10 Footnotes to Apocryphal Lorca (2): Strayhorn

2. I discovered that Billy Strayhorn had done music for a Lorca play when I was doing reading for a course on jazz that was going to teach, shortly after submitting the final copy-edited and proof-read ms. to the publisher. I read two biographies of Strayhorn. The idea was to take me out of Lorca and into something else. I couldn't have known that I should have been reading about Strayhorn while working on my Lorca book. Once again, the lesson is kind of intellectual humility. Something relatively close to me (jazz, and all things Duke Ellington and Strayhorn) that had enclosed a Lorca reference that escaped my attention. Once again, this discovery confirmed a central thesis of the book: the interest of gay and black intellectuals in Lorca.