Billy Strayhorn

Composer, lyricist, arranger and pianist Billy Strayhorn's career was inextricably linked to that of the great Duke Ellington. For nearly thirty years, the small, diffident guy with the gold-rimmed spectacles (nicknamed "Sweepea" by band members, after a comic book character) served as Ellington's closest confidante and collaborator. He was also his protégé. In the wake of a performance by the Ellingtonians in Pittsburgh in December 1938, the classically-trained Strayhorn submitted some of his own compositions. He was then interviewed by Duke who took him on as staff arranger despite his apparent lack of experience. With a little coaching from a friend (Bill Esch, who had written arrangements for Ina Ray Hutton), Strayhorn managed to turn out two pieces for alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges ("Savoy Strut" and "Like a Ship in the Night"). Before long, he found himself in charge of almost all of the arrangements for band vocalists, in particular recent arrival Ivie Anderson. Strayhorn won the Down Beat Poll as best arranger (1945-48). He composed some of the most enduring and sophisticated numbers for the Ellington orchestra, including their theme song "Take the 'A' Train" and the superbly swinging "Johnny Come Lately". He also wrote beautifully structured and harmonious ballads: "Chelsea Bridge", "Daydream", "Lotus Blossom", "Passion Flower", "After All", "Something to Live For" (sung by 'Jean Eldridge'), among many others. One of his earlier pieces, "Lush Life" (written in 1938), was initially sung by Strayhorn himself and withheld from publication for several years. It was destined to become a hit for Nat 'King' Cole in 1949. Numerous other numbers were written and orchestrated jointly by Duke and Strayhorn. Ellington regarded Strayhorn affectionately as his 'right arm, left arm, the eyes in the back of his head'. For his part, Strayhorn declared in a 1962 interview: "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" (The Duke Ellington Reader, 1993, p. 498). Their work on the moody and mellow film score for Anatomy of a Murder (1959) is often regarded as one of their finest collaborative efforts. Strayhorn also played an instrumental role in writing the idiomatic and evocative soundtrack for Paris Blues (1961), a film in which music and scenery rather overshadow the mechanics of the screenplay. Strayhorn was a regular visitor to Paris where he often worked with local musicians, recording an introspective album (the only one in which he is featured as a soloist under his own name), 'The Peaceful Side', for United Artists in 1961. In private life, Strayhorn was committed to social and charitable causes. He was a former president of Copasetics, a Harlem-based fraternal organization of entertainers. He was a strong supporter of the civil rights movement and a personal friend of Martin Luther King. Though openly gay, Strayhorn maintained a particularly intimate relationship with singer and actress Lena Horne. Since his death from esophageal cancer in 1967, Strayhorn's profound influence on jazz has been reevaluated with the publication of two seminal biographies in 1996 and 2002 and a 2007 TV documentary entitled "Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life".