Lush life - David Hajdu

This is a biography of Billy Strayhorn, who wrote and arranged many of the most significant music of the Ellington Orchestra between 1940 and 1967.;Billy Strayhorn lived his too-short life in the giant shadow cast by Duke Ellington. He rarely shared the limelight with his mentor and leader. His compositions, of which "Take the A Train", "Lush Life" and "Passion Flower" are some of the best known, are increasingly important to younger musicians and to a wide public. Hardly a year goes by without the release of another album of reverential versions of his tunes.;And like his peers, Strayhorn's life was marked, and eventually shortened, by tragic levels of stress and self-destruction. Strayhorn was a cultured, black intellectual. He was also openly gay, at a time when this was brave and unusual, and in a culture - that of the male jazz musician - notably unsympathetic to homosexuality. Content to let Ellington play the role of flamboyant leader, Strayhorn nonetheless suffered from his marginalization. He took refuge in a stylized world of cafe society, of late nights, good food and fine clothes - and in drink.