[Dixielandjazz] Music for the gay trade

[Fred Spencer]

Dear Mike,
"The Iron Duke" did not say "I don't care what they do, as long as they
don't do it in the street and frighten the horses." It was Mrs. Patrick
Campbell, an actress who played Eliza in the production of George Bernard
Shaw's "Pygmalion", and became a longtime friend of GBS..
What is the nameof the author and book "which spends several hundred pages
debating whether Duke Ellington had a gay relationship with Billy
Strayhorn"? Neither of the two Strayhorn biographies published recently -
David Hajdu's "Lush Life" (1996) and Walter van de Leur's "Something to Live
For. The Music of BillyStrayhorn" (2002) - devotes more than a few pages to
his sexual behavior. Regards.
Fred
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Durham" <mikedurham_jazz at hotmail.com>
To: <jazzboard at hotmail.com>; <drjz at bealenet.com>; <bbiffle at swcp.com>
Cc: <Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 4:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Music for the gay trade

Mike Durham wrote, in part -
... people's sexual preferences should be a private matter - as long as they
keep them in the private domain: as the Duke of Wellington said on the
subject, "I don't care what they do, as long as they don't do it in the
street and frighten the horses".

...just got a bit irritated by a book I recently
read which spends several hundred pages debating whether Duke Ellingtpon had
a gay relationship with Billy Strayhorn: