Billy Taylor Popular Books
Billy Taylor Biography & Facts
Billy Taylor (July 24, 1921 – December 28, 2010) was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and from 1994 was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.A jazz activist, Taylor sat on the Honorary Founders Board of The Jazz Foundation of America, an organisation he founded in 1989, with Ann Ruckert, Herb Storfer and Phoebe Jacobs, to save the homes and the lives of America's elderly jazz and blues musicians, later including musicians who survived Hurricane Katrina.Taylor was a jazz educator, who lectured in colleges, served on panels and travelled worldwide as a jazz ambassador. Critic Leonard Feather once said, "It is almost indisputable that Dr. Billy Taylor is the world's foremost spokesman for jazz." Biography Early life and career Taylor was born in Greenville, North Carolina, United States, but moved to Washington, D.C., when he was five years old. He grew up in a musical family and learned to play different instruments as a child, including guitar, drums and saxophone. He was most successful at the piano, and had classical piano lessons with Henry Grant, who had educated Duke Ellington a generation earlier. Taylor made his first professional appearance playing keyboard at the age of 13 and was paid one dollar.Taylor attended Dunbar High School, the U.S.'s first high school for African American students. He attended Virginia State College and majored in sociology. During his time, he joined Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. Pianist Undine Smith Moore noticed young Taylor's talent in piano and he changed his major to music, graduating with a degree in music in 1942.Taylor moved to New York City after graduation and started playing piano professionally from 1944, first with Ben Webster's Quartet on New York's 52nd Street. The same night he joined Webster's Quartet, he met Art Tatum, who became his mentor. Among the other musicians Taylor worked with was Machito and his mambo band, from whom he developed a love for Latin music. After an eight-month tour with the Don Redman Orchestra in Europe, Taylor stayed there with his wife, Theodora, and in Paris and the Netherlands.Taylor returned to New York later that year and cooperated with Bob Wyatt and Sylvia Syms at the Royal Roost jazz club and Billie Holiday in a successful show called Holiday on Broadway. A year later, he became the house pianist at Birdland and performed with Charlie Parker, J.J. Johnson, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. Taylor played at Birdland longer than any other pianist in the club's history. In 1949, Taylor published his first book, a textbook about bebop piano styles. Mid-career In 1952, Taylor composed one of his best known tunes, "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free", which achieved more popularity with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Nina Simone recorded the song on her 1967 album Silk & Soul. The tune is known in the UK as a piano instrumental version, used for BBC Television's long-running Film... programme. He made dozens of recordings in the 1950s and 1960s, including Billy Taylor Trio with Candido with Cuban percussionist Candido Camero, My Fair Lady Loves Jazz, Cross Section and Taylor Made Jazz. In 1958, he became music director of NBC's The Subject Is Jazz, the first television series focusing on jazz. The 13-part series was produced by the new National Educational Television Network with guests such as Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, Jimmy Rushing, and Langston Hughes. Taylor also worked as a DJ and programme director on radio station WLIB in New York in the 1960s. During the 1960s, the Billy Taylor Trio was a regular feature of the Hickory House on West 55th Street in Manhattan. From 1969 to 1972, he served as music director for The David Frost Show and was the first African American to lead a talk-show band. Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich were just a few of the musicians who played on the show. In 1964, he established Jazzmobile in New York City as a way to promote jazz through educational programmes. In 1981, Jazzmobile produced a jazz special for National Public Radio, for which the programme received the Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting Programs. Jazzmobile's 1990 Tribute Concert to Taylor at Avery Fisher Hall, part of the JVC Jazz Festival, featured Nancy Wilson, Ahmad Jamal Trio, and Terence Blanchard Quintet. Taylor hosted two long-running jazz programmes on National Public Radio. Jazz Alive! ran from 1977 to 1983, and Billy Taylor's Jazz at the Kennedy Center ran from 1995 to 2001. The former program won the Peabody Award. Later career In 1981, after being profiled by CBS News Sunday Morning, Taylor was hired as an on-air correspondent and then conducted more than 250 interviews with musicians. He received an Emmy Award for his segment on the multi-talented Quincy Jones. In 1989, Taylor formed his own "Taylor Made" record label to document his own music. You Tempt Me (1996), by his 1985 trio (with Victor Gaskin and drummer Curtis Boyd), includes a rendition of Ellington's/Strayhorn’s "Take the "A" Train". White Nights (1991) has Taylor, Gaskin, and drummer Bobby Thomas performing live from Leningrad in the Soviet Union. Then came Solo (1992), and Jazzmobile Allstars (1992). In 1997, he received the New York State Governor's Art Award.Taylor suffered from a 2002 stroke, which affected his right hand, but he continued to perform almost until his death. He died after a heart attack on December 28, 2010, in Manhattan at the age of 89.His legacy was honored in a Harlem memorial service on January 11, 2011, featuring performances by Taylor's final working trio – bassist Chip Jackson and drummer Winard Harper – along with long-time Taylor associates Jimmy Owens, Frank Wess, Geri Allen, Christian Sands and vocalist Cassandra Wilson. Taylor was survived by his wife of 65 years, Theodora Castion Taylor; a daughter, Kim Taylor-Thompson; and a granddaughter. His son, artist Duane Taylor, died in 1988. Legacy Taylor appeared on hundreds of albums and composed more than 300 songs during his career, which spanned over six decades. His 1963 song "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free" dealt with civil rights issues and became the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. It was selected as "one of the greatest songs of the sixties" by The New York Times and was the theme music of the 1996 film Ghosts of Mississippi.Engaging and educating more audience and young people was a central part of Taylor's career. He was the Wilbur D. Barrett Chair of Music at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale. Besides publishing instructional books on jazz, he taught jazz courses at Howard University, Long Island University, the Manhattan School o.... Discover the Billy Taylor popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Billy Taylor books.
Best Seller Billy Taylor Books of 2024
-
Withdrawn Traces
Sara Hawys Roberts & Leon NoakesNew discoveries and a fresh perspective, with unprecedented access to Richey's personal archiveOn 1 February 1995, Richey Edwards, guitarist of the Manic Street Preachers, went mis...
-
Based on the Movie
Billy TaylorIt's been nine months since Bobby Conlon's wife dumped him for a hot young film director and he's doing great. Okay, so he occasionally breaks into Natalie's apartment and sobs al...
-
Die unglaubliche Begegnung auf der Sutton-Farm
Mattis LühmannIn der Nacht vom 21. auf den 22. August 1955 in Kentucky in den USA wurde eine ganze Familie nach der Sichtung eines unbekannten Flugobjekts von merkwürdigen Kreaturen belästigt. E...
-
Messing Up the Paintwork
Ebury Publishing‘If it’s me and your granny on bongos, it’s The Fall.’As legendary frontman of postpunk outfit The Fall, Mark E. Smith was known as much for his mercurial temperament as his except...
-
Just Friends
Billy TaylorAugust and Ethan have been bestfriends since the day they met at Ethan’s seventh birthday party. And now, twelve years on, their friendship continues to grow. But after magic, fame...
-
How to Read Poetry Like a Professor
Thomas C. FosterFrom the bestselling author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor comes this essential primer to reading poetry like a professor that unlocks the keys to enjoying works from L...
-
The Jazz Life of Dr. Billy Taylor
Billy Taylor & Teresa L. ReedThe autobiography of the celebrated American jazz pianist, composer, activist, educator, and Emmy Award–winning broadcaster.Legendary jazz ambassador Dr. Billy Taylor’s autobiograp...
-
Tales from the LSU Tigers Sideline
Lee FeinswogLSU football, a program steeped in tradition, where the fan really does come from the word “fanatic,” has a rich history, including 11 SEC championships and three national champion...
-
Mutual Feelings
Billy TaylorWill Evans lives an ordinary life working and living alongside his best friend, Ted, inseparable since they were four. That doesn't change when they both start seeing girls they're...
-
Dressing Up the Stars
Jeanne Walker HarveyDiscover the true story of how a shy miner’s daughter became one of the most legendary costume designers in Hollywood in this inspiring nonfiction picture book biography.As a child...
-
Kidstory
Tom AdamsLearn about fifty amazing kids who changed the world in this beautifully illustrated collection of inspiring short biographies sure to empower and motivate in equal measure.You don...
-
The Rolling Stones All the Songs Expanded Edition
Philippe Margotin & Jean-Michel GuesdonComprehensive visual history of the "World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band" as told through the recording of their monumental catalog, including 29 studio and 24 compilation albums...
-
R.E.M. Fiction
David BuckleyR.E.M.'s public image has always been tightly controlled. Icons of anticelebrity rock, who bacame huge celebrity rock stars, they were, according to the story, the first U.S. p...
-
Rockonomics
Alan B. KruegerAlan Krueger, a former chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, uses the music industry, from superstar artists to music executives, from managers to promoter...
-
The Confessions of an English Slave
Yolanda CelbridgeIntroduced to the joys of barebottom discipline by lustful ladies, naval cadet Philip Demesne, posted to the Far East, painfully learns true submission from the voluptuous dominatr...