Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington's 'right arm', to be paid tribute to at Capilano University concert

"My right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head" — that was how jazz legend Duke Ellington described the composer and arranger Billy Strayhorn, who was born 100 years ago on Nov. 29.

But it often seemed that the gifted but lonely Strayhorn was left in the shadow of his friend and collaborator, not always getting the credit he deserved for his work during the decades he spent with Ellington's orchestra.

"It's a little like the story of Lennon and McCartney with the Beatles," said Réjean Marois, a jazz instructor at Capilano University.

"Most of the time [we] associate many titles that Strayhorn composed under Ellington's name," he told Hot Air host Margaret Gallagher.

Marois, Capilano University students, instructors and Vancouver jazz artist Brad Turner will pay tribute to Strayhorn at a special concert at Capilano University on Jan. 29, 2016.

'The pure artist'

While Ellington generally took the public bows for both himself and Strayhorn, he did acknowledge the composer's talents.

In 1962 Bob Smith, the founding host of Hot Air, interviewed Ellington when his band was playing Izzy's Supper Club in Vancouver, and asked him about Strayhorn.

"Well Strayhorn lives the life that I would love to live," Ellington told Smith, during their candid conversation.

"He is the pure artist. He writes, when the spirit strikes him, and what he writes is pure Strayhorn, unadulterated without any outside effects."

Marois told current Hot Air host Margaret Gallagher that these words from Ellington seem to fit with the freedom he gave Strayhorn.

"Apparently … Ellington didn't give any job description, and no contract, not even a verbal understanding of what he should be doing in the band. I read somewhere else that he just said, 'With this band you can do whatever you feel like'," Marois said.

"This collaboration was above any kind of a contractual, down to money type of thing."

When Ellington first invited the young Strayhorn a job in 1938, he paid for the composer's travel and gave him directions on how to get to his apartment in Brooklyn, New York.

Strayhorn wanted to prove he could write a song about anything, so he turned those instructions into what would become the signature tune of the Duke Ellington Orchestra: Take the A Train.

A lush but lonely life

Strayhorn was also a gifted vocalist, and his masterpiece Lush Life has been covered by over 500 artists.

However that song, written when he was a teenager in Pittsburgh yearning for a more sophisticated life, proved to be prophetic: Strayhorn did become a socialite, he did live in Paris, and he did become an alcoholic.

His alcoholism was no secret, and neither was his loneliness, as he often revealed his feelings through his music.

In Lush Life biographer David Hadju described Strayhorn as a minority three times over, as he was African-American, gay and open about his sexuality.

"The expression of his music tells a lot about perhaps his sense of insecurity [and] being in the margins of society," Marois said.

Strayhorn also battled esophageal cancer in his later years, and on May 31, 1967 he died at the age of 51.

In the centennial year of his birth, his legacy lives on — tribute albums to Strayhorn outnumber the composer's recordings of his own work.

To hear the full interview with Maoris, as well as to hear the archival interview of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn speaking to former host Bob Hope, listen to the audio labelled: Nov. 29 marks 100th birthday of Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington's right-hand man