Lush Life

by David Hajdu

  8

  THERE WAS NOBODY LOOKIN’

  Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington inhabited the same world, but each for his own reasons and on his own terms, and you could see the difference at the Hickory House. Between 10:00 and 11:00 p.m. once or twice a week, Strayhorn slipped in alone or, less frequently, with a friend or two. He had a spot: the bar, varnished black walnut and about fifty feet long, was U-shaped—in front of it, there were twenty-five or thirty tables for six or more laid with red linens; behind it, there was a bandstand where solo pianists like Marian McPartland or small groups like the Dwike Mitchell–Willie Ruff Duo performed—and Strayhorn always sat at the very last stool on the right side of the U, where he was tucked away and turned at right angles to both the performers and the customers. He had eye contact only with the bartender, usually Jimmy Ratigan, who knew how Strayhorn liked his gin and tonics: with Beefeater’s and Schweppes and in steady sequence. Strayhorn would take his seat, light a cigarette, and slide a twenty-dollar bill on the bar, rarely taking change home; one gin and tonic cost $1.75. “From where he sat, it was hard to see if he was there or not,” said McPartland, whose set regularly included a disciplined rendition of “Lush Life”; when he heard it, Strayhorn would turn to face McPartland—always at the conclusion, never during the performance—eyebrows and cocktail raised high in a toast, and he’d let out an affirming “Aaaaah!” When he was in Manhattan, Ellington came in around midnight three or four times a week. Surrounded by an entourage—perhaps his sister, Ruth, the businessman and lyricist Edmund Anderson, and two or three others somehow related to his project of the moment—Ellington also had a spot: the table for eight at the center of the room. “The focus of attention immediately shifted from [the performer] to Ellington,” said McPartland. Ellington ate his usual (a steak, a half a grapefruit, and a cup of hot water with lemon peel), greeted his public with smiles and nods—fearful of exposure to germs while eating, he’d slip his arms under the table to avoid shaking hands—and caught up on the news on the street from other Hickory House regulars. Strayhorn would give a little wave to the Ellington party and stop by the table for a few minutes shortly before leaving, unless Ellington was talking to Joe Morgen.

  The kingpin of the Hickory House crowd, Morgen was a fast-talking Broadway-beat publicist who seemed to have wandered off from his rightful place in a production of Guys and Dolls. Chubby and about five foot five, topped off with a few strands of dark hair that looked to be penciled across his pate, Morgen had a reputation for gracelessness and aggression, enhanced by a thyroid condition that, in popping his eyes, created the illusion that he was even more manically obsessed than he in fact was. In conversation, Morgen liked to clean his ears with a swizzle stick. He worked for Bill Doll, the publicist for such fifties celebrities as the retired boxing champion Jack Dempsey and the director Michael Todd, although the ever-angling Morgen was always open to taking clients on the side. “Joe Morgen had the manner of a gangster and the tact of a tommy gun,” said Phoebe Jacobs, the longtime head of promotion and publicity for the Basin Street East nightclub. “He knew all the ins and outs of the Walter Winchell school of celebrity PR, although I don’t think he graduated from that or any school.” Smelling an opportunity in Ellington, Morgen initiated a schmoozing campaign to snare the bandleader’s business: he brought Ed Sullivan into the Hickory House to meet Ellington, and he landed a couple of mentions of Ellington in the Sullivan and Earl Wilson newspaper columns. (“Today’s bravos: Duke Ellington’s band at Birdland,” noted Wilson.) Ellington put Morgen on his payroll early in 1957. Strayhorn disliked him, and Morgen felt even greater contempt for him. “Joe Morgen hated Billy with a passion that was beyond all understanding,” said Jacobs. “For one thing, Morgen thought that Billy represented competition for Duke’s attention, and that Joe Morgen couldn’t bear. And Billy was gay, which threw Morgen completely off the deep end. Just the mention of Billy Strayhorn’s name drove Joe Morgen crazy. The very idea of Billy made him nuts.” Ellington retained Morgen nonetheless, in one of his purest gestures of laissez-faire management. “Pop ran his business like a family, and his family like a business,” explained Mercer Ellington. “He had a certain attitude toward the people who worked for him that was like the old-fashioned attitude toward raising a family. Your sons, you let them fend for themselves—that’s how they learn and how they get stronger. You get the best of them that way. You pit one against the other, really. That’s the way the old man functioned as far as people like Joe Morgen and Strayhorn and myself were concerned. You let them fight it out. He hired Joe Morgen and figured he’d let the chips fall where they may and kept out of the picture. The only thing I was surprised about was that he allowed that with Strayhorn involved, since he tended to pamper Strayhorn more and protect him. That comes out of the family philosophy. You let the sons fight among themselves, but you treasure your daughters. You protect them. He was usually more that way when it came to Strayhorn.”

  Strayhorn, meanwhile, turned to the last of his major music projects for the year: a double LP teaming Ella Fitzgerald with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, produced by Norman Granz as an entry in Verve’s Ella Fitzgerald Songbook series of albums dedicated to master songwriters. As usual with Ellington-related vocal projects, much of the preparation for and supervision of Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook fell to Strayhorn, who wrote a folder full of new arrangements for the sessions, including swirling new versions of “Day Dream” and “Take the ‘A’ Train,” the latter recorded with Dizzy Gillespie as guest trumpet soloist. The folder wasn’t thick enough for Granz and Fitzgerald, however. “I didn’t know what was going on until we went into the studio,” said Granz. “I hadn’t been able to work it out with Duke. Duke was on the road. I spent more time traveling around trying to talk to Duke than we spent on the record. When we got in the studio, Strays had some arrangements, but nothing close to what we needed. Duke was supposed to do some and Strays did some, but Duke came without anything done. This was a major project, and we didn’t have the arrangements we needed. Ella really was very upset, and she didn’t want to do it. She wanted to walk out. Here we’d been waiting for a long time to get this together. Logistically it was a problem because Ella was traveling all the time and Duke was always on the road. And finally the day came, and Strays spent a lot of time holding Ella’s hand and saying, ‘There, there, it’s going to be okay. Don’t worry.’” Improvising a fix, Ellington supervised some recordings of Fitzgerald singing along with the band’s instrumental arrangements: she hummed the saxophone parts for songs that didn’t even have lyrics, such as “Chelsea Bridge.” As the bassist Jimmy Woode recalled, “Ella and Billy had a rough time. That wasn’t the way either one of them liked to work. They were perfectionists. They were accustomed to planning and having the work fine-tuned to perfection. The idea of faking your way through ‘Chelsea Bridge’ by humming along was terribly difficult for them to accept.”

  To fill out the multirecord project, Ellington told Granz that he and Strayhorn would compose a new instrumental suite in honor of Fitzgerald; instead, he took an existing Strayhorn ballad, “All Heart”—already recorded and credited to Strayhorn alone on a French LP by Aaron Bridgers—and added three new sections, one named “Beyond Category” (a favorite phrase of Ellington’s that the jazz writer and historian Patricia Willard first applied to Ellington’s own work), another a straight-ahead jam called “Total Jazz.” “That was a neat Duke trick,” said Granz. “Quite candidly, the suite was a way of padding the album.” In the process, the suite, called “Portrait of Ella Fitzgerald,” paid tribute to Strayhorn as well: Ellington’s spoken introduction to the first “movement” conspicuously credits Strayhorn for his piano accompaniment (“While Billy Strayhorn sets the mood, we gather the material for our musical portrait of Ella Fitzgerald, allowing our imagination to browse through her family album,” Ellington pronounced). At the opening of the fourth section, Strayhorn took over at the mike (“Hey, Billy Strayhorn! We’r
e going to change piano players at this point. Would you come over to the mike, please?”), accompanied by Ellington on piano. “I think Duke knew the rest of the project wasn’t really done right,” added Granz. “So he wanted to do something special for Ella and Billy, and that was what he did.” For variety as well as ease in the light of Fitzgerald’s frustrations, Granz chose to complete the project with the singer accompanied by a couple of small bands of Verve stalwarts, including Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, and Ellington veteran Ben Webster.

  While Ellington and Strayhorn made their music, Joe Morgen hustled to make it news, and he got stunning results: from May to October 1957, Newsweek, Look, and the New York Times all published features about Duke Ellington’s renaissance. “Duke Bounces Back with Provocative New Work,” crowed the Times; “A Living Legend Swings On,” announced the headline of the Look piece, which declared, “Ellington and his men have burst out in a cluster of projects as shiny as a new trumpet.… A whole new generation of Americans has caught the Ellington fever. Through all the sound and the fury, the Duke has never been in better tune.” For Ellington, this was not just a comeback but a cultural coming of age. Distinct from his past triumphs—hit records, concert-hall performances, praise in the music press, acceptance within academia—Ellington’s newfound acceptance as a major artist by the mainstream media was institutional lionization. Joe Morgen’s influence is impossible to quantify, although many of the Morgen-era articles on Ellington bear the handiwork of an old column-fodder PR man; the same grabby “facts” reappear: Ellington has studied a thousand books on Afro-American history, Ellington has traveled one million miles. “All cooked up,” said Phoebe Jacobs. “That was all Joe Morgen, every bit of it. All those articles after Newport—Joe Morgen made all of that happen. He sold everybody on Ellington.”

  If so, Morgen had a salable product and a prime market. Following Newport with Such Sweet Thunder and A Drum Is a Woman as well as the Ella Fitzgerald project, Ellington (in collaboration with Strayhorn) was clearly working at peak productivity and ambition. These efforts coincided, significantly, with the readiness of the mainstream to accept jazz as art and a jazz master as a cultural hero. Still, an unconventional partnership of two such heroes—both black and one gay, “composing and arranging companions,” as Ellington described Strayhorn and himself—was clearly too much, at least within Joe Morgen’s sphere of influence. In several hundreds of words of description and analysis of Such Sweet Thunder and A Drum Is a Woman, the name Billy Strayhorn never appeared in Newsweek, Look, or the New York Times. To the contrary, Ellington was described in detail as the works’ sole creator. Newsweek: “Entitled ‘A Drum Is a Woman,’ it is the Duke’s own highly personal history of jazz and ‘TV’s first jazz spectacular.’ With Ellington billed as author, composer, lyricist, narrator, conductor, piano player, and general handy man, it [was] one of the few times a great name in jazz [had] a full hour of prime evening TV time to himself.” The Times, describing Such Sweet Thunder: “This is the best work that Mr. Ellington has done in a decade. Mr. Ellington has poured greater range and variety into these sketches than in any of his earlier extended works.” The credits for both Such Sweet Thunder and A Drum Is a Woman acknowledged Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, but nobody seemed to be reading.

  “The publicity people deemphasized Billy,” recalled John S. Wilson, whose New York Times review of Such Sweet Thunder omitted Strayhorn. “We heard Ellington, Ellington.” Again, according to Phoebe Jacobs, “That was all Morgen. He did everything he could to push Billy out of the picture as far as the press was concerned. Duke was Morgen’s be-all and end-all.” Ellington’s own behavior with regard to Strayhorn was mercurial, evidently subject to conflicting personal and professional impulses. Much of the time, he served as Strayhorn’s most zealous booster, lavishing him with praise on stage: “And now,” announced Ellington at Carnegie Hall in 1948, “I’d like to introduce our writing and arranging companion, who we’ve been so much indebted to for quite a period for contributing so many of the high points of our performances, particularly in the writing.” On occasions, however, he permitted Strayhorn’s subordination through acquiescence. “He would let it happen,” said Leonard Feather, who performed public-relations functions for Ellington in the 1940s and early 1950s. “Duke’s intent was never to deny Strayhorn his due. If he allowed that to occur, it had to be a secondary effect of some effort to take advantage of a particular opportunity for promotion. I mean to say, Duke’s first priority was himself. This was not unreasonable, since the lives of everyone in his organization, including Strayhorn, were tied up in Ellington’s success. If Newsweek wanted to write about Duke Ellington the great bon vivant and scholar, Ellington gave them what they wanted. Of course, he would certainly answer any questions about Strayhorn with mighty praise, but he might not bring up Strayhorn’s name unless he were asked about him. Obviously, none of this mattered to Strayhorn, who didn’t appear to care one bit.” Strayhorn’s feelings, however, had more levels than his calmly accommodating manner suggested. In private with his intimates, Strayhorn revealed a deepening well of unease about his lack of public recognition as Ellington’s prominence grew.

  Honi Coles used his paternal authority over Strayhorn to pry a crack in his placid exterior in the summer of 1957—the August 20 issue of Look with the Ellington profile was still on the newsstands, Coles recalled. They met at the Flash Inn, an Italian restaurant near the Macombs Dam Bridge, a New York City landmark on the northern edge of Harlem. It was an ornately done-up spot, very pink and stucco, with pale blue arches along the walls that set off decorative oil paintings, originals by Castro (his full professional name) and other local artists. Strayhorn ate at the Flash Inn three or four nights a week, according to the owner, Joe Merenda, and the bartender, Cleo Hayes, both of whom considered him a friend. That night, Strayhorn ordered a bottle of Bordeaux and a Tanqueray martini to drink while the waiter was uncorking the wine. Coles had fettucine Alfredo, Strayhorn his favorite Flash Inn dish: charcoal-broiled lamb chops, extra well done. “I read Ellington’s article in Newsweek,” said Coles. “I asked him if he read it. He said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Why weren’t you mentioned? You wrote every bit as much of that music they’re fussing all over as Ellington, and they didn’t even mention your name. Why do you let them get away with that?’ We stopped eating, I believe, and we just talked. We never finished our meal. All Strayhorn could say to me was, ‘Oh, Father, you know about these things. I don’t care.’ I said to him, ‘I don’t believe you. I think you do care or you wouldn’t be drinking like a fucking fish every fucking time I see you.’ That got him. Billy said, ‘Be careful, Father. Some day, I may get angry with you.’ Then he said, ‘Oh, Father, you know I don’t need all that. I’m better off without all that. Let him have his articles. I’m better off this way.’ I understood what he was saying. Because he wasn’t a celebrity, he didn’t have to answer to anybody about his lifestyle. So I said, ‘I understand. The main thing is that you’re happy.’ And I asked him straight out, ‘Are you?’ And he went into his Father routine—‘Oh, Father…’ And he started to cry. I sat there with him, and Billy sat there, and he cried like a baby.”

  A few weeks later, the Amsterdam News, the Harlem daily, published a series of articles purporting to explain homosexuality. In an attempt at balance, the series provided homophobic Harlem residents a forum for commentary, including the following: “Harlem society is full of queers, both male and female.…” “Degenerate homosexuals know nothing of men of history.” “Our main fight is against the influx of degenerate homosexuals, not just homosexuals, since there is a great difference.” Clearly, Billy Strayhorn’s interests were not well served by the press at the time.

  Evidently frustrated and feeling vulnerable—“He didn’t know where to turn,” said Coles—Strayhorn found strength in the company of Francis Goldberg, the tall, outgoing one of the fraternal twins who had long been on the periphery of Strayhorn’s circle of friends. “Goldie” homed straight t
o the center of this sphere in the late 1950s, absorbing more and more of Strayhorn’s attention. Amber-skinned and trim, Goldberg had thick, wavy hair and sculpted cheekbones; he could have been a model, people told him, and he didn’t dispute it. “Goldie didn’t have a problem in the confidence department,” said Haywood Williams. He liked to talk, which he did with his whole body; his arms were spidery, and he used them to amplify his speech, slowly waving them about in dramatic gestures that flowed from his shoulders to his hands. As an exclamation, he would jut his chin forward, arch his eyebrows and tilt his head at a side angle, something like a deer. He was considered flamboyant and, by some, overbearing. “He wasn’t exactly the kind of guy you’d picture Billy going for,” said Strayhorn’s old Pittsburgh friend George Greenlee, who moved to New York in the 1950s to run a pharmacy in Queens. Greenlee saw some resemblance to Strayhorn’s father: “He was tall and good-looking, boisterous, a very strong type of personality.” Like James Strayhorn, too, Goldberg drank—every day and from early afternoon on, according to his friends (he died of cirrhosis in 1968). “You could say everybody drank in those days, but Goldie was a drinker,” said Williams. “You’d never—never, never—see him without a drink. Billy started drinking more when he was with him, because that’s what Goldie did, and they started doing everything together.”