Word Association Wednesday: Passionate About Flowers

For today's WAW, we follow up on Billy Strayhorn's Passion Flower with another fragrant entry from his musical garden: A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing.

Billy wrote the song for the Duke Ellington orchestra in 1941 around the same time as Passion Flower. In fact, it originally carried the working title Passion before acquiring its more distinctive name. 

Like Passion Flower, it was designed as a showcase for Johnny Hodges' incomparable alto saxophone.

🌸 Johnny in Full Bloom

Although A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing was performed by the Ellington orchestra in concert in 1941, it wasn't officially recorded until 1947, when Johnny led a studio group for Sunrise Records:

A glance at the label reveals something very much like an "Ellington Unit," with several of Johnny's Ellington bandmates along for the ride and Billy Strayhorn himself at the piano bench.

But make no mistake: this is Johnny’s show all the way.

🌷 The Flower Bed Gets Bigger

Interestingly, the full Ellington orchestra recorded A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing a year earlier, in 1946, for the Capitol Transcriptions service, with Billy again handling piano duties:

Johnny is front and center here too. The arrangement blooms beautifully, which makes it all the more surprising that Duke never made a commercial studio recording of the work for Victor.

🌹 Adding the Petals

At some point Billy added lyrics, and the first vocal version arrived in 1957 when Ozzie Bailey recorded the song with Luther Henderson's sextet for the MGM album Last Night When We Were Young:

A lovely performance. Ozzie spent time with Duke's orchestra, while Luther was a friend and colleague of both Duke and Billy, so this recording keeps things in the Ellington orbit.

💐 A Bouquet from Joya

Billy returned to the piano bench for the next vocal outing, Joya Sherrill's version from her 1965 album Sings Duke:

That's Ellington stalwart Ray Nance on violin, adding a chamber-music touch that gives the performance an especially elegant, haunting glow.

I've mentioned it before, but I really like how former and then-current Ellington bandmates continued to work on side projects over the years such as Joya's wonderful salute to Duke!

🌺 Flowers for Ella

Then came Ella Fitzgerald's gorgeous rendition with the Ellington orchestra for the 1966 Verve album Ella at Duke's Place:

Ella's regular pianist, Jimmy Jones, joins the session, and Johnny Hodges drops in for yet another reminder that nobody could caress a ballad quite like he could.

🌼 The Master Gardener

And of course, we have to finish with the composer himself. Here's Billy Strayhorn's own solo performance of A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing from 1963:

Backed by the Paris String Quartet on The Peaceful Side, Billy delivers the song with all the tenderness and grace it deserves.

🌱 Digging in the Strayhorn Garden

Billy was passionate about flowers, and this piece is one of the finest bouquets he ever arranged.

🌸 Now that's a lovesome thing. 🌸