Billy Strayhorn

At 4:45 a.m. on today's date in 1967, Billy Strayhorn died of cancer at the age of 51. The New York Timesobituary described him as "a jazz composer, arranger, lyricist and pianist, who was often called Duke Ellington's alter ego." Ellington himself would call Strayhorn simply "my favorite human being."

Shortly after he had joined Duke Ellington's band in 1939 as a lyricist and arranger, Strayhorn wrote a tune he called "Take the 'A' Train," which quickly became the group's signature theme -- and one that many assumed had been written by Ellington himself.

For the next three decades, Strayhorn would composed original pieces for the Ellington band and, in a kind of musical symbiosis, would work out musical ideas or even moods suggested by Ellington. Strayhorn explained: "What it comes down to is this: Duke can call me and say 'I've got these notes here and I haven't got the time. I write it out from there . . . We really understand what each of us wants in a composition."

During his lifetime, musicians in the know, starting with Elllington himself, realized the extent of his talent, but only recently, after the publication of David Hajdu's 1996 biography "Lush Life" has the full extent of Strayhorn's work as a composer in his own right been clearly outlined.