"Even if you're just a casual jazz fan, you probably recognize "Take the A Train," Duke Ellington's swinging theme song. Or you've heard the melancholy ballad "Lush Life" sung by Nat King Cole, by Linda Ronstadt during her Great American Songbook era, or by Lady Gaga on the album she recorded with Tony Bennett. Both of those - and many other tunes - were written by a gay man, musician, composer, and arranger Billy Strayhorn."
"He refused to live in the closet in mid-20 th-century America, and that may have cost him some public recognition. But he left an incredible body of work over his too-short life. William Thomas Strayhorn was born in 1915 in Dayton, Ohio. As a child, he often visited his maternal grandmother in Hillsborough, North Carolina. She had a piano that he played "from the moment he was tall enough to reach the keys," according to a biography on BillyStrayhorn.com, the website maintained by his heirs."
Billy Strayhorn composed enduring jazz standards such as 'Take the A Train' and 'Lush Life.' He lived openly as a gay man in mid-20th-century America and faced limited public recognition. Born in 1915 in Dayton, Ohio, he developed at the piano visiting his grandmother in North Carolina and trained in Pittsburgh at the Pittsburgh Musical Institute. He wrote music, lyrics, and a school revue, played with local bands, and created 'Lush Life' as a teenager. In 1938 he met Duke Ellington in Pittsburgh, demonstrating mastery of Ellington's idiom and his own distinctive musical voice during a dressing-room piano session.
Read at Advocate.com
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