30 Days Of Pride: The Hidden Musical Genius
It’s the spring of 1939 in New York City. The famous New York World’s Fair is just getting underway out in the marshes of Queens, Fiorello LaGuardia, who is widely considered the greatest mayor Gotham ever had, is at the height of his powers, and an emerging musical genre had taken hold and was beginning ti find its place in popular culture. The gathering storm clouds of what would become World War II are still distantly on the horizon as the Great Depression wanes. It’s still an optimistic time, a time to look forward, a time for creativity and fun. Here arrived a young composer, Billy Strayhorn, a Black, gay man whose gifted mind and talent would reshape the American musical landscape, and make Duke Ellington a legend.
Born in Ohio in 1915, Strayhorn knew early on that music was his life. Growing up in his grandmother’s North Carolina home, playing Gospel hymns on her piano, the musical genius within the growing child was awakened. Back in Pittsburgh as a teen, Strayhorn created musicals for his high school, and studied at the renowned Pittsburgh Musical Institute. He composed his first major song, Lush Life, during this time, and played with a musical trio on the local radio stations. His time at PMI inspired him to become a classical composer, but in the early twentieth century, Strayhorn’s prospects in that discipline were not good. The young artist turned his vision to the nascent jazz genre, and Strayhorn found himself at home. The interwar years saw Strayhorn playing with the Mad Hatters in and around Pittsburgh, until one life-altering night in 1937, when he met Ellington following a local concert the bandmaster had given. Strayhorn demonstrated to Ellington his ideas for arranging the orchestra’s music, and this marked the birth of a creative partnership that lasted for the rest of Strayhorn’s life.
Ellington was so impressed with his newfound composer, that just two years later, he invited Strayhorn to “stay with us” at his family’s Manhattan home. That, too, was a watershed moment for Strayhorn, for it was there in Harlem that he met Aaron Bridgers, a pianist and saxophonist who became Strayhorn’s first love. The two made a home together at 315 Convent Avenue, near Morningside Park. As their love grew and matured, so, too, did Strayhorn’s artistic spirit, enthusiastically mentored and encouraged by both Bridger and Ellington. It was a time of great change in New York City, and one night, while riding the city’s new Independent Subway, Strayhorn was inspired to write Take The A Train, which is Ellington’s signature song, the one most closely identified with him and his orchestra to this day. Other compositions followed, each an iconic work in its own right, including Something To Live For, Day Dream, and Lotus Blossom, among dozens of others. Ellington himself described Strayhorn as “my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine.”
Despite that rosy encomium, the openly gay Strayhorn was often a hidden presence with Ellington and his orchestra. Although Ellington himself would occasionally acknowledge his music maker in the early years of their collaboration, the orchestra’s publicist didn’t, and Ellington increasingly distanced himself in public from Strayhorn. Most historians have this down to Strayhorn’s sexual orientation, which was illegal during that era, and not generally tolerated by Black society. Strayhorn chafed against this willful erasure of his contributions to Ellington’s fame, but continued to write and arrange Ellington’s songs until his death. Bridger tried to encourage Strayhorn to declare his worth to Ellington, but the tenor of the times convinced Strayhorn to “go along to get along”. The two men lived their lives together in the Morningside brownstone until Bridger, disillusioned by the racism and homophobia rampant in postwar America, moved to Paris in 1948.
Strayhorn persevered, living and working out of the apartment until 1950, when he sought a new home. During the decades that followed, Strayhorn was deeply involved in the Civil Rights movement, and a close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., for whom he composed King Fit De Battle Of Alabama, a somg which appears on Ellington’s My People album of 1963. The following year, Strayhorn was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, but even this did not dampen his spirit. On his hospital bed, Strayhorn composed his final work, Blood Count, for Ellington. On another spring day in 1967 New York City, with another World’s Fair not too far behind, Billy Strayhorn made his transition to the Ancestors in the arms of his last love, Bill Grove. His timeless music continues to bring joy to the hearts of audiences everywhere.
