Jazz Articles about Billy Strayhorn

Billy Strayhorn: Piano Passion

by Andrew Velez
February 4, 2006

During their nearly three decades of working together, Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington created a legacy of music for the ages. This set offers a rare opportunity to hear Strayhorn the composer playing many of his own songs, as well as some he wrote with Ellington and others. Their partnership began in 1939 and ended only with the death of “Swee' Pea," as Strayhorn came to be fondly called by Ellington, at a mere 52 from cancer in 1967.

Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn

by Joel Roberts
March 8, 2004

by David Hajdu Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1996 0-374-19438-6

The young pianist and composer Billy Strayhorn was introduced to Duke Ellington, already a major international star and leader of one of the world's most popular bands, for the first time backstage at an Ellington Orchestra performance at the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh in December 1938. After a brief audition, which consisted of Strayhorn playing a few of his own compositions as well as interpretations of Ellington ...

Billy Strayhorn: The Peaceful Side

by Joel Roberts
August 1, 1997

During his twenty-five year tenure with the Duke Ellington Orchestra as composer, lyricist, arranger, and Duke's closest musical confidante, Billy Strayhorn rarely performed in front of a live audience and even less frequently entered a recording studio. Although his piano playing can be heard on a handful of records with the Ellington Orchestra as well as on some of its members' side projects, most notably several dates with Johnny Hodges, Strayhorn made just one album as a featured solo artist. ...