Duke (81 page)

NOTES

The first feature-length story about BS:
Leonard Feather, “Billy Strayhorn—The Young Duke,”
Jazz,
Jan. 1943.
BS’s name appeared only once in the
Reader’s Guide:
Hajdu, xi.

“A small, slightly burned, whole-wheat-toast owl”:
George, 80.
“Swee’ Pea”:
Dance, 61.
He was also referred to as “Weely”:
“Weely” is the title of the chapter in Ulanov that is devoted to BS.
“Aide-de-camp”:
Dance, 27.
BS’s “assimilation of Ellington’s mannerisms”:
The program for the Carnegie Hall concert is reproduced in
The Duke Ellington Reader
(163).
“So great a similarity”:
Ulanov, 223.
“A Duke Jr.
of sorts”:
Quoted in van de Leur, xvii.

“The whodunit game”:
BS, “Billy Strayhorn: ‘The Ellington Effect,’”
Down Beat,
Nov. 5, 1952, in
Reader,
270.
“Strayhorn’s role in the Ellington canon”:
Schuller, 136.
It was common for “experts” to credit DE with pieces that BS had written:
Eddie Lambert’s
Duke Ellington: A Listener’s Guide
makes this mistake regularly.
“A certain effeteness”:
Schuller, 136.
“Lushness, prettiness”:
Collier, 272–73.
“The genius, the power behind the throne”:
Brown, oral-history interview.

“From the moment I first heard ‘Chelsea Bridge’”:
Hajdu, 87.
“I’d like to really know”:
Quincy Jones, review of
Newport 1958,
Jazz Review,
May 1959, in
Reader,
312.
To this day he fails to receive his scholarly due:
BS is not mentioned at all, for example, in the Ellington chapter of Alyn Shipton’s
New History of Jazz.

“My playing and writing style”:
BS, “Billy Strayhorn: ‘The Ellington Effect’”;
Reader,
270.
“He is he and I am me”:
John S. Wilson, “Billy Strayhorn: Alter Ego for the Duke,”
The New York Times,
June 6, 1965.
“One
of the most important people”:
Jazz 625.

“Billy sits in the control room”:
Ulanov, 235.
DE’s “favorite human being”:
MM,
159.
“He was my listener”:
Ibid., 156.

That came in 1981:
George, 78–80. This is the first time that BS’s homosexuality was explicitly mentioned in print.

“I started to study”:
Traill, 43.

“Something changed when I saw him on stage”:
BS, 1962 interview.
“He had a chord”:
Quoted in van de Leur, 19.
Fantastic Rhythm:
One of the songs from the show, “My Little Brown Book,” became part of DE’s working repertoire, while another one, “Let Nature Take Its Course,” was later adapted for inclusion in the Ellington-Strayhorn musical
Beggar’s Holiday
(1946).

“It’s a song most persons have to listen to twice”:
“New Hit, ‘Lush Life,’ Is Not New,”
Down Beat,
Aug. 12, 1949.

“Everything he did made musical sense”:
Traill, 43.
“I had given no real serious thought”:
Ibid.

BS played and sang “Lush Life” and “Something to Live For”:
Accounts vary on this point. Ulanov says that BS played only “Lush Life” and that it was not until later that he showed “Something to Live For” to DE (Ulanov, 220, 222). George Greenlee, who arranged the meeting, told Hajdu that he played both songs (Hajdu, 51).
“It begins softly”:
Sinclair Traill, “Billy Strayhorn—An Interview,” in Traill, 41.
“Duke was very nice to me”:
Feather, “Billy Strayhorn—The Young Duke.”
“I would like to have you”:
BS, 1962 interview.

“In an almost instantaneous assimilation”:
van de Leur, 25.
“It was born without any effort”:
Quoted in Hajdu, 55–56.

“I’m not going to let you go”:
DE, TV interview,
The Parkinson Show,
BBC, 1973, in
RIT,
201.
“I don’t have any position for you”:
Wilson, “Billy Strayhorn: Alter Ego for the Duke.”
“Like
a native”:
Ruth Ellington, oral-history interview.
“What the hell are we
paying all the rent for?”:
Hajdu, 58.

“One day Duke sent me two pieces:
BS, 1962 interview.
“I couldn’t really arrange”:
Bill Coss, “Ellington & Strayhorn, Inc.,”
Down Beat,
June 7, 1962, in
Reader,
499.

“I left him at my house”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.
BS wrote “Day Dream” and “Passion Flower”:
Ulanov, 222–23, and van de Leur, 27.

“A long time”:
BS, 1962 interview.
“He had a good musical
education”:
DE,
Parkinson Show
interview.

“He gave [him] charge”:
BS, 1962 interview.
“From then on, Duke did very little”:
Coss, “Ellington & Strayhorn, Inc.,” in
Reader,
499.
“He got everything that Duke had”:
Tizol, oral-history interview. The trombonist’s admiration, however, stopped short of being willing to extract parts from BS’s manuscripts, for the young man’s unformed handwriting was hard to read. It was “like hen-scratching,” he admitted in 1962 (BS, 1962 interview).
“A guy that everybody loved”:
Greer, oral-history interview.

“I was down in the station”:
DE, Harman interview, 1964.

DE took sole credit for “Your Love Has Faded”:
A 1999 Warner Bros. Publications folio gives DE and BS joint credit for the song. For a detailed discussion of the provenance of “Your Love Has Faded,” see Lasker, liner notes for
Duke Ellington:
The Complete 1936–1940 Variety, Vocalion and OKeh Small Group Sessions,
17.

“Every once in a while”:
Hajdu, 239.
“At about one-thirty”:
Gordon Parks, “Jazz,”
Esquire,
Dec. 1975.

Only fifty-two surviving manuscript scores are in the handwriting of both DE and BS:
van de Leur, 89.

BS had not yet heard Ravel’s
Valses nobles et sentimentales:
Ulanov, 225.

DE cut “Chelsea Bridge”:
For a detailed discussion of the cuts, see van de Leur, 50–54.
“There is nothing like taking a Billy Strayhorn orchestration”:
Paul Worth, radio interview with DE and BS, 1962, quoted in van de Leur, 109.

BS’s work was being performed by DE’s band:
In 1998 the Dutch Jazz Orchestra recorded the original, uncut version of “Chelsea Bridge.” In addition to showing how Ellington altered the piece, this recording offers a dramatic demonstration of how the Ellington band played Strayhorn’s scores in such a way as to give them an unmistakably Ellingtonian coloration. (The performance is included on
Something to Live For.
)

“I feel that his was the only band”:
Traill, 45.
“He had a hard time making friends”:
Hajdu, 18.
“The guy went through a lot of shit”:
Ibid., 88.

“There wasn’t a lot of guys”:
Ibid., 70.
Bigard spoke critically of BS’s sexuality in his oral-history interview:
Dan Morgenstern, personal communication.

“Pop never cared one bit”:
Hajdu, 79.
“A Faggot Mafia”:
Ellington, 157–58.
“Duke treated Billy exactly like he treated women”:
David Hajdu, “Something to Live For,”
The Village Voice Jazz Special,
June 23, 1992.

“I think Duke was a much simpler character”:
Jewell, 63.
“Duke was a
magnificent role model”:
Hajdu, 78.

DE took care to display
Remembrance of Things Past:
“In a bedroom hall stands a small table with six books on it. Four of them are the elegantly bound ‘Remembrance of Things Past’ series by Marcel Proust. The fifth is Emily Post’s ‘
Etiquette,’
and the sixth is Emily Post’s ‘
Etiquette Revised’
” (H. Allen Smith, “Hot and Sweet: Duke Ellington as a Composer Is in Class Alone,”
New York World-Telegram,
Sept. 15, 1938).
BS favored Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, and the French impressionists:
Ulanov, 236.

BS and Bridgers were discreet about the nature of their relationship:
“Billy and I both felt that you don’t have to talk about such things. You communicate them better in other ways. . . . You shouldn’t have to ask” (Hajdu, 66).
Ulanov later implied as much:
Ulanov, 226–28. This appears to be the first published reference to Bridgers, who is described as “Billy’s roommate.” In 1946 knowledgeable readers would have understood Ulanov to be suggesting that BS and Bridgers were lovers.
“We accepted Aaron as a new member of the family”:
Hajdu, 69–70.

“It had nothing to do”:
Ibid., 86.
“When Strayhorn came on the scene”:
Ibid., 86–87.
“A turning point”:
MM,
153.

DE’s “staff arranger”:
Boyer, “The Hot Bach,” 220.

“He has never made me feel”:
Wilson, “Billy Strayhorn: Alter Ego for the Duke.”
“The one thing that stood out”:
Hajdu, 78.

BS’s nickname for DE was “Monster”:
See, for instance, Gordon Parks, “Jazz,”
Esquire,
Dec. 1975.
“You wrote every bit as much of that music”:
Ibid., 171–72. In addition to making no mention of BS, the article credited DE with writing “A Drum Is a Woman” and “Such Sweet Thunder,” both of which were jointly written by the two men (“Duke Ellington: A Living Legend Swings On,”
Look,
Aug. 20, 1957).

CHAPTER TEN
“THE SEA OF EXPECTANCY”

SOURCES

Documents

Lawrence Brown, oral-history interview, IJS; Helen Oakley Dance, oral-history interview, OHAM; DE,
The Duke Ellington Carnegie Hall Concerts: January 1943,
sound recording (Prestige); DE, unpublished interview with Carter Harman, 1964, EC; Sonny Greer, oral-history interview, IJS; Lawrence Gushee, liner notes for
Duke Ellington 1940,
sound recording (Smithsonian Collection); Milt Hinton, oral-history interview, OHAM; BS, public interview, Duke Ellington Society, New York, Mar. 1962; Juan Tizol, oral-history interview, IJS; Cootie Williams, oral-history interview, IJS.

Books

Barnet,
Those Swinging Years;
Berger,
Bassically Speaking;
Bigard,
With Louis and the Duke;
Büchmann-Møller,
Someone to Watch Over Me;
Bushell,
Jazz from the Beginning;
Cohen,
Duke Ellington’s America;
Collier,
Duke Ellington;
Crow,
Jazz Anecdotes;
Dance,
The World of Duke Ellington;
Ellington,
Duke Ellington in Person;
Gammond,
Duke Ellington;
George,
Sweet Man;
Gleason,
Celebrating the Duke;
Goldsby,
The Jazz Bass Book;
Hajdu,
Lush Life;
Stewart,
Boy Meets Horn;
Stewart,
Jazz Masters of the Thirties;
Ulanov,
Duke Ellington;
Vail,
Duke’s Diary, Part One;
van de Leur,
Something to Live For.