Lush Life

by David Hajdu

  If The Peaceful Side fell short of Strayhorn’s standards, he took enough pride in his first major solo effort to give a copy to each of his close friends in New York. He paid for the gifts himself (at artist’s cost), and the album needed the sales boost: it sold “maybe a couple of thousand” copies, according to Douglas, who attributed the lackluster sales to United Artists’ inexperience with both music promotion and the arcane machinery of record distribution. (The few reviews of the record were good: “After more than 20 years as an inextricable element in the musical complex that is Duke Ellington, Strayhorn emerges in these performances, recorded in Paris, as a personality in his own right. This is a lovely, low-keyed set,” wrote John S. Wilson in Down Beat.) “But it never got a chance to find its audience,” Douglas said. “People weren’t used to seeing Billy’s name out there, so nobody knew what they were going to get. And what they got from that album was so very different from Ellington. It was a whole different sound and feeling—on songs you had a certain conception of, from Ellington. It was pure Billy. He did it the way he wanted to do it. It was his concept of who he was.” There was an error on the credits printed on the back of the LP jacket (in addition to a misspelling of Gaudry’s name as Goudret): “Passion Flower” was mistakenly attributed to E. Coates and G. Wiskin, who had composed a song with the same title. On each of the copies he gave away, Strayhorn block-printed his own name next to the “Passion Flower” listing, and he spelled it Strayhorne, just as he had twice earlier, before he met Duke Ellington and when he tried to leave him.

  Arriving back in New York in mid-March, Strayhorn called a limo for the ride from Idlewild Airport to West 106th Street. (His favorite service was Bermuda Limousine, at which he was so well known that for years drivers passed on stories about how Billy Strayhorn would request a limousine: instead of ordering a car for precisely the time and place he required, as other customers might, Strayhorn would ask for it deferentially, saying something like, “If you have a driver available, could you please see if he could pick me up when it’s convenient?”—or so went the drivers’ tales.) While Strayhorn was in France, Georgia Conaway had moved from New Jersey to Corona, Queens, and worked for a while as a waitress until the restaurant owner’s German shepherd attacked her; a patron beat away the dog with a garbage-can lid, but Georgia sustained twelve bites, which were treated with antibiotics that set off a severe allergic reaction that required hospitalization. Taking her brother up on his offer, she relocated to Strayhorn’s apartment in Manhattan and looked for work. “I think she always wanted to end up in New York,” said her son Michael Conaway. “I think she wanted to go there, and hopefully her brother would introduce her to friends who would be wowed, and maybe [she would] start a business, something where she could display her talents. I think that had always been a problem for her: what do you do when you’re a very, very bright and talented woman, and you’re black and your husband is a millworker, and you have five kids to raise? She finally just went for it.”

  In Pittsburgh, meanwhile, child-welfare agency authorities challenged Robert Conaway’s ability to raise a family of five—including mentally handicapped twins—while working full time, and they initiated steps to place the children in foster care. Stepping in, Georgia’s eldest son, Gregory, who was twenty-three and out of the house, packed up the children and bused them all to be with their mother on West 106th Street. Hoping to help, Gregory’s aunt Lillian, also estranged from her husband, followed with her own two children. All nine of them—Georgia; her daughters, Adrienne and Cheryll; her sons Michael, Kevin, and Keith; Lillian; her daughter, Leslie, and her son Gary—were living in Strayhorn’s one-bedroom apartment when he came home from Paris. “I guess we had kind of trashed the place,” recalled Georgia’s daughter Cheryll Conaway Chakrabarti. “Remember, there were nine of us in that little place. All the girls in the bedroom, all the boys in the living room. We were just kids. We wanted to run around and play and get a little wild sometimes, and we didn’t have very much room.”

  Abandoning his place to his sisters and their families, Strayhorn took a residential apartment in the Master Apartments on Riverside Drive at 103rd Street, an elegant Art Deco tower overlooking Riverside Park and the Hudson River. Most of the residents were monied and white, and many were show-business professionals, owing to the Master’s reputation for thick walls, supposedly designed specifically for the convenience of working musicians and actors. On the ground floor, there was a 500-seat theater and a small museum called the Corona Mundi Art Center. In April 1961, Strayhorn moved permanently into a one-bedroom apartment with a terrace facing the park and the river; in the living room stood a new Steinway grand piano, a housewarming gift from Ellington. Aesthetically and socioeconomically, the apartment was several steps above West 106th Street. “His new apartment was much more appropriate to his maturity and sophistication,” said Cheryll Chakrabarti. As one of the building’s doormen, Jimmy Monici, recalled, “Billy Strayhorn? That was a classic old Masters tenant, a perfect gentleman, extremely elegant, always gracious. Quiet. Quite a tipper.”

  The Conaway kids grew impressed with Strayhorn’s generosity on more than one level. Several assumed that he had continued to carry the lease on West 106th Street and to pay the rent (or Ellington did—none of Strayhorn’s closest friends or family members ever knew which of his bills he handled himself and which went straight to the Ellington organization); however, both Georgia and Lillian worked on and off, and Robert Conaway was sending a portion of his steel-mill pay from Pittsburgh. Strayhorn evidently covered some grocery bills for his sisters’ families through an account he kept at Jack’s, a market near Broadway and West 106th Street. “We knew we could go there and get anything we needed and he would pay for it or the bill went to Duke. We just knew we could get whatever we needed,” said Michael Conaway.

  Most memorably to his nieces and nephews, Strayhorn shared what he valued most, music. He played for the kids when they visited him at the Masters, asking their opinions of compositions in progress. “I used to sit and watch him, and he’d play a little thing and say, ‘How does it sound? What do you think?’” recalled Adrienne Conaway Claerbaut. “I’d say something, and he listened to me, he really did. At least he made me feel like he did. He’d write a little more, and I came away seeing what it took to write music and feeling like my opinion was worthwhile.” Encouraging development of their own musical interests beyond jazz, Strayhorn prompted discussions about their favorites. “All music is beautiful” was his decree. In a proof of his own faith in it, Strayhorn was an attentive audience as the kids took up their own music studies. “I joined the high school chorus [at Charles Evans Hughes High School on West 18th Street], and I said, ‘You have to come to the school and hear our chorus and hear this jazz version of “Chopsticks” that we do,’” said Claerbaut (who took up music seriously as an adult). “And he came and spent a lot of time. I introduced him all around the school. That support meant everything to me.” Much the same way, Strayhorn supported Michael Conaway’s interest in the trumpet. “I wanted a trumpet, and he bought me a trumpet,” said Conaway. “I had seen it in a pawnshop, and I told him about it. He gave me the money, and I went out and bought it—sixty bucks. I loved it. It’s funny. We all took the challenge that Uncle Billy gave us and got something out of it, even if we didn’t become professionals.” (Conaway became a mathematician in the aerospace industry but kept music as a pastime.)

  In December 1961, the producer Creed Taylor signed Strayhorn as musical director of yet another Johnny Hodges date for Verve, this one with a difference: Strayhorn would be billed as the session’s leader. “There were two elements to what we wanted to do,” recalled Taylor, a small red-headed man with an ear for beauty and a reputation for commercial savvy. “One, obviously, was Johnny Hodges’s unmistakable sound. And two was Billy Strayhorn’s compositional and arranging colors, those gorgeous, liquid, dreamlike colors. I thought he should be a marquee name. I gave him free rein, and he produced a beautifu
l record. All beauty, no ego.” Untitled, the record was billed as Johnny Hodges, Soloist, Billy Strayhorn and the Orchestra. The “the” meant Duke Ellington’s: recorded in two late-night sessions at the Van Gelder studios in Hackensack, New Jersey, on December 11 and 12, 1961, the album featured a big band made up entirely of Ellingtonians performing Ellington compositions (“Gal from Joe’s,” “I’m Just a Lucky So and So”), along with a few Hodges tiff tunes (“Jeep’s Blues,” “Juice A-Plenty”) and Strayhorn pieces (“Your Love Has Faded,” “Day Dream”), plus one standard (Hoagy Carmichael and Mitchell Parrish’s “Star Dust”). “It was like an Ellington session, only the music was ready,” said the trombonist Chuck Connors. “Billy handed out the music, and we played it, and it was amazingly gorgeous—one, two, three.” According to the engineer, Rudy Van Gelder, who owned the studios, it “was just like everybody wished they could always work. Billy was the dream leader. The guys loved to play his music and they knew what he wanted. He didn’t have to say a word to anybody—I don’t think he did.” The result was a casual album of appealing tunes expertly played, warming like a favorite sweater. It sold modestly, almost solely to Ellington fans, Taylor presumed. “Although Strayhorn’s name was on the record, it was still a kind of Ellingtonia,” said Taylor. “If you really thought about it, you’d realize that what the record showed was how much Billy Strayhorn defined what we think of as Ellingtonia. But nobody really thought of it that way. They saw Strayhorn’s name but still thought Ellington. I think that’s one of the reasons Duke didn’t mind that Johnny and Billy made that kind of record. It made his people happy, and it made him look good. He had nothing to lose.”

  Just weeks later, in the early days of 1962, Strayhorn was offered an arranging opportunity that posed a larger threat to the Ellington organization. Frank Sinatra had founded his own record label, Reprise, in 1959 and had recorded Al Hibbler in May 1961. (In a come-fly-with-me tribute to Hibbler, Sinatra called the former Ellington vocalist “my pilot.”) When the time came to plan a follow-up album for Hibbler, Sinatra used the project to lure Strayhorn to Reprise. “Sinatra wanted Strayhorn to come over to his label,” recalled Hibbler. “He said, ‘Listen, Hib, can’t you get Strayhorn to come work for me?’ I said, ‘That’s your department.’ So he called up Strayhorn, and they talked it over.” Strayhorn’s old friend Haywood Williams was at his apartment during one call from Sinatra. “Billy said, ‘That was Frank Sinatra. He wants me to work for him.’ I said, ‘Really? What are you going to do?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ll hear what the man has to say.’” Ellington, however, already knew what was up. “When Duke found out, he blew his fuckin’ top,” said Hibbler. “I heard about it from Frank. He said, ‘Duke won’t let me have Strayhorn. [Ellington said] “You already have my singer. Now you want my arranger? I won’t allow it!”’ I don’t know what Duke did, but that was the end of that. He was damn pissed off at Sinatra, and I know he gave Strayhorn a talking-to.” Honi Coles heard from Strayhorn shortly after he and Ellington spoke about Sinatra’s overtures. “Billy told me quite simply that Duke wouldn’t permit it,” said Coles. “He said, ‘Strays, haven’t you heard about the prodigal son? He can’t go home again.’”

  His Columbia contract expired, Duke Ellington signed with Reprise Records himself on November 28, 1962, in a deal meant to capitalize on his skill not only at making music of his own but at recognizing talent in others. Ellington’s contract granted him license to sign artists and supervise recordings for the “Ellington Jazz Wing” of Reprise; Down Beat reported, “Ellington will have carte blanche to record whomever and whenever he desires.” He started overseas: booked for a thirty-six-date tour of Europe under Norman Granz from January 12 through March 1, Ellington took up talent scouting between engagements, accompanied by Strayhorn, who seemed in good spirits. “He was like the old Billy. He drank—oh, yeah—but he was happy,” said Jimmy Hamilton. Working together, Strayhorn and Ellington mended their conflict over Sinatra. Seeking out artists and brainstorming record projects, they clubbed in Manchester and had breakfast (in midafternoon) at a sidewalk place in Piccadilly, Strayhorn even appeared on stage—and on camera—with Ellington and the orchestra in a studio concert program taped at the Granada TV studios in Chelsea on January 22, 1963. Sitting in for one number, Strayhorn performed a gentle new composition, “Angu” (credited to Ellington). At the conclusion of the piece, he played a simple, pretty figure, and the camera closed in on the star sapphire ring Lena Horne had given him, wiggling on his left pinky.

  Under Ellington’s direction, Strayhorn worked on a flurry of recordings at the Barclay Studios in Paris during the last week of February. “He was very busy and he was laughing and smiling,” said Gerhart Lehner, the engineer for all the sessions. On a showcase for Alice Babs, a Swedish singer Ellington had first met in Stockholm twenty-four years earlier (when she was fifteen), Strayhorn contributed arrangements (some songs were scored for four French horns), played piano on several numbers (including “Take the ‘A’ Train” and “Something to Live For”), and coached her in developing a composition of her own, “Babsie.” “This was really nice for me,” said Babs, “because I had been wondering over the years, since I had many, many Ellington recordings, why he attacked the piano with so much power and was, you know, more mild and soft at other times. After I worked with Billy and Duke I knew the secret.” Babs saw Ellington and Strayhorn trade off piano duties, sometimes in the midst of recording a song, a technique they had employed since their early years together. “It was a fantastic experience to see this,” Babs continued. “On that occasion also, Billy really helped me work out my song. He and I sat alone in a room next to the studio, and we worked it out. He was a fantastic help to me. He had a certain way of making me sound more like me than I knew how to.”

  Backing another singer—a young South African, Bea Benjamin—Ellington and Strayhorn shared piano duties with Benjamin’s lover, the pianist Dollar Brand (later well known as Abdullah Ibrahim), whom Ellington also recorded the same evening for an instrumental album. (Strayhorn played his own “Your Love Has Faded” as well as several vocal standards, including “I Could Write a Book,” “Dam That Dream,” and “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.”) “I was very nervous,” Benjamin recalled. “This was my first record, and there I was with Duke Ellington. Billy kept me calm. He helped me along with my singing—he coached me and changed things to fit my voice—and just the look in his eyes made me feel better. He seemed to be able to feel what I was feeling.” Seeking fresh musical touches, Ellington and Strayhorn had Svend Asmussen, the Danish jazz violinist, accompany Benjamin with improvised pizzicato work. “I got blisters from playing so much pizzicato that night, but Duke and Billy were fascinated by the sound,” said Asmussen. “Duke had the time of his life in those sessions, producing the records. Billy’s job was to keep everything together, musically. Duke very rarely bothered to go into the booth and listen to a take. After a number, he’d say, ‘Wonderful! Next number—what do we have? Bea, darling, what do you want to sing?’ ‘In My Solitude,’ she said. ‘Marvelous,’ he said. ‘What key?’ ‘B-natural,’ she said. And then Duke said, ‘Uh-mmm … Mis-ter Strayhorn … that’s where you take over.’ He would have no business playing in B-natural. Billy would laugh and sit down and play anything in the world in any key, perfectly. One take. And Duke would say, ‘Marvelous! Wonderful! What should we do next?’” Focusing more deeply on the possibilities of jazz for string instruments, Ellington and Strayhorn followed up Asmussen’s Benjamin sessions with an album featuring the trio of Asmussen on viola and Stephane Grappelli and Ray Nance on violin. In addition to playing piano on some cuts, Strayhorn pitched in a new composition, the aptly titled “Pretty Little One.” “He understood the violin as well as he understood jazz, and he wrote for the violin as a violin,” said Grappelli, who felt a kinship with Strayhorn and arranged to spend time with him the day after the string sessions. (The Bea Benjamin sessions have never been issued in any recording fo
rmat. Some of the string recordings were released on LP in 1976, two years after Ellington’s death, as Duke Ellington’s Jazz Violin Session.)

  “We became friendly very quickly,” Grappelli recounted. “He was very fond of learning. He was very intelligent. I took him to museums in Paris. We spent an entire day in the Louvre marveling at the artworks and talking about them. He was very interested in the French painters, the impressionists, and he studied them very closely. I remember he said that many people talk only of color when they talk of the impressionists. Billy saw much more in their work. He talked about the shapes and the lines and the feelings—everything. I showed him the old streets. He was full of questions. He wanted to learn everything. We walked along the Seine. I was telling him how much I loved the river and how I loved to look at it as it ran through the city. We were talking about the water running through the city. Billy said it seemed to him to be the essence of life. It carried life through the city and beyond it, he said. He was very thoughtful. He looked sad, and I said, ‘Billy, what are you thinking?’ He said, ‘I think when I die I want my ashes thrown into the river by my house in New York City.’”

  10

  BLOOD COUNT

  As a park-bench news buff, Billy Strayhorn had a reputation for political awareness among his friends and in jazz quarters. “Strayhorn was ahead of me in terms of what he knew—how the white world operated, who had the power, how they used it,” said Dick Gregory, the comedian and activist, who performed at the annual Copasetics shows in the early 1960s. With the civil rights movement intensifying, Strayhorn spoke increasingly about channeling his passion for the cause into action, and he found the forum in the Logans’ parlor. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a close acquaintance of theirs, visited the Logans a few times a year during his frequent visits to New York; in the Logan’s circle of prosperous black New Yorkers, he saw a hub of influence and money, the latter an especially precious resource in his efforts. At several small gatherings of the Logans’ most prominent friends, including the Robinsons (but not Ellington, owing to his road schedule), Strayhorn and King talked together at length. “I saw the two of them shuffle off into the kitchen,” recalled Marian Logan, “and I said to myself, ‘There goes Strays. He’s going to have Martin cookin’ up a pot.’ I waited a few minutes, then went into the kitchen alone, like I needed to get something, and they were off in the back of the kitchen, face to face, talking a mile a minute about some aspect of civil rights law. After that, every time Martin was coming, he asked about Strays.” At King’s appeal and with his guidance, the Logans began sponsoring fund-raising events in their apartment, inviting a hundred or so of their most affluent friends and acquaintances to shake hands with King. “Everybody wanted to meet Martin and have their picture taken with him, and we gave them a good evening. Catered. Good champagne—not the best, but good. We didn’t want to be extravagant,” said Marian Logan. “Strays always helped me plan the whole thing, the menu and such. And he always played piano. And he always gave a big check. After a couple of hours, I would tell everybody, ‘Okay now, it’s time to be quiet, because we have something to say. And the purpose of the gathering is: Freedom is not free. Now, cough up.” From a few steps up the Logans’ stairway, King would give a short inspirational speech while Marian Logan collected donations. Strayhorn would play “Why Don’t You Do Right”; its chorus, though he didn’t sing it, ends with the lyrics “Get out of here and get me some money too.”