Dr. Billy Taylor was born on July 24, 1921 in North Carolina to a musical family, where everybody played piano and sang. Unimpressed with the sound of his own voice, Billy decided at a young age that he would fuse both family pursuits into one and try to "sing through the piano." It was a fortuitous decision. Classical piano lessons with Henry Grant and experimentation with saxophone, drums, and guitar prepared the aspiring musician for his first professional appearance at the keyboard at the age of 13 (his take for the performance was exactly $1.00.) At Virginia State University, where Taylor was enrolled as a sociology major, Billy stepped up his music studies while in college. Then, shortly after graduation in 1942, Taylor set out for New York City, jazz capital of the world, to see where his talent would take him.
Billy had been in the Big Apple for less than a day when he found himself sitting in at Minton's, jamming with Ben Webster. Two days later he was invited to join Webster's group. That same night he met Art Tatum, who was soon to become his mentor. Playing with Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Don Byas, and Oscar Pettiford, the newcomer quickly immersed himself in the local music scene. His light touch and musical intelligence took him to Broadway where he played with Cozy Colt's Quintet for Billy Rose's show The Seven Lively Arts, to Machito's mambo band, to gigs as an accompanist for Kevin Spencer at the Cafe Society Uptown, and to the piano chair of the Slam Stewart Trio.
In 1948 he form a duo with organist Bob Wyatt and played with Billie Holiday in a Broadway revue called Holiday on Broadway. A year later, he was hired as the house pianist at Birdland, where he played with the all the greats, remaining there longer than anyone else in that legendary club's history.
Billy Taylor launched a recording career that has spanned five decades and has produced more than two dozen albums on which he has been the leader. .
In addition to playing and recording, Billy is a gifted writer about music. In 1949, he published his first book, an instructional manual for be-bop piano. By that time, he had also begun to publish the first of what was to become a body of nearly 300 songs, including "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free," which was selected by the New York Times as "One of the Great Songs of the Sixties," and is presently featured as the anthem of Rob Reiner's film, Ghosts of the Mississippi, playing during the opening and closing credits.
Impressed by the range and depth of his work, classical musicians have asked Billy to compose symphonic works for jazz piano. Commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony, Dr Taylor's "Peaceful Warrior", a work dedicated to the memory Dr. Martin Luther King, was premiered under the direction of Robert Shaw. "Make a Joyful Noise," a six-part suite inspired by the 97th Psalm, follows the tradition of the Ellington Sacred Concerts.
Other notable composition credits include "For Rachel" a dance suite which resulted from collaboration with choreographer Rachel Lamport, the score for Wole Soyinka's off-Broadway hit, The Lion and the Jewel, and "Suite for Jazz Piano and Orchestra," commissioned by Maurice Abravenal and the Utah Symphony. His most recent composition, "Homage," was written for the Julliard String Quartet and was nominated for a Grammy.
Accomplished as he is on the piano, as a recording artist, and as a composer, Billy Taylor is perhaps best known as the public face of jazz, a man who has spent much of his life bringing jazz to the airwaves. In the 1960s, alarmed by the reorientation of his record company, Capitol Records, toward upstart rock & rollers, (the Beatles had just signed on), Billy decided to forget recording for a while and devote himself instead to radio and television.
In the 1970s Billy began an extended engagement as the musical director of the David Frost Show, a variety show whose guests included the likes of Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and Buddy Rich, who came to play and be interviewed on the show. Later on he served as musical director for Tony Brown's Black Journal Tonight and became host of National Public Radio's Jazz Alive and the 13-week series, Taylor Made Piano, both of which won Peabody Awards.
Billy's career in broadcasting reached its summit in the early 1980s when he was hired as the arts reporter for the CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt. To date, he has profiled more than two hundred and fifty artists for the program.
Sparked by his experience in the late 1950s at a Yale University conference which explored ways to improve musical instruction in public schools, Billy has never stopped informing the public about the idiom he loves. His first endeavor in broadcasting was essentially an educational one. Aired in 1958, the 13-part series was called The Subject is Jazz, and was the first history of jazz produced by the new National Educational Television Network (NET).
After serving as a visiting professor at Howard University, the Manhattan School of Music, U.C. Irvine, North Carolina Central College, Shaw University, and many other colleges and universities, and as an adjunct professor at C.W. Post, Billy earned his doctorate from the University of Massachusetts, in the mid 1970s. He is now the Wilber O. Barret Professor of Music there. He lectures widely and gives master-classes and seminars.
In addition, he was the founder of Jazzmobile, a unique outreach organization which brings free concerts and music clinics to thousands in the inner-city.
Beyond the realm of the media, Billy's passion for jazz and his talents as a communicator brought him into prominence in public service circles. Dr. Taylor was appointed by the president to the National Council for the Arts, the first jazz musician since Duke Ellington to be so honored. He was only the third jazz musician to receive the National Medal of the Arts. The others were Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald. He has led State Department-sponsored tours to Hungary, the Middle East, and Latin America. Currently, he is adviser for jazz at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, and the presenter of an on-going series, "Mentors and Masters," at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Multi-dimensional and very accomplished, Billy Taylor seems to draw energy from his own activity and he shows no signs of slowing down. His passion is still alive, and his piano still sings. Happy Birthday Dr Billy Taylor!
