29 Facts About Billy Taylor

1.

Billy Taylor was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator.

2.

Billy Taylor 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, DC.

3.

Billy Taylor was a jazz educator, who lectured in colleges, served on panels and travelled worldwide as a jazz ambassador.

4.

Billy Taylor was born in Greenville, North Carolina, United States, but moved to Washington, DC, when he was five years old.

5.

Billy Taylor grew up in a musical family and learned to play different instruments as a child, including guitar, drums and saxophone.

6.

Billy Taylor was most successful at the piano, and had classical piano lessons with Henry Grant, who had educated Duke Ellington a generation earlier.

7.

Billy Taylor made his first professional appearance playing keyboard at the age of 13 and was paid one dollar.

8.

Billy Taylor attended Dunbar High School, the US's first high school for African American students.

9.

Billy Taylor attended Virginia State College and majored in sociology.

10.

Billy 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.

11.

Billy 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.

12.

Billy Taylor played at Birdland longer than any other pianist in the club's history.

13.

In 1949, Billy Taylor published his first book, a textbook about bebop piano styles.

14.

In 1952, Billy 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.

15.

Billy Taylor 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.

16.

Billy Taylor worked as a DJ and programme director on radio station WLIB in New York in the 1960s.

17.

Billy Taylor hosted two long-running jazz programmes on National Public Radio.

18.

In 1981, after being profiled by CBS News Sunday Morning, Billy Taylor was hired as an on-air correspondent and then conducted more than 250 interviews with musicians.

19.

Billy Taylor received an Emmy Award for his segment on the multi-talented Quincy Jones.

20.

In 1989, Billy Taylor formed his own "Billy Taylor Made" record label to document his own music.

21.

Billy Taylor suffered from a 2002 stroke, which affected his right hand, but he continued to perform almost until his death.

22.

Billy Taylor died after a heart attack on December 28,2010, in Manhattan at the age of 89.

23.

Billy Taylor appeared on hundreds of albums and composed more than 300 songs during his career, which spanned over six decades.

24.

Billy Taylor was the Wilbur D Barrett Chair of Music at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale.

25.

Billy Taylor was sometimes better known as a television personality than a pianist.

26.

Billy Taylor had more than 20 honorary doctoral degrees and was the recipient of two Peabody Awards for Jazzmobile, NEA Jazz Masters Award, an Emmy Award for carrying out over 250 interviews for CBS News Sunday Morning, a Grammy Award Down Beat magazine's Lifetime Achievement award, National Medal of Arts, and the Tiffany Award.

27.

Billy Taylor was honored in 2001 with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Jazz Living Legend Award, and election to the Hall of Fame for the International Association for Jazz Education.

28.

Billy Taylor served as artistic director for jazz at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where he developed many critically acclaimed concert series, including the Louis Armstrong Legacy series, and the annual Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival.

29.

Billy Taylor was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2010.