Think About it. Words and Music. The music of our Great American Songbook has always been a cunning combination of superior sounds and carefully crafted poetry. Once in a while a songwriter alone or in partnership strikes the chord that moves the heart.
Rogers and Hart did it with ….. “In that Mountain Greenery where God paints the scenery.”
Long before Rap, Cole Porter wrote hits like, Good authors too who once new better words, now only write four letter words, now heaven knows, Anything Goes.
Give Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer the credit for “How Little We Know how much to discover what chemical forces flow from lover to lover.”
Cameron Weaver makes music a charming picture writing, “If I could lift you up for every time I’ve let you down, I’d place you up among the Stars.”
And then there is Billy Strayhorn. In early teens when outlining his jazz masterpiece, the young black, pianist, composer, lyricist had already seen a lot. It couldn’t have been enough to provide inspiration for one of the classics of that or any day. He credited his grandmother’s teaching him to play hymns on the family piano in a North Carolina. There’s is no explanation for his erudition and sophistication.
Moving to Pittsburgh, in high school he shared a music teacher with Errol Garner and Ahmad Jamal with whom he moved on to the Pittsburgh School of Music which had boldly broken the Jim Crow color barrier.
“I used to visit all the very gay places, those come-what-may places, Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life to get the feel of life from jazz and cocktails.
The girls I knew had sad and sullen gray faces, with distingue’ traces, that used to be there. You could see where they’d been washed away by too many through-the-day twelve o’clocktails.”
A 22 year old Billy Strayhorn met Edward Kennedy Ellington, and their shared music would make jazz history. Take the A Train, Satin Doll, Day Dream, Lotus Blossom, Chelsea Bridge and Something to Live For should be part of the musical prism through which you hear and feel music.
“Romance is mush stifling those who strive I’ll live a Lush Life in some small dive. And there I’ll rot with the rest of those whose lives are lonely, too.”
“His Mother Called Him Bill” was the title of the Duke’s posthumous album tribute to the man who wrote my favorite song. Yes, he wrote the lyrics, too. Openly gay and a chain-smoker, Billy Strayhorn was said to have died of esophageal cancer at age 52. Perhaps this extraordinarily talented human being succumbed to his own Lush Life after being one of he most able craftsmen of Words and Music. Think About It. You really should hear Lush Life performed by Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane.