All About Jazz: The web's most comprehensive jazz resource
Serving jazz worldwide since 1995 All About Jazz: The web's most
comprehensive jazz resource  Book Reviews  Lush Life: A
Biography of Billy Strayhorn  By Published: March 8, 2004 Lush
Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn by David Hajdu Farrar
Straus and Giroux, 1996  The young pianist and composer Billy
Strayhorn was introduced to Duke Ellington, already a major
international star and leader of one of the world's most popular
bands, for the first time backstage at an Ellington Orchestra
performance at the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh in December
1938. After a brief audition, which consisted of Strayhorn
playing a few of his own compositions as well as interpretations
of Ellington numbers, Duke hired him on the spot - even though
there was no specific role for him in the band, which already
had a regular pianist. The partnership between these two
immensely talented musicians would continue for the next twenty-
five years, until Strayhorn's death from