Sunday, May 21, 1995
Take the Stray Train: The Ellington conference
sheds new light on the late Billy Strayhorn — Pittsburgh’s
publicity-shy composer and bon vivant
By Peter B. King
Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Billy Strayhorn lived his life with nothing like the kind
of attention he’ll receive in Pittsburgh this week at the
13th Annual International Duke Ellington Conference. And
that suited him fine.
Strayhorn, who grew up in Homewood, composed about 200
published works alone or in collaboration with Duke
Ellington during their 28-year partnership. He orchestrated
hundreds more tunes for Ellington’s orchestra and small
groups. But only the cognoscenti recognized the name of
this shy and quiet man who valued privacy and freedom more
than the footlights.
Almost 30 years after his death in 1967 at the age of 51,
his name rings lots more bells. Strayhorn tunes like “Take
the A Train,” “Lush Life” and “Chelsea Bridge” are
performed and recorded ceaselessly. Tribute albums
proliferate, with one of them — Joe Henderson’s
Grammy-winning “Lush Life” — topping the jazz charts in
1992. Strayhorn’s tunes are even reaching a new generation
of pop listeners through recordings by Linda Ronstadt,
Natalie Cole and others.
Wednesday through Sunday, the city where Strayhorn did most
of his growing up will take another look at the composer
during the Ellington event. About 300 scholars, musicians
and fans will hit town for lectures and concerts —
including performances of newly released, unpublished
Strayhorn pieces — at the Pittsburgh Hilton & Towers
and other sites.
The conference will spotlight a man with a remarkable
talent for music and an almost-as-remarkable talent for
living. By all accounts, Strayhorn was good-natured,
well-liked and reasonably content. But — as an artist, a
black man and a gay man — he didn’t escape life unscathed.
Strayhorn was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1915. His family
moved to Hillsborough, N.C., and then to Braddock in 1920,
Ranking in 1925 and, a year later, to Homewood. Lillian
Dicks, Strayhorn’s sister and 15 years his junior,
remembers her teen-age brother playing piano incessantly in
their four-room house in Homewood.
“I guess you got kind of used to it, like living near the
railroad.”
She also remembers Strayhorn’s sense of style. “My brother
didn’t walk around the house in his pants, because they’d
get creased, they’d get wrinkled. So my earliest
recollections of him were sitting around in his boxer
shorts playing the piano.”
Now a vacant lot, the house stood at the intersection of
Cassino Way and Zenith Way, behind a still-standing
red-brick church at the corner of Homewood and Tioga.
“The minister came over and requested would he please not
play during the services on Sunday because he was
distracting the congregation,” Dicks remembers.
But though some memories from that time make Dicks laugh,
the situation was far from idyllic.
Strayhorn’s mother is described by those who knew her as
warm and nurturing. Strayhorn’s father was a different
story. Dicks describes him as “a smart man and a very
unfulfilled man, I would say. Extremely frustrated.” He was
handsome and charming and had “problems with
responsibility, with raising (six) children.” He worked
hard as a plasterer, Dicks says, for very little money. He
drank on weekends, and he cursed up a storm.
His son Billy sought refuge in music. As a student at
Westinghouse High School, he had access to a strong music
program — one that nurtured other great musicians such as
Ahmad Jamal, Ray Brown and Erroll Garner. Strayhorn took
piano with Jane Patton Alexander, and he played piano in
the school orchestra under Carl McVicker — one of
Pittsburgh’s most celebrated music teachers.
Strayhorn practiced Chopin waltzes and preludes. He loved
Ravel and Rachmaninoff. Occasionally he’d play a Gershwin
tune, his sister remembers, but that was “stepping down.”
For his graduate recital, Strayhorn performed Grieg’s A
minor Concerto with the orchestra.
What he really wanted was to be a classical pianist, Dicks
says. But he felt that route was blocked because of his
color.
While he was at Westinghouse, probably when he was 16,
Strayhorn wrote his second-most popular song, “Lush Life.”
“A week in Paris would ease the bite of it,” he could
imagine in this mother-of-all-torch-songs. This from a kid
who spent his after-school hours jerking sodas at the
Pennfield Pharmacy in Point Breeze, whose only knowledge of
Paris came from studying French in school and from his
subscription to the New Yorker. (In the ‘50s, Strayhorn
would visit Paris for months at a time.)
Shortly after graduating Westinghouse, Strayhorn wrote the
music, lyrics and book for a musical called “Fantastic
Rhythm.”
Robert Conaway, now 78, was hired to play piano for the
musical’s rehearsals in the evening at Westinghouse, while
Strayhorn worked at the drug store. “It was a lot of cute
little skits put together around a newspaper office,” he
says. “And a lot of songs. It was a local success.”
Performed at Westinghouse High and a few other venues,
“Fantastic Rhythm” made a profit of $55. A tune from the
musical, “My Little Brown Book,” later found its way into
the Ellington repertoire.
Despite local recognition, Strayhorn “was never a
braggart,” says Conaway. “He was not the kind of person who
made himself obvious. He was always quiet, and a very
gentle young man.
“He was very unassuming. As a matter of fact, he never
seemed to project himself in any way that people do
personally.”
Strayhorn continued to work locally as an arranger and, in
1937, he put together a trio called The Mad Hatters. Then,
on Dec. 2, 1938, he made the move that changed his life.
Strayhorn went to the Stanley Theatre to see Duke
Ellington. His mission: to get backstage to play for the
maestro. And he did it.
According to Conaway, who heard the story from Strayhorn,
“Duke was arranging a piece of music at the time for his
orchestra, and Billy took up where he left off. He
completed it there on the spot, right there backstage. And
Duke was pleased, and he gave him a $20 bill.”
Strayhorn also played “Lush Life” for Ellington, who was
most impressed by the lyrics. Ellington said he’d send for
Strayhorn at some point.
Two months later, a friend and arranger named Bill Esch
persuaded Strayhorn to come with him to New York and look
up Ellington. Strayhorn found Ellington at the Teresa Hotel
in Harlem, a day or two before the band was leaving for a
tour of Europe, and Strayhorn became a house guest of
Ellington’s sister, Ruth, and his son, Mercer.
Mercer and Strayhorn studied Duke’s scores during the three
months Duke was away, and Strayhorn wrote for Mercer’s
small group. Shortly after that, his father took Strayhorn
out on the road, Mercer remembers, “and out came this
wonderful series of songs.”
The Ellington band’s first recording of a Strayhorn tune
was “Something To Live For,” waxed on March 21, 1939, and
sung by Pittsburgh’s Jean Eldridge. Strayhorn’s first hit
came in 1940, with his arrangement of a Tin Pan Alley tune
called “Flamingo,” sung by Herb Jeffries. During 1940-41
alone, Strayhorn wrote such great tunes as “A Flower is a
Lovesome Thing,” “Chelsea Bridge,” “Passion Flower” and
“Raincheck.”
But Strayhorn’s most famous song was one he had written and
judged as “very good Fletcher Henderson but not Duke
Ellington,” says Mercer Ellington, “and he threw it in the
trash can.” He didn’t dig it out until a time when the
Ellington band desperately needed new material; the tune
Strayhorn presented, of course, was “Take the A Train.”
Recorded on Jan. 15, 1941, the song became the Ellington’s
band’s signature.
Many people assume Duke wrote the song, even though
Ellington announced the composer with every performance.
Physically, of course, there was no mistaking one man for
the other. Ellington was beefy, charismatic, a flashy
dresser and a legendary chaser of skirts. Strayhorn
(nicknamed Swee’ Pea, after the baby in Popeye cartoons)
was gay, 5-feet-3, shy, quietly elegant and
studious-looking in his thick-framed glasses.
But musically, scholars still puzzle over where one
contribution ended and the other began. Strayhorn didn’t
always get credit for his arranging, and the suites and
other extended works composed by Ellington-Strayhorn don’t
always credit particular sections.
Sometimes Strayhorn’s writing sounded remarkably like
Duke’s. “It was intentional,” says Mercer Ellington. “So
that it wouldn’t seem like one person started here and then
somebody else came in while the other person went out to
lunch.”
Mercer recalls how the two would divvy up the arranging,
with one man taking sections A and B, for example, and the
other C and D. “One day they got their directions screwed
up, and both of them wound up doing C. And it was as if
they had written it together. It came out to be exactly the
same thing. That was on the bridge of ‘Satin Doll.’ “
Nevertheless, the songs and instrumentals composed by
Strayhorn usually exude a distinctive harmonic sense and
atmosphere. David Hajdu, an editor at Entertainment Weekly
who is writing the first biography ever of Strayhorn for
release next spring, says his interest was piqued by
listening to Ellington records “and having individual
pieces of music pop out,” like “Isfahan” from “The Far East
Suite” and “Star Crossed Lovers” from “Such Sweet Thunder.”
“While I was listening I’d start looking at the credits,
and I’d see that a lot of the tunes that I was most
attracted to had the name Billy Strayhorn on them.
“Duke is a great folk genius and broke musical rules in a
very innovative and often startling and almost always
rewarding way. Billy’s much more of the European tradition.
Of course, a lot of composers go to the conservatory and
learn the rules of composition, but the thing that makes
him extraordinary is this combination of training and
discipline with emotionality. There’s a real emotion and
feeling and truth in his work. And a lot of that feeling is
bittersweet in nature.”
Nevertheless, the human being who expressed wistfulness in
“Lotus Blossom” and dread in “Blood Count” did not present
himself to the world as a tortured artist.
“In all of our lives, there’s usually more complexity than
meets the eye.” says Hajdu. “I think that life was
difficult for him because he was both black and gay and
never hid his homosexuality. Which is not to say that he
was blatant or outward about it, in a way that we think of
today. He chose to express the complexity of his emotions
and the darker side of his emotions through his music, not
through his personal manner. Because he was a gentleman
above all, and a nice guy.”
In a 1992 Village Voice piece, Jay Weiser wrote that as a
gay man, Strayhorn “lived his life unashamed, but
discreetly, in a glass closet.”
Gregory Morris, Strayhorn’s nephew and one of the owners of
his song copyrights, says Strayhorn seemed comfortable with
his sexuality. “He was very comfortable with himself. He
didn’t run around telling the world; I guess it was just no
big thing.”
Ellington and the band knew of Strayhorn’s sexual
preference and accepted him without reservation, says
Mercer Ellington.
Ellington and Strayhorn were “soulmates, like alter egos of
each other,” Mercer says. “Show business has always been
the most tolerant (as far as) what some people might
consider immoral.”
As for the public at large, Mercer recalls: “Billy was very
discreet. If you weren’t on the inside to know, if somebody
didn’t tell you what his personal life was like, you
wouldn’t be able to tell by the way he carried himself.”
Weisner wrote that Strayhorn attended gay parties where he
hobnobbed with Truman Capote and Gore Vidal, talked arts
and politics with gay and straight friends like Lena Horne
and the choreographer Talley Beatty, and visited Cherry
Grove, the gay summer colony on Fire Island. But it’s
difficult to say with certainty who his lovers were.
Just as Strayhorn sidestepped homophobia, he also managed
to avoid the ugliest aspects of racism. He had money, for
one thing. For another, the Ellington band traveled on a
private train to avoid the hassle of seeking food and
lodging down South.
Strayhorn himself did not have a racist bone in his body,
says Morris. “I would say the only time my uncle was ever
angry with me was when I made this stereotypical comment
about another religious group. I was talking about
intellect and how smart ‘these people’ always are, and he
really ripped into me about that. He said that’s what
education is about, getting beyond making these stereotypes
about groups of people based on very limited data.”
Strayhorn involved himself in the struggle for civil
rights. He got to know the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
he played piano for Horne when she sang at rallies, and he
traveled with Marian Logan, the widow of Duke Ellington’s
doctor, on trips to desegregate Southern hotel rooms. He
felt an obligation
because of his modicum of celebrity, says Morris.
Closer to home, Morris remembers going with his uncle to an
East Liberty bank when Strayhorn needed to cash a check in
the mid-’60s, and getting glacial treatment from a white
teller.
“When she finally mosied around to him, he said, ‘You see
the treatment we’re getting? She’s looked at me, and she’s
made some assumptions about me. Watch.’
“And he said to her, ‘I’d like to transfer $10,000 from my
savings account to my checking account.’ And we’re talking
about mid-60s — $10,000 was a lot of money. This woman, she
got really flustered. She said, ‘I have to go to the
manager.’ The next moment the two of them came along. ‘Mr.
Strayhorn, would you like to come over here?’ And we went
into this private little office, we were asked to sit down.
And the whole thing changed ... “
To his family in Pittsburgh, Strayhorn was the glamorous
older sibling — calling from foreign countries and even
from an ocean liner at all hours of the day and night.
He told the family he lived “on the other side of the
clock,” his sister Lillian Dicks remembers. “His business,
it was always at night.”
He also sent letters and gifts — sometimes from exotic
places. “I was very sorry when my feet got larger than
his,” Morris says, “because as his things kind of wore out
or he moved onto something else, he would send these
beautiful things along to me. I had a cashmere navy pea
coat. I had a blue double-breasted leather coat that was
kind of like Marshal Goering — a field-general coat from
Daniel Fish in London.”
But Strayhorn handed out more than a cast-off pair of shoes
— he paid for much of Morris’ college education, for
instance, and bought his mother a house in West Mifflin.
To the general public, Strayhorn was little-known before
his death. He could have raised his profile by trying his
hand as a bandleader or by accepting invitations from
Sinatra, Charlie Barnet and others to write for them. But
he was loyal to Ellington. He recorded only a few albums as
a leader. And though he wrote songs for Lena Horne and for
the Copasetics — a charitable organization comprising
mostly tap dancers — his only hit song that did not involve
the Ellington band was “Lush Life,” recorded by Nat King
Cole in 1948.
Strayhorn “was very happy being with Duke Ellington,” says
Morris. “He loved the orchestra and all that it
represented, and it also gave him the opportunity to live
his own life. There were times when he traveled with the
band, there were times he stayed home writing or
researching or creating or just taking it easy. When things
were needed, when Duke would call, they would churn stuff
out.”
Strayhorn made a conscious decision to avoid the limelight,
Hajdu says, in order to live more easily as a homosexual.
And he lived well. Besides reading and shopping for
clothes, he was a gourmet cook (Ellington said he was the
world’s greatest), known for dishes like Beer and Beans. He
was also a wine connoisseur who began to drink too heavily
late in his life.
Mercer Ellington calls Strayhorn a genius, and he means it
in more than just the musical sense: “He treated everything
he did with that touch that always showed a bit more care
than the average person would take — whether it was baking
Sweet Potatoes and Orange Skins, or the way he did his
clothes when he would make repairs and sew things — it was
just completely different. Completely artistic.”
In 1965, at the age of 49, Strayhorn began to feel ill. “I
know he was having a lot of trouble swallowing,” Morris
recalls. “He kept saying, ‘My throat feels like it’s
closing. I don’t know what’s wrong.’ “
A chain smoker of Camels, Strayhorn had contracted cancer
of the esophagus. In the next two years, he underwent
surgery three times.
Dicks remembers accompanying Strayhorn to the doctor at a
hospital in New York City. “Bill, he just did everything in
such a grand manner. He got the limousine, and we went to
the doctor, but first we went to Bloomingdale’s …”
Surgeons removed Strayhorn’s esophagus and replaced it with
parts of his intestines. “A lot of pain, and of course he
lost weight,” Morris says, his voice breaking. “It was a
very, very sad time. He suffered a lot.”
The last time Strayhorn visited Pittsburgh, Morris drove to
the airport to meet him. “And the first time around I
passed him up. I didn’t recognize him. My son said, ‘Daddy,
you passed up Uncle Bill!’ So I made the circle again. He
said ‘There he is!’ And I looked at him, and he was just a
shadow of his former self.”
Strayhorn died on May 31, 1967 at the age of 51. In his
eulogy, Ellington called the diminutive Strayhorn “the
biggest human being who ever lived.”
Ellington continued: “He demanded freedom of expression and
lived in what we consider the most important of moral
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 help himself; and freedom
from the kind of pride that could make a man feel he was
better than his brother or neighbor.”
Since his death, his star has only risen. Joe Henderson,
Art Farmer and Marian McPartland recorded their tributes.
Strayhorn’s close friend Lena Horne made her 1993 comeback
at a JVC Jazz Festival Strayhorn tribute in New York; the
“We’ll Be Together Again” album, a TV special and a live
album followed, heavy on Strayhorn material. Natalie Cole’s
“Unforgettable” introduced “Lush Life” to millions.
On Friday, Pittsburgh will have the opportunity to hear a
dozen or so unpublished Strayhorn tunes played by the Dutch
Jazz Orchestra at the Hilton at 7 p.m. Morris found the
tunes in Strayhorn’s Harlem apartment after his death.
Like other Strayhorn pieces, they promise to give future
jazz musicians beguiling frameworks for improvisation and
future fans shivers of delight.
Thirty years after his death, “the biggest human being that
ever lived” casts a towering shadow.
Here’s a schedule of events at the 13th Annual
International Duke Ellington Conference:
— Wednesday, 8 p.m., Pittsburgh Hilton and Towers Ballroom
— Ellington Reunion Concert with Clark Terry, Louie
Bellson, Kenny Burrell, Jimmy Woode and special guest Walt
Harper, with the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra led by Nathan
Davis. Tickets: $20.
— Thursday, 8 p.m., Hilton Ballroom — “Strictly Strayhorn”
with McCoy Tyner and Geri Allen. Tickets: $20.
— Friday, 7 p.m., Hilton Ballroom — “ ‘Portrait of a Silk
Thread’ and Other Newly Discovered Works of Billy
Strayhorn” with the Dutch Jazz Orchestra. Tickets: $12.50.
— Saturday, 11 a.m., Westinghouse High School — Dedication
of a Billy Strayhorn marker.
— Saturday, 7 p.m., Hilton — Conference Banquet, with music
by Roger Humphries. Tickets: $50.
— Sunday, 11 a.m. Jazz Brunch Boat Ride, Station Square —
Tickets: $40.
A package ticket to the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday
concerts is available for $46.50. For concert tickets:
323-1919. For other events and more information: 681-3538.
Here’s a highly selective list of recordings of Billy
Strayhorn’s music, from the songs to the extended works:
By Duke Ellington’s orchestras:
“The Blanton/Webster Band,” RCA/Bluebird.
“Such Sweet Thunder,” Columbia.
“The Far East Suite,” RCA/Bluebird.
“And His Mother Called Him Bill,” RCA/Bluebird.
By Ellington small groups:
“Caravan,” Johnny Hodges All-Stars with the Duke Ellington
All-Stars, the Billy Strayhorn All-Stars, Prestige.
“Great Times! Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn Piano
Duets,” Riverside.
By others:
“Lush Life: The Music of Billy Strayhorn,” Joe Henderson,
Verve.
“Marian McPartland Plays the Music of Billy Strayhorn,”
Concord.
“Something to Live For,” Art Farmer, Contemporary.
“We’ll Be Together Again,” Lena Horne, Blue Note.
“Portrait of a Silk Thread: Newly Discovered Works of Billy
Strayhorn,” The Dutch Jazz Orchestra, Challenge (brand-new
from Europe, probably hard to find).
By Strayhorn as leader:
“Lush Life,” Red Baron.
“Cue For Sax,” Verve.
“The Peaceful Side,” UA (out of print but highly
recommended).
Two classic recordings of “Lush Life:”
“The Nat King Cole Story,” Nat King Cole, Capitol.
“John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman,” MCA.
