April showers are behind us, in accordance to the well-known music. Holding these flowers that bloom in Could in thoughts, it’s time to play a musical bouquet—dropped at us by instrumental and vocal jazz artists.
You would possibly assume there could be an nearly limitless listing of jazz tunes about flowers, however the listing is a reasonably brief one—thought there are many tunes concerning the spring season. Duke Ellington’s alter ego and co-composer, Billy Strayhorn, nicknamed “Sweetpea,” wrote some beautiful compositions that match this theme.
Be a part of me for a celebration of Strayhorn and a floral musical extravaganza.
”Black Music Sunday” is a weekly sequence highlighting all issues Black music, with over 200 tales overlaying performers, genres, historical past, and extra, every that includes its personal vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll discover some acquainted tunes and maybe an introduction to one thing new.
Ella Fitzgerald does nice justice to the late nice Strayhorn’s tune “A Flower is A Lovesome Factor.” whose lyrics point out daffodils, roses, azaleas, and gardenias, on this recording from October 1965.
In 2021, jazz author Mike Zirpolo at Swing & Past wrote an in-depth portrait of Strayhorn, who had an “affinity for all issues French.”
The story: There was one thing about French tradition that fascinated Billy Strayhorn all his life. He wrote these phrases within the Thirties: “Life is lonely once more, …Every week in Paris will ease the chew of it, All I care is to smile despite it.” They grew to become part of Strayhorn’s lyric to his haunting music “Lush Life.” Strayhorn’s companion Aaron Bridgers, who lived in Paris for a few years, made this assertion about Strayhorn’s affinity for all issues French. “From his highschool days, Billy was a Francophile. He was fluent within the language and was thrilled with each journey he might make. (In Paris) no one cared who you have been or what you have been. There was no judgment. That’s one motive why Billy and I liked it right here.”
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The music: The main knowledgeable on Strayhorn’s music, Walter van de Leur, has summarized the historical past of Billy Strayhorn’s “A Flower Is a Lovesome Factor.” “Inside months of becoming a member of Duke Ellington in New York within the winter of 1939, Strayhorn had written two ballads for Johnny Hodges, the Ellington orchestra’s star alto saxophonist: ‘Ardour Flower,’ and ‘A Flower Is a Lovesome Factor.’ Whereas there may be proof that ‘A Flower Is a Lovesome Factor’ made it into the band ebook as early as February of 1941, it wasn’t till 1946 that the Johnny Hodges All-Stars waxed the piece for Capitol Transcriptions. There’s a kinship between ‘Ardour Flower’ and ‘A Flower Is a Lovesome Factor’ that exceeds their botanic titles. Each items are constructed on related musical concepts, reminiscent of little or no harmonic motion, a way present in different (Strayhorn) items as effectively. All through ‘A Flower Is a Lovesome Factor,’ Strayhorn maintains a subdued and minor temper. As all the time, his writing is detailed and successfully expressive of the emotional content material of this introspective composition.”
Right here’s Strayhorn enjoying the aforementioned “Ardour Flower,” launched in 1963. He was not the primary to document it: That honor went to Ellington band member and saxophonist Johnny Hodges a full twenty years earlier than Strayhorn would launch his model.
There have been quite a few covers since “Ardour Flower” was first launched by Hodges in 1943. However in the case of vocal variations that includes lyrics by Milt Raskin, I really like Fitzgerald and the Duke’s take.
Let’s pause the music and study a bit extra about “Sweetpea,” courtesy of the Billy Strayhorn web site.
The historical past of the household of William Thomas Strayhorn (his mom referred to as him “Invoice”) goes again over 100 years in Hillsborough, North Carolina. One set of nice grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. George Craig, lived behind the current Farmer’s Change. An amazing grand-mother was the prepare dinner for Robert E. Lee. Billy, nevertheless, was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1915. His mom, Lillian Younger Strayhorn, introduced her kids to Hillsborough typically. Billy was interested in the piano that his grandmother, Elizabeth Craig Strayhorn owned. He performed it from the second he was tall sufficient to succeed in the keys. Even in these early years, when he performed, his household would collect to hear and sing.
In 1923 Billy entered the primary grade in slightly wood college home, since destroyed. Quickly after that, nevertheless, his mom moved her household to Pittsburgh to affix Billy’s father, James Nathaniel Strayhorn. Mr. Strayhorn had gotten a job there as a gas-maker and wire-puller. Charlotte Catlin started to offer Billy personal piano classes. He performed the piano on a regular basis, generally changing into so engrossed that he could be late for his job. He additionally performed in the highschool band.
His father enrolled him within the Pittsburgh Musical Institute the place he studied classical music. He had extra classical coaching than most jazz musicians of his time.
Queer Portraits in Historical past provides particulars about Strayhorn’s life that he by no means hid. We’ll decide up the story after a vital audition in Pittsburgh.
Ellington was so impressed by what Strayhorn performed for him that he invited him to return to New York Metropolis, regardless that there have been no official open positions within the band. Strayhorn took him up on the supply. There he met his first associate, fellow black musician Aaron Bridgers. They lived collectively from 1939 till when Bridgers moved to Paris in 1947. All through his life, Strayhorn was surprisingly open about being homosexual. In 1941, he met the singer Lena Horne as a result of Ellington, who was romantically on the time, thought Strayhorn could be a “secure” alternative to point out her round. Lena Horne ended up falling in love anyway, and stated she would have married Strayhorn had he been straight. He did turn into her mentor, vocal coach, and shut pal.
In 1994, Mary Pettis Sanford wrote extra about Sweetpea (or Swee’pea), his enduring nickname, for the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography.
Nicknamed “Willie” and “Swee’pea” (for the infant within the cartoon strip Popeye due to Strayhorn’s small five-foot-three-inch stature), he’s credited by Lena Horne, his shut pal, with contributing significantly to her musical schooling, significantly in regard to classical music, throughout their many hours collectively. He cited as his causes for by no means marrying each his frenetic actions as a jazz musician touring to concert events, dances, theaters, golf equipment, and recording studios on three continents, and his impulsive mode of life, incompatible with home order. Coteries of admirers fashioned in Paris, Helsinki, Stockholm, and London. Influenced by Ravel, Stravinsky, Debussy, and Rimsky-Korsakov, his work was extra celebrated in Europe, the place jazz was taken severely as an artwork type, than in America. His music has been referred to as “sheer and shimmering in high quality,” “light, reflective melodies in minor moods” and “pastel colours.”
One more floral providing from Strayhorn was “Lotus Blossom” which, in accordance with Songfacts, went by quite a lot of title modifications earlier than Strayhorn registered the music title in 1959.
Songfacts provides:
Duke Ellington favored the music a lot that it will definitely grew to become the sign-off music on the finish of every of his band’s efficiency. It’s his recording of “Lotus Blossom” which may be the most effective of the numerous covers that exist. He stated that it was the music that Strayhorn favored to listen to him play essentially the most. After Strayhorn died from most cancers of the esophagus on Could 31, 1967, Ellington and among the band went into the recording studio in August to make a tribute album of a few of Strayhorn’s lesser-known songs. When the session for the album And His Mom Known as Him Invoice was over, Ellington went again to the piano. As he sat there alone, he started to play “Lotus Blossom.” The recording tools was nonetheless on as he performed. Harry Carney unpacked his baritone sax and Aaron Bell took out his bass and the 2 males sat in with Ellington on the second refrain. It grew to become the final monitor of the album and lots of jazz critics seen this rendition of “Lotus Blossom” as Ellington’s closing eulogy to his pal. Fittingly, when Ellington died in 1974, Alec Wyton reworked the music for the organ and he performed it at Ellington’s funeral at St. John the Divine in New York.
Give that closing rendition a hear.
One more floral tune is the beautiful “Single Petal of a Rose,” written for Queen Elizabeth II. As Christopher Carroll wrote for the “Secret Music” sequence at Lapham’s Quarterly:
Secret Music: On Duke Ellington’s The Queen’s Suite
The music, “The Single Petal of a Rose,” was among the many most lovely and private melodies Ellington ever wrote. It was the centerpiece of The Queen’s Suite, six songs he and his collaborator Billy Strayhorn composed for Queen Elizabeth II in 1958. 5 of the six songs signify completely different musical landscapes—a grove stuffed with fireflies, or a mockingbird singing at sundown—seen by Ellington in his travels all over the world. A number of of those, he wrote in his autobiography, represented among the most shifting moments of his life. It’s a exceptional inventive achievement, even by the requirements of such a prolific composer. However after recording it, he gave to the queen what he claimed was the one copy, refusing to launch the album in his lifetime.
Have a hear:
This splendidly poignant presentation of the tune was recorded by the Classical Theatre of Harlem in 2022:
Talking of my favourite flower OI’m a longtime rose grower), let’s end our Could bouquet with two variations of people and blues songwriter-musician Tim Hardin’s “Misty Roses.” The primary is an instrumental by The Fashionable Jazz Quartet, recorded in 1972.
I really like Astrud Gilberto’s 1966 bossa nova samba vocal cowl.
I hope you’re having fun with Could blooms right this moment!
Be a part of me within the feedback for extra, and please share any floral favorites not lined right here!