Lush Life is a jazz standard written by Billy Strayhorn between 1933 and 1936, published in 1949. It was first performed publicly by Strayhorn with Kay Davis and the Duke Ellington Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on November 13, 1948. The tune, in D-flat major, is famed for its sophisticated chromatic harmony and an inseparable 32-bar verse and 24-bar chorus, often described as an art song. The lyrics tell of weariness with the night life after a failed romance. It has been widely recorded by Nat King Cole (1949) and later by many jazz greats including Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, and John Coltrane (two versions), with Frank Sinatra’s attempted 1958 Only the Lonely take unfinished, and Linda Ronstadt earning a Grammy for a Riddle-arranged version. Strayhorn reportedly kept Lush Life as a personal project, and it endures as a defining piece in his legacy.
