fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
First, I have to correct a glaring omission. In my post recommending Strayhorn recordings to pick up, I left off something that I myself own: Marian McPartland plays the music of Billy Strayhorn. Why did I clumsily leave it off the list? Because when I went to my collection to pull out stuff to recommend, I neglected to find…
New York City will host several events to mark the 100th anniversary of Billy Strayhorn’s birth. Details can be found at a special centennial website. Ah, to be in New York this autumn. Fortunately, we all have access to his incredible body of music. Here’s just a short selection of recommendations and some of my favorite…
The homophobia that Joe Morgen, Duke Ellington’s publicist, possessed only reflected the homophobia of the society at large in the late 1950s. Around the time the New York Times ignored Strayhorn in its review of Such Sweet Thunder, a move undoubtedly engineered by Morgen, the Amsterdam News, Harlem’s daily, published a series of articles and…
Bebop hit the scene in the early 1940s and grew as the decade progressed. Rhythm and blues got more attention as the 40s rolled to a conclusion. Thus, by 1950, club owners began booking smaller R & B combos and jazz joints booked bebop combos. It was cheaper to pay 4-6 musicians than a large…
1939 was a good year for a composer/arranger to join the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Several important musicians joined its ranks around this time, adding to the band’s considerable aural palette. Jimmy Blanton freed the bass from its simple time-keeping role and made it a fluid, melodic instrument. This is best heard on the track “Jack…
For the first few years of his life, Billy Strayhorn didn’t have a name. His parents had buried two of three children born before him, so when the new born started life sickly, with rickets, they did not rush to name him. He was called “Baby Boy Strayhorn” on his birth certificate. The rickets went…
