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Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn cover

Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn

David Hajdu

0

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4

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Lush Life was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Billy Strayhorn (1915–67) was one of the greatest composers in the history of American music, the creator of a body of work that includes such standards as "Take the 'A' Train." Yet all his life Strayhorn was overshadowed by his friend and collaborator Duke Ellington, with whom he worked for three decades as the Ellington Orchestra's ace songwriter and arranger. 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. While composing some of the most gorgeous American music of the twentieth century, Strayhorn labored under a complex agreement whereby Ellington took the bows for his work. Until his life was tragically cut short by cancer and alcohol abuse, the small, shy composer carried himself with singular style and grace as one of the few jazzmen to be openly homosexual.

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Publisher
Macmillan + ORM
ISBN-13
9781466842786
Topics
Jazz musicBilly Strayhorn's life and careerLGBTQ history in jazz

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