Billy Strayhorn

Out & Gay in the Jazz World

Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967) attended high school in Pittsburgh, while studying classical music on the side. His trio played daily on a local radio station, and he wrote a musical for his high school. He also wrote "Chelsea Bridge", "Take the A-Train", "Lotus Blossum" and “Lush Life,” all of which have become jazz classics. 

He started composing both words and music for "Lush Life" at age 16, which became a prophetic anthem for his life. He did indeed get to Paris, become a socialite and suffer from alcoholism. That such a world-weary lyric could come from the pen of a teenager is astounding.

At 23 his life changed completely when he met Duke Ellington (above left), who was performing in Pittsburgh in 1938. Ellington was so impressed that he took him into his household, where he lived as part of the family. Ellington's nickname for Billy was "Sweet Pea." Strayhorn worked for Ellington for the next 29 years as an arranger, composer, pianist and collaborator until his early death from esophageal cancer, the result of a lifetime of cigarette use. As Ellington described him, “Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves in his head, and his in mine.”

Strayhorn was openly gay, but his association with Ellington helped protect him from discrimination. Until age 33 Strayhorn lived with his partner Aaron Bridgers, a jazz pianist and composer who moved to Paris in 1948. Until his death, Strayhorn then maintained a relationship with his subsequent partner, Bill Grove, who was Caucasian; however, they kept separate apartments, likely as the result of Strayhorn's higher profile and interracial prejudices of the day.

Strayhorn significantly influenced the career of Lena Horne, who recorded many of his songs. Strayhorn’s compositions are known for the bittersweet sentiment and classically infused harmonies that set him apart from Ellington.

Strayhorn to the rescue:

In a dispute over royalties in late 1940, ASCAP forbid its members from broadcasting any of their compositions over the radio. But Ellington, one of ASCAP’S most celebrated composers, needed radio broadcasts to promote record sales, which paid his orchestra’s salaries. Strayhorn rallied to save the day. During a hurried cross-country train ride to join Ellington in Los Angeles, Strayhorn (not an ASCAP member), got almost no sleep for six straight days, writing song after song after song. Strayhorn’s prolific, engaging new works kept the Ellington Orchestra afloat for months. When it was time for a new radio theme (Ellington’s own “Sepia Panorama” was still forbidden on the airwaves), Ellington chose Strayhorn’s “Take the A Train,” premiering it in early 1941. The rest is jazz history.

Queen Latifah (who lives in the Hollywood Hills with her partner Eboni Nichols) sings “Lush Life,” written when Strayhorn was a young, unseasoned song writer. Most performers say it’s difficult to sing and sounds like no other song in the standard repertoire.

Ralph Burns

Jazz great Ralph Burns (1922-2001) was one of the most important arranger-composers you’ve never heard of. In the early days of his career he worked as a pianist, composer and arranger for swing bands. Fresh out of studying classical piano at the New England Conservatory of Music, he found himself working with ensembles that included jazz royalty such as Nat King Cole, Stan Getz and Art Tatum. In 1944 he joined the Woody Herman band, writing and arranging some of their greatest hits for a span of fifteen years.

During his years as a touring pianist with jazz bands, he kept a closely guarded secret. He was a gay man in a field dominated by libidinous straight guys. Burns did not have a Duke Ellington to protect him (as did Billy Strayhorn), so he lived in utter fear of being found out. In his 1971 memoir “The Night People”, jazz trombonist Dicky Wells recalled the main topic of conversation on the Count Basie band tour bus: “Chicks. What else?” Burns knew that those who did not join in the banter faced big trouble, so he walked on egg shells his whole career. Burns recalled, “Everybody would joke, ‘Oh, that fag!’, and if they wanted to be funny, they’d lisp. My one fear was that at one time or another they’d turn on me, but luckily they never did.”

During the 1940s in New York City, all that was available to Burns socially as a gay man was the  opportunity to fraternize at friends-of-friends private parties behind closed doors. Many of those events were hosted by fellow gay musician Billy Strayhorn, with whom Burns loved to play piano duets for the assembled guests. The talent of both Strayhorn and Burns was so great that, out of respect for their careers, their straight colleagues never mentioned their sexual orientation, even though nearly everyone knew their secret.

Early Autumn (1949, composed & arranged by Ralph Burns)
Woody Herman band, featuring tenor saxophonist Stan Getz. Johnny Mercer added lyrics after the song had already become a hit.




Burns saw the writing on the wall for jazz bands and began to record under his own name in the 1950s, working with Billy Strayhorn (see entry in sidebar) and saxophonist Ben Webster. Ralph made a successful transition from big bands to bebop style. He went on to write material for singers such as Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, Peggy Lee, Natalie Cole and Aretha Franklin. He wrote arrangements for two mega-hits by Ray Charles: Georgia on My Mind and Come Rain or Come Shine – it was Burns’s idea to incorporate a string orchestra on those two songs.

By the 1960s Burns ventured into arranging and orchestrating Broadway musicals and movie soundtracks. Among his many successes were Funny Girl, Chicago, Sweet Charity, The Muppets Take Manhattan, Urban Cowboy, Cabaret (won 1972 Academy Award as music supervisor), New York New York, All That Jazz (won 1979 Academy Award), and Annie (1982 Academy Award nomination). Among notable television works was Baryshnikov on Broadway (won 1980 Emmy Award), followed by work with major cabaret performers during the 1990s, chief among them Mel Tormé, John Pizzarelli and Michael Feinstein.

In 2001 Burns died from complications from a stroke and subsequent pneumonia in Los Angeles at age 79. During the later decades of his life, Burns had lived as an openly gay man, and he was able to get commissions right up until his death. At the time he succumbed to his fatal illness, manuscripts for a planned musical lay upon his desk. A Massachusetts native, he was inducted into the New England Jazz Hall of Fame in 2004. Do not despair if you've never heard of this influential musician, since his entire career was carried out in behind-the-scenes work, providing the best possible support for the great stars. He liked it that way.

Regarding his legacy, Burns’s masterpiece was Summer Sequence, a 20-minute suite introduced to the world by Woody Herman at Carnegie Hall on March 25, 1946. “That was something I wish I could remember more,” said Burns years later. “It was a thrilling night. The band was at its absolute peak. We thought nothing of it at the time, like a baseball team that went on to the World Series.”