[Dixielandjazz] Ellington and Strayhorn

Stan Brager sbrager at verizon.net
Fri Jul 15 10:30:15 PDT 2011


There are many areas of agreement about who wrote what in the
Ellington/Strayhorn book. Strayhorn is credited for the compositions which
he wrote entirely for the band or the Ellington small groups. David Hajou's
bio of Billy Strayhorn has a fairly complete list of these compositions.
Hadjou looks to the registration of the composition and talks about some of
tunes which have been reregistered. However, as the list points out, there
were some areas of contention which may never be fully resolved. As to who
arranged what, it gets even murkier as the closeness of Duke and Strays
collaborations don't allow us to discriminate between Duke's and Stray's
contributions.

Stan
Stan Brager

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Ringwald [mailto:rsr at ringwald.com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 12:39 PM
> To: DJML
> Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Ellington and Strayhorn
> 
> Steve Voce wrote:
> >Ellington was not unique, amongst bandleaders, in having a stipulation
> in a
> > musician's contract that Ellington was to be given half composer
> credit of
> > any tune which the musician wrote whilst he was a member of the band.
> 
> 
> 
> All of that may be true, and I'm sure it is.  But that really was not
> my point.  I was speaking more of the talent.  Who wrote what.  How
> much of what
> Strayhorn wrote and arranged has actually been attributed to Ellington.
> 
> 
> 
> --Bob Ringwald
> www.ringwald.com
> Fulton Street Jazz Band
> 530/ 642-9551 Office
> 916/ 806-9551 Cell
> Amateur (Ham) Radio K6YBV
> 
> The red cross knocked at my door asking if I could help towards the
> floods in Pakistan.
> I said I would love to, but my hose only reaches the bottom of the
> driveway.
> 
> 





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