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EXCERPT:
Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn
Strayhorn didn't so much transform in New York as take form; in New York, his amorphous youthful ideal of urban elan could finally be made real. "He had always had a certain vision of himself," said Lillian Stayhorn Dicks. "But it never had a chance to come out until he went to New York and met the right people and went to the right places. Then he really came alive." As his intimates saw him, Strayhorn emerged during his first years in Manhattan as nearly a caricature of sophistication, at least in appearance. Strayhorn dressed like a dandy: he liked striped or dark-colored shirts, sometimes paisley prints, and colorful ties; his favorite tie designer, Countess Mara, specialized in whimsical, cartoonish figures on bright backgrounds. Alto saxophonist Marshall Royal left Birdland on Broadway, around the corner from West 52nd Street, at around four one morning and found Strayhorn window-shopping at Layton's men's store. "He was admiring a suit jacket," recalled Royal. "There was another one he liked a couple of blocks away, and it was real nice." Strayhorn was fond of the feel of silk and cashmere on his body, and he collected socks; he had two sock drawers. Bred to regard good manners as elevating, he purchased an etiquette guide that he read as intently as one might a novel. When he bought a new suit, he kept the front pockets sewn up, because his mother had taught him to keep his hands out of his pockets.
Strayhorn had two favorite phrases: "Ever up and onward" was one. As Aaron Bridgers recalled, "It was his constant message of encouragement and good cheer. It meant, Don't look back — yesterday was yesterday and today is today. Look ahead." The other was, simply, "That's great!" and its variants: "He's great!" or "She's great!" Bill Patterson explained, "That was the thing he said more than anything. It was part of his philosophy, his approach to being alive, which was very generous, very open, almost too much so. He could see what was unique and worthy in almost any individual he came upon. Like, a waitress would wait on us, and she'd walk away, and Strayhorn would say, 'She's great!' Why? We didn't see it, but Strayhorn would see something there. The big and the small — these weren't real distinctions for him."