce love of classical
music. In grade school, he bought an upright piano with money he saved
from odd jobs, and come high school he studied piano and harmony.
But he was black, and the classical music world wanted white. So he
started listening to jazzmen like Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson.
Unfortunately, jazz jobs weren't plentiful either in the Depression, and
it didn't help that Strayhorn was gay at a time when songs like "Sissy
Man Blues" were floating around in the musical currency.
So he gigged around Pittsburgh and he wrote a show called "Fantastic
Rhythm" that earned $55 from a local production. Then, one night in
1934, the Ellington band came into town and he spent the evening right
by the bandstand, transfixed.
Four years later, on another Ellington swing through Pittsburgh, he got
up the nerve to meet the maestro and play a few songs. Duke told the kid
he'd like to bring him to New York.
As Strayhorn was clerking in a drugstore at the time, this offer didn't
require a lot of thought. But several months passed with no formal
invitation, so Strayhorn and an arranger friend, Bill Esch, headed for
New York on their own. At the Adams Theater in Newark they caught up
with Ellington, who said glad to see ya, kid, I lost your address.
By this time, Strayhorn had written a classic of his own, "Lush Life,"
which he sat on for a dozen years until he found a singer he felt could
do it justice. It eventually became a standard from a Nat King Cole
recording, though Strayhorn personally felt Cole still hadn't gotten
quite the nuances he was looking for.
THERE WERE NO such caveats in either the musical or personal symbiosis
between Ellington and Strayhorn. They fell into what most called a
father-son relationship, though Strayhorn's close friend Lena Horne said
it was more like a nonphysical love affair - creating for Strayhorn
some of the same problems faced by the hundreds of women romanced by
world-class lover man Ellington.
"Duke treated Billy exactly like he treated women, with all that
old-fashioned chauvinism," said Horne. "Very loving and very protective,
but controlling, very destructive.
"From Strayhorn's perspective, whatever problems his association with
Ellington may have created, it solved more. If it committed him to the
twilight world of the musician - too many cigarettes, too many drinks,
months on the road, no clock - it gave him something to do with his life
that he was good at. Once inside the Ellington band, he never left its
comfortable embrace.
He wrote lyrics, he arranged, he played piano, he led the band when Duke
was spread too thin. When Duke was writing in the bathtub, his faithful
valet Jonesy maintaining the water temperature, he would call out lines
to Strayhorn, who would play them on the piano. If the rest of the band
was around, they might pick up their cues and assemble the song on the
spot.
There was some jealousy over Strayhorn's status in the band - one
musician would transcribe Ellington's work, but not Strayhorn's - and
some critics say Strayhorn never reached Ellington's musical level.
Perhaps owing to the classical training Duke never had, Strayhorn was a
bit more formal and controlled in his playing and composition.
Other critics point to "A Train" or "Lush Life" and say his work speaks
for itself.
Whatever the critical assessment, Strayhorn became indispensable to
Ellington, who used him to keep up with his own creativity. If Ellington
needed the middle part to a suite, Strayhorn could write it. He pushed
Ellington at the same time he took some of the pressure off.
He didn't always get properly thanked for this. There is evidence he
helped write "Satin Doll," though only Ellington is credited. But in
daily life, Ellington was appreciative and attentive: To mess with
"Strays" was to mess with the Duke.
STRAYHORN EVENTUALLY did a few separate projects, and while he remained
as modest as Duke was gregarious, he developed his own circle of
friends, like Horne, who gave him the Swee'pea name, after the small,
sweet and vulnerable character in the Popeye cartoons.
In the mid-1960s, Strayhorn was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus.
From his bed in the Hospital for Joint Diseases he wrote his last tune,
"Blood Count," and Horne was at the side of that bed when he died May
31, 1967.
Ellington would live seven more years, savoring his legend and accepting
the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which he viewed as partial
recompense for being denied a Pulitzer Prize because the Pulitzer
committee saw him as a black jazzman and felt black jazz just wasn't a
worthy enough art form.
Ellington also would record a Strayhorn tribute titled "And His Mother
Called Him Bill," probably the most powerful work of his later years,
and he told friends that when he got the call about Strayhorn's death,
he cried out loud and pounded his head against the wall.
But on the day of Billy Strayhorn's memorial service at St. Peter's
Church, a composed Ellington delivered a poignant tribute and traveled
across town to the Hickory House to join 20 of his comrades for dinner.
He ordered a steak.
Notes: BIG TOWN BIOGRAPHY: Lives and Times of the Century's Classic New
Yorkers
Billy Strayhorn (right), born 100 years ago, spent the
majority of his career as a composer and arranger for the Duke Ellington
Orchestra. David Redfern/Getty Images
In 1964, near the end of his career, Billy Strayhorn accompanied himself on a live recording of one of his best-known songs. It starts:
I used to visit all the very gay places Those come-what-may places Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life To get the feel of life From jazz and cocktails ...
When
Strayhorn wrote "Lush Life" in 1936, he could only dream of the Paris
nightlife described in the lyrics. He was a 20-year-old living in the
poorest neighborhood of Pittsburgh. He had already written a musical
revue called Fantastic Rhythm, but he wanted to play classical piano. Strayhorn
was working at a drugstore to pay for his lessons, and when he made
deliveries, he played for the customers who had pianos. He had also
written a number of original songs.
"They were unheard," Strayhorn told interviewer Paul Worth in
1962. But "they were heard by the drugstore customers. And they got
after me to have someone else hear them." Composer and arranger Billy Strayhorn would go on to create some of the most popular American music of the 20th century:
songs like "Lush Life" or "Take The 'A' Train." Born 100 years ago
today, Nov. 29, 1915, Strayhorn did it his way — without ever hiding who
he was.
His accomplishments are made all the more remarkable
by the fact that he received little attention during his own lifetime.
Strayhorn spent the bulk of his career in the shadow of his employer —
bandleader Duke Ellington.
You Must Take The 'A' Train In
December 1938, a friend took Strayhorn backstage at the Stanley Theatre
in Pittsburgh to meet Duke Ellington. Strayhorn played some of his
music for Ellington, who invited him to New York — scribbling down
directions to his home in Harlem.
Strayhorn turned those
notes into a song, and took it to Ellington a month later. Duke
Ellington hired the young composer and made Strayhorn's "Take The 'A'
Train" his theme song. Ellington also took partial credit for some of Strayhorn's other
pieces, says Alyce Claerbaut — Strayhorn's niece, and co-editor of a new
book called Strayhorn: An Illustrated Life. "The
first song that he co-credited to himself and Billy was 'Something to
Live For,'" Claerbaut says. "Billy wrote that song before he met Duke.
It was part of his play Fantastic Rhythm. Duke really liked
that song. And he recorded that song in 1939. And because he was the
publisher, he credited that song to himself as well." Strayhorn
worked for Ellington for the rest of his life: 28 years. He never had a
contract, and he never complained publicly about not getting credit —
or royalties — in part because he had a dream job, says David Hajdu,
author of Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn. "The
Duke Ellington Orchestra was one of the greatest orchestras in the
world — not just one of the greatest jazz orchestras, one of the
greatest orchestras in the world," Hajdu says. "The opportunity to have
music that you composed played by those musicians is a gift beyond
measure. Hajdu says Ellington gave Strayhorn, an African-American gay man, another sort of gift. "Two
strikes against him in those days," Hajdu says. "And the closest we
would come to thinking of someone as being out-of-the-closet gay. ... He
was comfortable with who he was and never pretended to be anything
else. And Duke Ellington accepted him for that. And that is also
golden." 'I Prefer To Write It' Other
members of the Ellington organization weren't always so accepting.
Nevertheless, with his classical training, Strayhorn brought a new level
of sophistication to the Ellington band, especially on ballads like
"Chelsea Bridge." "Strayhorn was interested in hues of the
emotional spectrum that we don't often encounter in popular music or
jazz," Hajdu says. "In Strayhorn we find a lot of gray tones. And muted
colors. We find a bittersweet quality. We find tinges of remorse and
regret." Billy Strayhorn also helped take the Ellington band
into the future. On songs like "Johnny Come Lately," he was an architect
of bebop, exploring the uptempo, angular style at its inception in the
early 1940s. "Strayhorn played an essential role in changing
the sound of American popular music, at a time when jazz was American
popular music, in the 1940s," Hajdu says. "And did so all through an
individual idiosyncratic personal sensibility that made the music all
his own." For all of his skills as a composer, Billy Strayhorn was at a loss for words when asked to describe his creative process. "Jazz
composition?" he said. "Oh my. That's a hard one. What do you want me
to say? I don't usually talk about composition or about music. I prefer
to write it." Strayhorn wrote or co-wrote more than 100 tunes for Duke Ellington before dying of cancer in 1967. He was just 51 years old.
If you are familiar with the jazz composition, "Take the A Train," then you know something about not only Duke Ellington,
but also Billy "Sweet Pea" Strayhorn, its composer. Strayhorn joined
Ellington's band in 1939, at the age of twenty-two. Ellington liked what
he saw in Billy and took this shy, talented pianist under his wings.
Neither one was sure what Strayhorn's function in the band would be, but
their musical talents had attracted each other. By the end of the year
Strayhorn had become essential to the Duke Ellington Band; arranging,
composing, sitting-in at the piano. Billy made a rapid and almost
complete assimilation of Ellington's style and technique. It was
difficult to discern where one's style ended and the other's began. The
results of the Ellington-Strayhorn collaboration brought much joy to the
jazz world.
The history, of the family of William Thomas Strayhorn (his mother
called him "Bill") goes back over a hundred years in Hillsborough. One
set of great grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. George Craig, lived behind the
present Farmer's Exchange. A great grand-mother was the cook for Robert
E. Lee. Billy, however, was born in Dayton. Ohio in 1915. His mother,
Lillian Young Strayhorn, brought her children to Hillsborough often.
Billy was attracted to the piano that his grandmother, Elizabeth Craig
Strayhorn owned. He played it from the moment he was tall enough to
reach the keys. Even in those early years, when he played, his family
would gather to listen and sing.
In 1923 Billy entered the first grade in a little wooden school house,
since destroyed. Soon after that, however, his mother moved her family
to Pittsburgh to join Billy's father, James Nathaniel Strayhorn. Mr.
Strayhorn had gotten a job there as a gas-maker and wire-puller.
Charlotte Catlin began to give Billy private piano lessons. He played
the piano everyday, sometimes becoming so engrossed that he would be
late for his job. He also played in the high school band.
His father enrolled him in the Pittsburgh Musical institution where he
studied classical music. He had more classical training than most jazz
musicians of his time.
Strayhorn lived a tremendously productive life. He influenced many
people that he met, and yet remained very modest and unassuming all the
while. For a time he coached Lena Home in classical music to broaden her
knowledge and improve her style of singing. He toured the world with
Ellington's band and for a brief time lived in Paris. Strayhorn's own
music is internationally known and honored. It has been translated in
French and Swedish.
Some of Strayhorn's compositions are: "Chelsea Bridge," "Day Dream,"
"Johnny Come Lately," "Rain-check, and "Clementine." The pieces most
frequently played are Ellington's theme song, "Take the A Train" and
Ellington's signatory, "Lotus Blossom". Some of the suites on which he
collaborated with. Ellington are: "Deep South Suite," 1947; the
"Shakespearean Suite" or "Such Sweet Thunder," 1957; an arrangement of
the "Nutcracker Suite," 1960; and the "Peer Gynt Suite," 1962. He and
Ellington composed the "Queen's Suite" and gave the only pressing to
Queen Elizabeth of England. Two of their suites, "Jump for Joy," 1950
and "My People," 1963 had as their themes the struggles and triumphs of
blacks in the United States. Both included a narrative and choreography.
The latter Strayhorn conducted at the Negro Exposition in Chicago in
1963. Another suite similar to these two was "A Drum Is a Woman." The
"Far East Suite" was written after the band's tour of the East which was
sponsored by the State Department.
In 1946, Strayhorn received the Esquire Silver Award for outstanding
arranger. In 1965, the Duke Ellington Jazz Society asked him to present a
concert at New York's New School of Social Research. It consisted
entirely of his own work performed by him and his quintet. Two years
later Billy Strayhorn died of cancer. Duke Ellington's response to his
death was to record what the critics cite as one of his greatest works, a
collection titled "And His Mother Called Him Bill," consisting entirely
of Billy's compositions. Later, a scholarship fund was established for
him by Ellington and the Julliard School of Music.
Born on November 29, 1915, in Dayton, Ohio, Billy Strayhorn was the fourth of nine children. Gravely ill at birth and born into an impoverished family, he wasn't expected to survive. Four of his siblings did not. As a child, he was shielded from an abusive father by his mother, Lillian, who bought him books and sheet music from her earnings as a domestic. Lillian also sent her gifted son for extended visits to North Carolina, where his grandmother taught him to play piano. He was largely self-educated and so interested in intellectual pursuits that one of his childhood nicknames was “Dictionary.” As a young man, Strayhorn had his own newspaper route and worked as a soda jerk and delivery boy for the local drugstore, finally saving up enough money to buy his own piano.
On March 1, 1934, the diminutive Strayhorn, then a barely five-foot-tall teenager, took center stage at the Westinghouse High School auditorium. The featured soloist in Grieg’s “Piano Concerto in A Minor,” Strayhorn was also the only black musician in a 25-player orchestra. The following year, Strayhorn wrote music, skits and lyrics for a sophisticated Cole Porter-style musical revue at his high school, which he called Fantastic Rhythm. The ambitious musical played at black theaters throughout western Pennsylvania for several years, attracting top-notch talent, including singer Billy Eckstine and pianist Errol Garner.
In 1938, at the age of 23, Billy Strayhorn met the 39-year-old Duke Ellington, who was performing in Pittsburgh's Crawford Grill. An impromptu backstage audition showcased Strayhorn's stunning talent at the piano, and Ellington contemplated hiring him on the spot—although, at the time, there was no real job to fill. A few months later, Strayhorn was writing arrangements for Ellington's orchestral music and living relatively openly as a gay man, a rare feat for an African American man during that time.
During the next 29 years, Strayhorn made an inestimable contribution to American songwriting and culture—all while working without a contract. His presence allowed Ellington to increase his workload and expand his artistic palette. Strayhorn worked as a composer and collaborator, and also served as Ellington's "guarantor," assuring that the Ellington Orchestra’s music was top notch. But it took a bitter music industry battle to allow Strayhorn’s genius to emerge.
In a highly publicized dispute over composing royalties in late 1940, ASCAP, the music licensing organization, forbid its members from broadcasting any songs over the radio. One of ASCAP’S most celebrated composers, Duke Ellington needed radio broadcasts to promote record sales, which in turn paid his orchestra’s salaries. But as of January 1, 1941, Ellington’s music was banned from the air, even as he was about to broadcast live from a Los Angeles nightclub.
During a hurried cross-country train ride to join Ellington in Los Angeles, Strayhorn, not a member of ASCAP, got almost no sleep for six straight days, writing song after song after song. Strayhorn’s prolific, engaging new work kept the Ellington Orchestra afloat for months. And when it was time for a new radio theme—Ellington’s own “Sepia Panorama” was still forbidden on the airwaves—Ellington chose Strayhorn’s “Take the ‘A’ Train,” premiering it in early 1941.
Remarkably, while Ellington and Strayhorn were expanding the orchestra’s musical vocabulary and composing a string of hit songs, they also embarked on a pioneering musical event. Taking advantage of Strayhorn’s feel for musical theater, Ellington and Strayhorn co-wrote the groundbreaking musical, Jump for Joy, which opened in Los Angeles in 1941. A daring and risky venture for the times, the show masqueraded as a musical review and featured an all-black cast. Jump for Joy was, in fact, a social satire that fiercely attacked racism.
Ellington’s hiring of Strayhorn launched an impressively productive recording period, regarded by many critics as the most significant and creative phase of Ellington's career. And, from the early 1940s on, Strayhorn's training in classical and long-form music became central and indispensable to the orchestra. Together, the collaborators began to write longer, more complex suites and, in 1943, they performed the first of these works, “Black, Brown and Beige,” an unprecedented 43-minute jazz work, in Carnegie Hall. Most assume that Ellington was responsible for these long-form innovations, but Strayhorn was, at the very least, co-composer of many of these ambitious new works. Recently discovered Strayhorn compositions reveal much about his role, as he kept pushing both himself and Ellington in ambitious new directions.
Ellington did publicly note the importance of Strayhorn’s talent. He liked to joke onstage, “Strayhorn does a lot of the work but I get to take the bows!” This formulation was rather nearer to the truth than many suspected. Certainly, Strayhorn was considerably more than a humorous aside or a musical footnote. Not only was he the sole composer of Ellington's signature piece, “Take the ‘A’ Train,” but he also wrote other defining works, including “Passion Flower,” “Lush Life,” and “Chelsea Bridge,” and co-wrote “Satin Doll” and “Such Sweet Thunder.”
In the early 1950s, tired of his secondary role, Strayhorn left Ellington to pursue his own interests. Even after rejoining Ellington several years later, Strayhorn concluded that his musical contributions were still not sufficiently acknowledged in public.
A man of passionate beliefs, Strayhorn became a committed civil rights advocate and was a close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1963, he arranged and conducted the Ellington Orchestra in “King Fought the Battle of 'Bam” for the historical revue My People, dedicated to Dr. King.
Although Billy Strayhorn’s distinguished songs, arrangements and virtuosity at the piano gave him status among musicians, few others realized what he had achieved for Ellington as his tireless co-writer and arranger. Fewer still appreciated that this generous, deferential man had created some of the most important and enduring American music of the 20th century.
"Billy Strayhorn was
always the most unselfish, the most patient, and the most
imperturbable, no matter how dark the day. I am indebted to him for so
much of my courage since 1939. He was my listener, my most dependable
appraiser, and as a critic he would be the most clinical, but his
background--both classical and modern--was an accessory to his own good
taste and understanding." —Duke Ellington
"It made us all think a little differently about what we were doing." —Benny Carter
"Strayhorn is like Beethoven--every note he wrote seems inevitable." —Cliff Colnot, principal conductor, Civic Orchestra of Chicago
"To me [Billy Strayhorn] is the boss of the arrangers." —Quincy Jones
"Billy
was the source of my consciousness raising.... I had to learn to accept
myself first, and that's what Billy helped me do." —Lena Horne
"That's all I did - that's all I ever did - try to do what Billy Strayhorn did." —Gil Evans
"All those sevenths—man, I never heard anything like those things until him." —Dizzy Gillespie
"When Strayhorn came on the scene, he just blew us away." —Gerry Mulligan
"Strayhorn
had created a personal musical style in which he sought and found
refuge. His music at the same time reflected beauty and conflict, and
allowed for multiple readings." —Walter van de Leur, author of Something to Live For
Billy Strayhorn, pictured here in the 1940s, wrote more than 1,000 works, most of them for Duke Ellington.
William P. Gottlieb/Library of Congress
The composer Billy Strayhorn spent almost all of his adult life in
the professional company of Duke Ellington, operating as a crucial but
seldom visible creative partner whose own greatness has finally emerged
only in the past two decades — long after his death in 1967 at age 51.
The author of "Take The 'A' Train," "Lush Life" and "Satin Doll,"
Strayhorn wrote songs, suites, scores and other works that run to well
over 1,000 pieces in all. He was an impeccable and sensitive craftsman
whose own musical universe overlapped and expanded the vast world of
Ellingtonia; his tonal language ran the gamut from classical to bebop.
This month marks Strayhorn's centennial.
He was born in Dayton, Ohio on Nov. 29, 1915 and grew up in Pittsburgh,
a jazz capital known for producing other pianists and composers. A
musical prodigy, he began composing while in high school, writing a
musical called Fantastic Rhythm that included the future standard "My Little Brown Book." In
late 1938, while Ellington was playing in Pittsburgh, a
two-degrees-of-separation friendship resulted in the bandleader granting
Strayhorn a private audience. Ellington was so impressed that he hired
Strayhorn and moved him into Ellington's Harlem apartment, beginning a
nearly 30-year collaboration that saw only one brief pause in the 1950s.
(His life is memorably rendered in David Hajdu's biography Lush Life, and Walter van de Leur's Something to Live For offers a definitive account and analysis of the vast amount of music that he wrote for both Ellington and others.) It's
been noted that Strayhorn's cultural identity in the mid-20th-century
United States was, to say the least, challenging. He was a gay
African-American jazz artist. Yet he lived as he pleased, with quiet
courage and an aesthetic sophistication underlined by beauty, loneliness
and love. In 1967, Ellington, devastated by Strayhorn's death,
delivered a moving eulogy that praised his friend and writing partner as an artistic cosmopolitan suffused with humane grace:
He
spoke English perfectly and French very well, but condescension did not
enter into his mind. He demanded freedom of expression and lived in
what we consider the most important and moral of freedoms: freedom from
hate, unconditionally; freedom from self-pity (even throughout all the
pain and bad news); freedom from fear of possibly doing something that
might help another more than it might himself; and freedom from the kind
of pride that could make a man feel he was better than his brother or
neighbor.
Here are five examples of Strayhorn's spirit and vision made manifest.
Billy Strayhorn In Five Songs
Take The 'A' Train
from Ellington Uptown
by Duke Ellington
The song that launched more than 1,000 Ellington broadcasts
and concerts, "Take The 'A' Train" ironically is not a prime example of
Strayhorn's compositional style. Walter van de Leur writes that "its
string of choruses, ample solo space against background riffs, and
unison saxophone lines with snappy brass answers" places it more in the
realm of standard big-band conventions of the time, but also notes that
its harmonies and rhythms anticipate the modernistic turns of bebop. Described
by Strayhorn as an explanation of how to ride the subway to Harlem, the
song captures the energy of the cultural capital of black America at
the dawn of the 1940s. Ellington's epic 1952 version kicks off with an
extended piano introduction, then sets up singer Betty Roche's
bop-and-scat-inflected spin on Strayhorn's lyrics. (A decade earlier,
Roche made what may be the first vocal recording of the song with
Ellington's orchestra in late 1942 for the wartime-morale movie Reveille with Beverly, in a sequence that depicted Roche, Ellington and the orchestra swinging the song aboard a passenger car.)
Tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves comes on for the second half of the
tune, gliding along slowly with the orchestra at first, then bursting
into a full-throttle gallop that concludes with a stirring cadenza.
YouTube
Lush Life
from John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman
by John Coltrane with Johnny Hartman
Along with "Take The 'A' Train," Strayhorn is best known
for this song. It's astonishing to think that he was barely out of his
teens when he wrote it, given its booze-jaded viewpoint of a seemingly
much older person whiling away his life "in some small dive." Not an
easy song to sing (no less than Frank Sinatra gave up on it during his
1958 sessions for Only the Lonely), it was minted as a standard
in 1949 by Nat King Cole with a version that Strayhorn despised,
largely because of the liberties Pete Rugolo took with the arrangement. Yet
it was Cole's record that singer Johnny Hartman and saxophonist John
Coltrane heard on the radio while driving to a 1963 studio date, causing
them to add the song to their recording schedule that day. Hartman's
elegant baritone-barfly rendition, gracefully buffeted along by
Coltrane's saxophone runs, perfectly conjures a twilight world of
melancholia, all filtered through the ebb and flow of a smoky,
late-afternoon buzz. (And check out the composer himself performing the song in 1964 with wry self-regard.)
YouTube
Chelsea Bridge
from Music with Feeling/Ben Webster with Strings
by Ben Webster
Many of Strayhorn's compositions evoke dream-misted
psychological landscapes with titles that sometimes invoke physical
objects or places to help power those projections. The chromatic
moon-and-fog melody of "Chelsea Bridge" is one such instance, and what
better horn to come swirling out of the mist than that of tenor
saxophonist Ben Webster, who joined Ellington's orchestra for a brief
but significant two-year stint not long after Strayhorn was enlisted. In
addition to arranging and conducting, Strayhorn played piano on this
particular date, providing a solo that demonstrates the spare complexity
informing much of his work.
YouTube
Upper Manhattan Medical Group
from A Portrait of Duke Ellington
by Dizzy Gillespie & His Orchestra
Also known as "U.M.M.G.," this piece is an ode to Arthur
Logan, Strayhorn and Ellington's doctor. Its spry rhythmic quality
highlights the jaunty side of Strayhorn's musical personality. As van de
Leur observes, the tune also nods to the Copasetics, an ensemble of tap
dancers Strayhdorn wrote for. It plumbs new harmonic depths and finds a
ready interpreter in bebop paragon Dizzy Gillespie (who also recorded
it separately with the Ellington orchestra for the album Jazz Party). This
album was arranged by a young Clare Fischer, fresh off his work with
the vocal group the Hi-Lo's, and his use of woodwinds may be an acquired
taste for some. The arrangements do provide an example of how other
composers and arrangers responded to Strayhorn's influence. "All I ever
did (was) try to do what Strayhorn did," famed composer Gil Evans told
David Hadju.
YouTube
Blood Count
from ...And His Mother Called Him Bill
by Duke Ellington and Orchestra
Numerous ballads are strewn throughout the Strayhorn
songbook like so many lovely flowers, and many of them served as
showcases for alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges. This dark,
mortality-haunted bloom was Strayhorn's final contribution to the
Ellington orchestra, completed as the first part of an intended suite
while he was in the hospital, slowly succumbing to esophageal cancer. Not long after Strayhorn's death, his longtime friend and collaborator took the band into the studio to make ...And His Mother Called Him Bill,
a memorial album of Strayhorn compositions and arrangements. On the
LP's first side, a prominent place was given to "Blood Count," a
minor-key incarnation of narrowing possibilities and unavoidable loss.
"Blood Count" often showed up in saxophonist Stan Getz's late-period set lists, and Elvis Costello recorded a memorable version with lyrics he added to Strayhorn's elegiac melody. On the edge of death, the composer still made beauty out of life.
THE MUSIC OF BILLY STRAYHORN: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH BILLY STRAYHORN:
Strayhorn was born in Dayton, Ohio. His family soon moved to the Homewood section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. However, his mother's family was from Hillsborough, North Carolina,
and she sent him there to protect him from his father's drunken sprees.
Strayhorn spent many months of his childhood at his grandparents' house
in Hillsborough. In an interview, Strayhorn said that his grandmother
was his primary influence during the first ten years of his life. He
first became interested in music while living with her, playing hymns on
her piano, and playing records on her Victrola record player.[2]
Return to Pittsburgh and meeting Ellington
Strayhorn returned to Pittsburgh, and attended Westinghouse High School, later attended by Erroll Garner and Ahmad Jamal. In Pittsburgh, he began his musical career, studying classical music
for a time at the Pittsburgh Music Institute, writing a high school
musical, forming a musical trio that played daily on a local radio
station, and, while still in his teens, composing (with lyrics) the
songs "Life Is Lonely" (later renamed "Lush Life"), "My Little Brown Book", and "Something to Live For".
While still in grade school, he worked odd jobs to earn enough money to
buy his first piano. While in high school, he played in the school
band, and studied under the same teacher, Carl McVicker, who had also
instructed jazz pianists Erroll Garner and Mary Lou Williams. By age 19, he was writing for a professional musical, Fantastic Rhythm.
Though classical music was Strayhorn’s first love, his ambition
to become a classical composer was shot down by the harsh reality of a
black man trying to make it in the classical world, which at that time
was almost completely white. Strayhorn was then introduced to the music
of pianists like Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson
at age 19. These musicians guided him into the realm of jazz where he
remained for the rest of his life. His first jazz exposure was in a
combo called the Mad Hatters that played around Pittsburgh. Strayhorn’s
fellow students, guitarist Bill Esch and drummer Mickey Scrima, also
influenced his move towards jazz, and he began writing arrangements for
Buddy Malone’s Pittsburg dance band after 1934.[3] He met Duke Ellington in December 1938, after an Ellington
performance in Pittsburgh (he had first seen Ellington play in
Pittsburgh in 1933). Here he first told, and then showed the band leader
how he would have arranged one of Duke's own pieces. Ellington was
impressed enough to invite other band members to hear Strayhorn. At the
end of the visit, he arranged for Strayhorn to meet him when the band
returned to New York. Strayhorn worked for Ellington for the next
quarter century as an arranger, composer, occasional pianist and
collaborator until his early death from cancer. As Ellington described
him, "Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the
back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine."[4]
Strayhorn's relationship with Ellington was always difficult to pin
down: Strayhorn was a gifted composer and arranger who seemed to
flourish in Duke's shadow. Ellington was arguably a father figure and
the band was affectionately protective of the diminutive, mild-mannered,
unselfish Strayhorn, nicknamed by the band "Strays", "Weely", and
"Swee' Pea". Ellington may have taken advantage of him,[5]
but not in the mercenary way that others had taken advantage of
Ellington; instead, he used Strayhorn to complete his thoughts, while
giving Strayhorn the freedom to write on his own and enjoy at least some
of the credit he deserved. Though Duke Ellington took credit for much
of Strayhorn’s work, he did not maliciously drown out his partner.
Ellington would make jokes onstage like, "Strayhorn does a lot of the
work but I get to take the bows!"[6] Strayhorn composed the band's best known theme, "Take the 'A' Train",
and a number of other pieces that became part of the band’s repertoire.
In some cases Strayhorn received attribution for his work such as
"Lotus Blossom", "Chelsea Bridge", and "Rain Check", while others, such as "Day Dream" and "Something to Live For", were listed as collaborations with Ellington or, in the case of "Satin Doll"
and "Sugar Hill Penthouse", were credited to Ellington alone.
Strayhorn also arranged many of Ellington's band-within-band recordings
and provided harmonic clarity, taste, and polish to Duke's compositions.
On the other hand, Ellington gave Strayhorn full credit as his
collaborator on later, larger works such as Such Sweet Thunder, A Drum Is a Woman, The Perfume Suite and The Far East Suite, where Strayhorn and Ellington worked closely together.[7] Strayhorn also often sat in on the piano with the Ellington Orchestra, both live and in the studio.
Detroit Free Pressmusic critic Mark Stryker concludes that the work of Strayhorn and Ellington in Anatomy of a Murder is "indispensable, [although] ... too sketchy to rank in the top echelon among Ellington-Strayhorn masterpiece suites like "Such Sweet Thunder" and "The Far East Suite", but its most inspired moments are their equal."[8] Film historians have recognized the soundtrack "as a landmark -- the first significant Hollywood film music by African Americans comprising non-diegetic
music, that is, music whose source is not visible or implied by action
in the film, like an on-screen band." The score avoided the cultural
stereotypes which previously characterized jazz scores and rejected a
strict adherence to visuals in ways that presaged the New Wave cinema of the ’60s."[9] In 1960 the two collaborated on the album The Nutcracker Suite, recorded for the Columbia label and featuring jazz interpretations of "The Nutcracker" by Tchaikovsky, arranged by the two.[10] The original album cover is notable for the inclusion of Strayhorn's name and picture along with Ellington's on the front.
Personal life
Shortly
before going on his second European tour with his orchestra, from March
to May 1939, Ellington announced to his sister Ruth and son Mercer Ellington that Strayhorn "is staying with us."[11] Through Mercer, Strayhorn met his first partner, African-American musician Aaron Bridgers, with whom Strayhorn lived until Bridgers moved to Paris in 1947.[12] Strayhorn was openly gay.[6] He participated in many civil rights causes. As a committed friend to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
he arranged and conducted "King Fit the Battle of Alabama'" for the
Ellington Orchestra in 1963 for the historical revue (and album) My People, dedicated to King.
Strayhorn's strong character left an impression on many people who met him. He had a major influence on the career of Lena Horne, who wanted to marry Strayhorn and considered him to have been the love of her life.[13]
Strayhorn used his classical background to improve Horne's singing
technique. They eventually recorded songs together. In the 1950s,
Strayhorn left his musical partner Duke Ellington for a few years to
pursue a solo career of his own. He came out with a few solo albums and
revues for the Copasetics (a New York show-business society), and took on theater productions with his friend Luther Henderson.
Illness and death
Strayhorn was diagnosed with esophageal cancer
in 1964, which eventually caused his death in 1967. Strayhorn finally
succumbed in the early morning on May 31, 1967, in the company of his
partner, Bill Grove, not in Lena Horne's arms as has often been falsely
reported. By her own account, she was touring in Europe when she
received the news of Strayhorn's death.[14] His ashes were scattered in the Hudson River by a gathering of his closest friends.[15] While in the hospital, he had submitted his final composition to Ellington. "Blood Count" was used as the third track to Ellington's memorial album for Strayhorn, …And His Mother Called Him Bill,
which was recorded several months after Strayhorn's death. The last
track of the album is a spontaneous solo version of "Lotus Blossom"
performed by Ellington, who sat at the piano and played for his friend
while the band (who can be heard in the background) packed up after the
formal end of the recording session.
Legacy
Strayhorn's
arrangements had a tremendous impact on the Ellington band. Ellington
always wrote for the personnel he had at the time, showcasing both the
personalities and sound of soloists such as Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Ben Webster, Lawrence Brown and Jimmy Blanton,
and drawing on the contrasts between players or sections to create a
new sound for his band. Strayhorn brought a more linear, classically
schooled ear to Ellington’s works, setting down in permanent form the
sound and structures that Ellington sought.[citation needed] A Pennsylvania State Historical Marker highlighting Strayhorn's
accomplishments was placed at Westinghouse High School in Pittsburgh,
from which he graduated.[16] In North Carolina, a state historical marker honoring Strayhorn is located in downtown Hillsborough, near his "boyhood home".[17] The former Regent Theatre in Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood was renamed the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in honor of Strayhorn and fellow Pittsburgher Gene Kelly in 2000. It is a community-based performing arts theater.
In 2015 Strayhorn was inducted into the Legacy Walk.[18] In his autobiography and in a spoken word passage in his Second Sacred Concert,
Duke Ellington listed what he considered Strayhorn's "four major moral
freedoms": "freedom from hate, unconditionally; freedom from self-pity
(even through all the pain and bad news); freedom from fear of possibly
doing something that might possibly help another more than it might
himself and freedom from the kind of pride that might make a man think
that he was better than his brother or his neighbor."[19]
Discography
For albums where Strayhorn arranged or performed with the Duke Ellington Orchestra see Duke Ellington discography
Cue for Saxophone (Felsted, 1959) - Johnny Hodges small-group session released under Strayhorn's name
The Peaceful Side (United Artists,
1961) - Small group sessions recorded in Paris. This was the only Lp
released by Strayhorn during his life where he had complete artistic
control; other Lps released under Strayhorn's name while he was alive
(such as "Cue for Saxophone" on the Felstead label and "Billy
Strayhorn!!! Live!!!" on the Roulette label) were released under
Strayhorn's name for contractual reasons.
Lush Life (Red Baron,
1992) - composed mostly of 1965 studio recordings of a small group
featuring Strayhorn, Clark Terry, and Bob Wilber. The group had played
these arrangements at a tribute concert on June 6, 1965 at the New
School for Social Research in New York City which was organized by the
Duke Ellington Society. The CD also has two Strayhorn-composed tracks
recorded live in 1961 at a Duke Ellington show at the Basin Street East club in New York, and a handful of studio duets by Strayhorn and singer Ozzie Bailey and piano solos by Strayhorn.
Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 45470-45471). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
![Anatomy of a Murder [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]](https://cdn-s3.allmusic.com/release-covers/250/0001/348/0001348331.jpg)
Billy Strayhorn 
,”
one of a few Ellington tunes Strayhorn knew from his days with the Mad
Hatters; as a trio, the group used to play a version inspired by Art
Tatum’s arabesque 1933 recording. “The amazing thing was,” explained
Greenlee, “Billy played it exactly like Duke had just played it
on stage. He copied him to perfection.” Ellington stayed silent and
prone, though his hair work was over. “Now, this is the way I would play
it,” continued Strayhorn. Changing keys and upping the tempo slightly,
he shifted into an adaptation Greenlee described as “pretty,
hip-sounding and further and further ‘out there’ as he went on.”
In 1964, near the end of his career, Billy Strayhorn accompanied himself on a live recording of one of his best-known songs. It starts:
William P. Gottlieb/Library of Congress
