Lush Life

It is difficult to imagine many teenagers having the maturity to write a song as introspective and worldly as "Lush Life." Yet, it was 16 year-old Billy Strayhorn who set to work on the jazz standard that was originally called "Life Is Lonely." It would be many years later when he would debut the song with vocalist Kay Davis at a Carnegie Hall performance on November 13, 1948. Strayhorn was not the typical teenager, though. His mother fueled his desire for knowledge with books and sheet music. His classmates called him "Dictionary." Strayhorn bought his own piano by saving up money he earned as a soda jerk. All the while, the piano prodigy dreamed of a more rich – or lush – life than the one he had in the shadow of the steel industry of Pittsburgh. Strayhorn was 23 when he met 39-year-old Duke Ellington, who was in Pittsburgh for a show at the Crawford Grill. He impressed Ellington with an impromptu performance of a new arrangement of one of Ellington's own songs. Eventually, Strayhorn would collaborate with Ellington on some of jazz's best-known classics, including "Take the A Train." In fact, 'Take the A Train" was a hit before "Lush Life" made it's first public appearance.

"Lush Life" was more of an ongoing project for Strayhorn than a song intended for publication. He only played the song for friends or at parties until the Carnegie Hall performance. Ellington played seven shows at the iconic theatre that year, and Strayhorn and Davis unveiled "Lush Life" in the final show. Soon after, vocalists clamored to record it, although not all were able to do it. Over 500 covers of "Lush Life" exist, but Frank Sinatra quit trying after a few attempts to interpret the complexities of the verses in 1958. He said he would give it another try in a year, but he never did. Jazz singer and pianist Andy Bey said of the song that he has performed countless times, "A lot of songs had verses and refrains, you know, but it's like a mind boggling thing. It's not about 'ring-a-ding ding' when you do "Lush Life."

Many consider the John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman collaboration from 1962 to be the definitive recording of the song. Perhaps it is the song's complexities that have kept it from appearing often in popular films or on television. Other than documentaries and television tribute specials, "Lush Life" was first used in a movie in 1991 when it was part of the soundtrack for the Kenneth Branagh thriller Dead Again. Queen Latifah performed it for her 1998 movie Living Out Loud and the Chet Baker recording was used in the 2001 film Sidewalks of New York. The song was used in Spanglish in 2004, but was not included on the soundtrack. No version of the song ever charted.