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Although well respected for his tasteful, non-intrusive accompaniment as a sideman, Billy Taylor is known for his championing of jazz music, especially through his various broadcasting and educational ventures. After growing up in Washington, DC and studying music at Virginia State College, where he earned a degree in Music in 1942, Taylor moved to New York. He spent the 1940s frequently playing the clubs on New York's famed 52nd Street, performing with greats such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Ben Webster, Stuff Smith, Machito, Slam Stewart, and Don Redman. His adroit abilities enabled him to freely cross over from swing to the then-burgeoning modern jazz called bebop. In the 1950s, he served as the ideal sideman, finding work with Roy Eldridge, Oscar Pettiford, and Lee Konitz while employed as house pianist at Birdland in 1951. Beginning in 1952 he became a bandleader, primarily heading trios with bass and drums. Taylor started in radio with a program in the 1960s on WLIB in New York. From 1969-72 he was house bandleader for the David Frost television show, and in the 1970s also served as host-director of the NPR syndicated Jazz Alive radio series. Since 1981, Taylor has profiled some of the biggest names in jazz as an interviewer and reporter for CBS television's Sunday Morning program. As a jazz educator, Taylor's experience has been vast, starting with authoring a series of beginning piano primers. He was a founder of New York's successful Jazzmobile community performance and school-without-walls, beginning in 1965. He earned his doctorate in Music at the University of Massachusetts in 1975, with a dissertation on The History and Development of Jazz Piano: A New Perspective for Educators. Taylor has subsequently taught at Yale, Manhattan School of Music, Howard University, University of California, Fredonia State University, and C.W. Post College. His experience at the University of Massachusetts led to a lead faculty position at the university's annual summer intensive, Jazz in July. As a composer he has written a number of commissioned works, his most well known composition being "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free." In the 1990s, Billy Taylor became artistic director of the Jazz at the Kennedy Center program in his adopted hometown, Washington, DC, from which emanated his syndicated NPR radio series, Billy Taylor's Jazz at the Kennedy Center. He has also served on the NEA's National Council on the Arts. Taylor worked with the National Endowment for the Arts as chairman of the advisory group for a research project that studied the financial condition and needs of jazz artists in four cities: New York, Detroit, New Orleans, and San Francisco. Selected Discography Cross-Section, Original Jazz Classics, 1953-54 National Endowment for the Arts · an independent federal
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