Billy Taylor, one of the musical treasures of Washington and the world, died last night, Dec. 28, at a hospital in New York City. He was 89 and died of a heart attack. Billy Taylor, an acclaimed jazz pianist and composer who became one of the genre’s most ardent advocates through radio, television and the landmark Jazzmobile arts venture.

Taylor died Tuesday of a heart attack in Manhattan, said his wife, Theodora Taylor. “He enjoyed his life,” she said. “Music was his love.”

Billy Taylor as Pianist in 2001 with Children from Intermediate School 176

Dr. Taylor, as he was known to one and all, was a first-rate jazz pianist who grew up in Washington and was a graduate of Dunbar High School. He moved to New York in the early 1940s and was present at the birth of bebop, the new vernacular of music that transformed jazz. He played alongside Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis and became a protege of the greatest jazz pianist ever, Art Tatum.

Billy Taylor Career

Though he had a noteworthy career as a musician and composer that spanned decades, and played with luminaries such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, Billy Taylor was probably best known as a tireless jazz booster, educator and broadcaster.

In the 1950s, Dr. Taylor began to branch out into broadcasting with a television series, “The Subject Is Jazz,” and with radio programs. He appeared on CBS over the years, particuarly on “CBS Sunday Morning,” interviewing and performing many of the great artists in jazz.

Dr. Taylor — who earned a doctorate in education, by the way — had been the artistic adviser for jazz programming at the Kennedy Center and was a constant presence at concerts at the center. He often performed with his own trio and other groups and helped make the Kennedy Center one of the most important venues for jazz in America. He launched the annual Women in Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center and was instrumental in developing other concert series.

For several years, he was the host of an NPR series, “Billy Taylor’s Jazz at the Kennedy Center,” and many people considered him the foremost jazz educator of his — or any — time.

Dr. Taylor received every award there is in jazz and the arts, including the National Medal of Arts in 1992, and was designated a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1988.

I knew Dr. Taylor somewhat, and I treasure the memory of visiting him once at the Watergate hotel, interrupting him as he was practicing on an electric piano in his room. We sat and talked for more than an hour for background for a story you can find here

He was the first black to lead a television studio orchestra in the 1950s. He founded Jazzmobile in the 1960s — a mobile, outdoor stage begun on a parade float that would take free music to inner city neighborhoods. He was host of a popular jazz show on National Public Radio from 1977 to 1982.

And, in what he later called one of his more significant accomplishments, he profiled musicians for CBS’ Sunday Morning show — winning an Emmy Award in 1983 for a piece on Quincy Jones.

When asked by an interviewer in 2007 how he would talk to a jazz newbie, he said it depended on the “quality of the music.”

“When it’s well played, there’s not a lot you have to say, because if you play it right, then people get that melody, the rhythm, or whatever the aspect of the music is that is attractive to them. But one of the things that we have not done is to put jazz in the position that it deserves in our society,” he said.

For Taylor, jazz was a central musical form for telling the story of America.

“If you really listen to that, study that, everything you need to know about America is right there, and it’s up to us who’ve experienced much of that to be able to share that,” he continued.

William Taylor was born July 24, 1921, in Greenville, N.C., but he grew up mostly in Washington, D.C. After graduating from Virginia State College, where he studied sociology and music in the 1940s, he moved to New York City to forge a career as a jazz pianist.

He lucked out, landing a gig playing with Ben Webster, Big Sid Catlett and Charlie Drayton opposite the Art Tatum Trio, he told an interviewer in 1994.

His went on to lead the Billy Taylor Trio, and composed dozens of pieces for ensembles as well as more than 300 songs, including the popular “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.”

Besides his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Kim Taylor-Thompson, a law professor at New York University. A son, Duane, died in 1988. Funeral arrangements were pending.

Billy Taylor Video as Pianist

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