Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn

Amazon.com Price: $14.39 (as of 10/11/2019 08:35 PST- Details)

Description

A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award

Billy Strayhorn (1915-67) used to be probably the most greatest composers within the history of American music, the author of a body of work that comes with such standards as “Take the ‘A’ Train.” Yet all his life Strayhorn used to be overshadowed by his friend and collaborator Duke Ellington, with whom he worked for three decades as the Ellington Orchestra’s ace songwriter and arranger. A “definitive” corrective (USA Today) to decades of patchwork scholarship and journalism about this giant of jazz, David Hajdu’s Lush Life is a vibrant and absorbing account of the “lush life” that Strayhorn and other jazz musicians led in Harlem and Paris. Whilst composing one of the vital most gorgeous American music of the 20 th century, Strayhorn labored under a complex agreement whereby Ellington took the bows for his work. Until his life used to be tragically cut short by cancer and alcohol abuse, the small, shy composer carried himself with singular style and grace as probably the most few jazzmen to be openly homosexual. Lush Life has sparked an enthusiastic revival of interest in Strayhorn’s work and is already acknowledged as a jazz classic.

A 1996 nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award, this perceptive, meticulously researched biography rescues from obscurity the gifted Billy Strayhorn (1915-67), Duke Ellington’s arranger and composer of many popular Ellington Orchestra tunes, including “Take the `A’ Train.” Worshipped by jazz aficionados as the creative power in the back of the Ellington throne, Strayhorn preferred to live quietly Whilst his friend/boss took the bows. In clear prose and with careful attention to nuance, David Hajdu documents Strayhorn’s contributions to the Ellington magic and delineates an exquisite personality who found good in almost everyone he met.

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