Billy Taylor – Harlem Jazzmobile
Billy Taylor, who died on December 28 aged 89, was a pianist, composer, academic and tireless advocate for jazz (which he described as “America’s classical music”) on radio and television.
His gospel-style composition I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free was recorded by Nina Simone and adopted as the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement. British listeners, however, know the tune as the introductory music to the popular BBC television show Film Night, presented by Barry Norman.
William Edward Taylor, the son of a dentist and a schoolmistress, was born on July 24 1921 at Greenville, North Carolina, and grew up in Washington DC. He began taking formal piano lessons at junior high school.
Meanwhile, a neighbour, who had been a boyhood friend of Duke Ellington, and had a large record collection, introduced him to jazz. This set the pattern of his musical education through high school and Virginia State College, where he read Music and spent the evenings sitting in with every band he could find.
In 1943, at the age of 22, Taylor determined to try his luck in New York. He arrived on a Friday night and made straight for Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, where ambitious young players were always welcome to sit in. Before the weekend was out he had been spotted by the great tenor saxophonist Ben Webster and hired to play with his quartet at the Three Deuces on 52nd Street, the very epicentre of the jazz world at the time.
Taylor soon discovered that his greatest asset was his adaptability. An acute ear for the nuances of individual players enabled him to accompany soloists of widely differing styles. In 1949 he became the house pianist at Birdland, accompanying all the leading figures of the era, including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and the young Miles Davis.
In 1951 Taylor formed his own trio, which appeared at jazz clubs throughout the United States and Canada. Despite the trio’s success, Taylor often found the nightclub ambience frustrating: if people knew more about the music, he thought, they would enjoy it more, and the result would be a better experience for audience and players alike.
He began by writing introductory articles on jazz in popular magazines. This led to a series of lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and eventually to a second career in television and radio. He became a cultural correspondent on the CBS Sunday Morning news programme and had several long-running series on National Public Radio, the most recent being Billy Taylor’s Jazz, recorded at the Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington, to which he acted as an adviser.
One of his most imaginative schemes was aimed at reintroducing jazz to the black neighbourhoods where it had once flourished. Launched in 1965 under the heading Jazzmobile, the organisation staged free concerts by top-class artists in housing estates, parks and even on street corners.
In 1975, reflecting on this and his other educational projects, Taylor produced a dissertation on jazz in musical education, for which he was awarded a doctorate by the University of Massachusetts. Although he later received numerous honorary degrees, it was for this that he made a point of styling himself “Dr Billy Taylor”.
Taylor’s growing fame as the spokesman for jazz inevitably overshadowed his own considerable but unspectacular musical talents. He acknowledged this, but was always keen to point out that, between 1969 and 1972, he acted as the musical director of David Frost’s weekly American television show, the first African-American musician to hold such a position.
Billy Taylor continued working until the end. With his ready smile, unflappable manner and trademark spectacles with large, square lenses, he seemed never to age. One of his last radio appearances was for BBC Radio Two, in the series Jazz Junctions, broadcast last month. His calm voice and unpretentious mastery of his subject were as impressive as ever.
He is survived by his wife and daughter; a son predeceased him.