Billy Taylor's Jazz - influential pianist going strong at 77 - Interview

American Visions, April, 1999 by T. Brooks Shepard

MUSIC FOR THE MILLENNIUM

If "all diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means," then jazz pianist Billy Taylor, from Greenville, N.C., is a diplomat He is the supreme commander in for a more enlightened of jazz. In fact, this 77-year-old the voice of jazz. When he speaks people listen.

They listen when Taylor speaks because he communicates in so many ways. As a teacher, composer, musician and recording artist, author, lecturer, producer, and television and radio personality, Taylor is all about jazz. In an inimitably affable but determined way, he gets the message out.

You see his smiling Face on CBS Sunday Morning and hear his friendly voice on National Public Radio's Billy Taylor's Jazz at the Kennedy Center. And Live from C.D. Hylton High School, in Prince William County, Va., Which has its own Satellite, Taylor broadcasts Master classes to students around the country. Taylor also trumpets jazz in his books on music, including Jazz Piano: A Jazz History (W.C. Brown, 1983), and his latest, The Billy Taylor Collection (Hal Leonard Publishing, 1999).

His list of academic titles is just as impressive: He is a Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale University, he occupies the Wilber D. Barrett Chair of Music at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he earned his doctorate in music education, and he has been awarded 19 honorary degrees.

The list goes on: He is a member of the International Association of Jazz Educators Hall of Fame. He has two Peabody journalism awards, an Emmy and an award for Best Direct Satellite Broadcast/Special Events, from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Of his many accomplishments, he says, simply, "Everything I do is related, and I'm indebted to music for putting me there."

When it comes to jazz education, a major contribution of his has been Jazzmobile, New York City's premier music clinic and free concert series, which he co-founded with former jazz musician David Bailey. Taylor describes the genesis of the idea for Jazzmobile: "In those days, because we couldn't get jazz taught in the schools to the extent that I wanted to see it, I started a workshop in New York City. And we've turned out a lot of folks that are doing well in the field--people who studied with Frank Foster, Frank Wess, Jimmy Owens, and some of the teachers that we have there. They put folks out there that can play."

People listen when Taylor plays because his protean pianistic skills encompass so many great piano jazz styles and meld them into a splendid oneness. His latest album, Ten Fingers, One Voice (Arkadia), is an exquisitely sensitive, virtuoso solo statement on piano. On the tune "Joy Spring," Taylor plays one melody with his right hand and another with his left with confidence, ease and dexterity.

"That's something I enjoy doing," he says. "When I was studying classical music, I always wanted to find something to do with the way that Bach handled melodies with both hands. There's something going on here, and there's something going on there. It took me a long time, but I finally found that I was comfortable with that my left hand melodically as well as harmonically."

After Taylor graduated with a bachelor of science degree in music from Virginia State University, Petersburg, he split straight for New York City. In town less than a day, he was already jamming with tenor saxophone master Ben Webster at Minton's, the renowned Harlem jazz club. A year later, he was playing the famed Birdland jazz club on Broadway. Monte Kay, Diahann Carroll's first husband (who later managed Flip Wilson and the Modern Jazz Quartet), hired Taylor because, he said, "I have to have one musician who shows up."

"He liked the fact that I was dependable and could play with anybody--any style, whatever," Taylor explains. "I looked at it as a challenge and was happy to be there. You see, my first job at Birdland was with Charlie Parker and Strings. To start off with Bird in Birdland was just terrific. All memories I have from there are pleasant. It was a two-year period in my life, man, that was New Year's Eve every night."

By the 1950s, Billy Taylor's jazz club star was in the ascendant. He was leading his own trio, with Charles Mingus on bass and Charles Smith on drums. "In those days, I could play in Greenwich Village, take a week off and play out on Long Island for a week or so, go to Jersey and play for a couple of weeks, and then go to Connecticut," he recalls. "I could be right at home, playing in this neighborhood, and it was like going to different towns."

By the 1960s, however, the jazz club scene was winding down for him. "What drove me out of the clubs," Taylor says, "was that I was recording for Capitol Records when they discovered the Beatles, and I was so frustrated because nobody could get their records pressed, and you needed to record, especially in my position at that time. You needed to be played on the radio so people would hire you."

Jazz clubs fell on hard times, and jobs disappeared. "In the days that I was traveling with my trio," he continues, "at least for the entire decade of the '50s, you could get a gig and play for a month, then go to another place for two weeks, go to another place for three weeks. It wasn't a one-nighter. You got a salary that you could live on on the road. So you could make it by doing the club scene. When that fell apart, it was very difficult for a lot of guys to make the adjustment of going into colleges, doing concerts and stuff like that, because now you're talking about one or several concerts together so that you could make up for what you used to make in two weeks."