Remembering Billy Taylor

Billy Taylor (born William Taylor (July 24, 1921, Greenville, North Carolina, United States – December 28, 2010, New York, United States), was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster, and educator. Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and since 1994 was artistic director of jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

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Billy Taylor was an icon of television jazz with his weekly show on the CBS channel “Sunday Morning” from 1981, until practically his disappearance from the public scene. That TV program had the virtue of bringing jazz music to a wide audience, and at the same time it revealed to the entire world what a good pianist he was.

Although not an innovator, per se, Taylor was flexible enough to play swing, bop, and more advanced styles while still retaining his own musical personality. After graduating in piano from Virginia State College in 1942, he moved to New York and played with such important musicians as Ben Webster, Eddie South, Stuff Smith (with whom he recorded an album in 1944), and Slam Stewart. , among others. In 1951, he was resident pianist at Birdland in New York, first as a session musician, and then leading his own trio, the formula with which he was most comfortable.

He was one of the founding musicians of the Jazz Foundation of America, an organization he founded in 1989, with Ann Ruckert, Herb Storfer and Phoebe Jacobs, to save the homes and lives of aging jazz and blues musicians in America. USA. In 1969 he became the first black band director of a television series (The David Frost Show); in 1975 he obtained his doctorate from the University of Massachusetts; and founded and served as director of the popular radio show Jazz Alive.

Taylor was also a jazz educator, lectured at universities, taught at Long Island University and the Manhattan School of Music, and was a standard-bearer for jazz music throughout the world. Critic Leonard Feather once said, “It is almost indisputable that Dr. Billy Taylor is the world’s leading spokesman for jazz.” Taylor was, among others, a member of the New York City Cultural Council, to which composers such as Leonard Bernstein also belonged, and an advisor to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. He died of heart failure in New York on December 28, 2010, at the age of 89.

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Billy Taylor Discography

1945: Billy Taylor Piano (Savoy)
1951: Piano Panorama (Atlantic and 1957 as most of The Billy Taylor Touch)
1952: Jazz At Storyville (Roost 1952)
1953: Billy Taylor Trio (Prestige)
1953–54: Cross Section (Prestige) – released 1956 (includes all tracks from Billy Taylor Plays for DJs)
1954: The Billy Taylor Trio with Candido (Prestige)
1954: Billy Taylor Trio at Town Hall (Prestige) (Status 1965)
1955: A Touch of Taylor (Prestige)
1956: Evergreens (ABC-Paramount)
1956: Billy Taylor at the London House (ABC-Paramount)[19]
1957: Introduces Ira Sullivan (ABC-Paramount)
1957: My Fair Lady Loves Jazz (ABC-Paramount; Impulse! 1965, ABC Impulse! 1968)
1957: The Billy Taylor Touch (Atlantic) - featuring tracks recorded in 1951 and 1957
1957: The New Billy Taylor Trio (ABC-Paramount)
1959: One for Fun (Atlantic)
1959: Billy Taylor with Four Flutes (Riverside; with Frank Wess, Herbie Mann and Jerome Richardson)
1959: Taylor Made Jazz (Argo)
1960: Uptown (Riverside)
1960: Warming Up! (Riverside) - also released as Custom Taylored (SeSac) and Easy Like (Surrey)
1961: Interlude (Prestige Moodsville)
1961: Kwamina (Mercury)
1962: Impromptu (Mercury)
1963: Right Here, Right Now! (Capitol)
1965: Midnight Piano (Capitol)
1968: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free (Tower)
1969: Sleeping Bee (MPS) - also released as Billy Taylor Today (Prestige)
1970: Ok Billy (Bell)
1977: Jazz Live (Monmouth Evergreen)
1977: Live at Storyville (1977 recording for West 54 Records)
1981: With Joe Kennedy Where've You Been (Concord Jazz)
1985: You Tempt Me (Taylor-Made, 1989)
1988: White Nights And Jazz in Leningrad (Taylor-Made)
1988: Solo (Taylor-Made)
1989: Billy Taylor and the Jazzmobile All Stars (Taylor-Made)
1991: White Nights and Jazz in Leningrad (Taylor-Made)
1992: Dr. T with Gerry Mulligan (GRP Records)
1993: Live at MCG with Gerry Mulligan, Carl Allen, Chip Jackson
1993: It's a Matter of Pride (GRP)
1995: Homage (GRP)
1997: The Music Keeps Us Young (Arkadia Jazz)
1999: Ten Fingers – One Voice (Arkadia Jazz)
1999: Taylor Made at the Kennedy Center with Dee Dee Bridgewater (Kennedy Center Jazz)
2001: Urban Griot (Soundspot)
2002: Live at AJE New York (Soundspot)

Billy Taylor – Uptown ( Full Album )

Billy Taylor – Uptown ( Full Album )

Piano – Billy Taylor Drums – Ray Mosca Bass – Henry Grimes Design [Cover] – Harris Lewine, Ken Braren, Paul Bacon Photography By [Cover & Back-liner] – Lawrence N. Shustak Producer, Liner Notes – Orrin Keepnews Recorded By, Engineer – Ray Fowler

00:00 A1 La Petite Mambo (Erroll Garner) 05:53 A2 Jordu (Duke Jordan) 10:15 A3 Just the Thought of You 15:27 A4 Soul Sisters 21:11 B1 Moanin’ (Bobby Timmons) 26:32 B2 Warm Blue Stream (Sara Cassey, Dotty Wayne) 31:39 B3 Biddy’s Beat 36:06 B4 Cu Blu 40:19 B5 ‘S Wonderful (George & Ira Gershwin)

Recorded – Live at The Prelude, New York – February 4, 1960

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