Lush Life

I was just moments away from posting on Billy Strayhorn's birthday, when I was visited by the  nasty computer virus. Strayhorn is a major figure to me & the writer of one of my most admired songs. I have chosen a Linda Ronstadt version, which is included in one of her incomparable Nelson Riddle albums from the 1980s. Here is a live version with a lovely intro from Joe Williams:



Songwriting genius Billy Strayhorn lived, unnecessarily, in the shadow of bandleader Duke Ellington. He was openly gay in an era when it was nearly impossible to be out of the closet & he moved in the homophobic jazz circle of Harlem. He was able to live & write songs because of the protection of the famous band leader. Ellington took credit for Strayhorn’s compositions & he worked without a contract. Ellington’s signature song-Take the A Train, was, unknown to everyone at the time, written by Strayhorn, who never received any royalties. Strayhorn worked without recognition or reward. He is responsible for some of the greatest songs of all time: Lush Life, Day Dream, Clementine, Johnny Come Lately, Maybe, A Love Like This Can’t Last & the ironic Something To Live For. Many of his creations were recorded by his close friend Lean Horne. In 1940, shortly after arriving in New York, Strayhorn & his boyfriend Aaron Bridgers lived openly as a couple in Harlem, when he was just 24 years old. He lived a life of heavy drinking & smoking, & he died of cancer of the esophagus at 51, in the arms of his partner Bill Grove. Strayhorn worked in the early gay rights (years before Stonewall) & civil rights movements. He wrote lyrics & music to what I think is one of the most perfect gay laments ever composed:


I used to visit all the very gay places
Those come what may places
Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life
To get the feel of life...
From jazz & cocktails.

The girls I knew had sad & sullen gray faces
With distant gay traces
That used to be there you could see where they'd been washed away
By too many through the day...
Twelve o'clock tales.


Then you came along with your siren of song
To tempt me to madness!
I thought for a while that your poignant smile was tinged with the sadness
Of a great love for me.
Ah yes! I was wrong...
Again,
I was wrong.


Life is lonely again,
& only last year everything seemed so sure.
Now life is awful again,
A troughful of hearts could only be a bore.
A week in Paris will ease the bite of it,
All I care is to smile in spite of it.


I'll forget you, I will
While yet you are still burning inside my brain.
Romance is mush,
Stifling those who strive.
I'll live a lush life in some small dive...
& there I'll be, while I rot
with the rest of those whose lives are lonely, too…