Billy Taylor, Ardent Jazz Promoter, Dies at 89
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) 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, has died on Tuesday at age 89.
Taylor, who won an Emmy for his work for CBS News' "Sunday Morning," died of a heart attack in Manhattan, his wife, Theodora Taylor, said.
"He enjoyed his life," she added. "Music was his love."
Taylor was probably best known as a tireless jazz booster, educator and broadcaster. He also had a noteworthy career as a musician and composer, and played with luminaries such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis.
Dr. Taylor, as he preferred to be called, helped found Jazzmobile - which began as mobile, outdoor concerts on a parade float to bring free music to inner city neighborhoods - in the 1960s. He also hosted 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 News' "Sunday Morning" program - 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, Taylor 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," he said. "But one of the things that we have not done is to put jazz in the position that it deserves in our society."
William Taylor was born July 24, 1921, in Greenville, N.C., but he grew up mostly in Washington. After graduating from Virginia State College, where he studied sociology and music in the 1940s, he moved to New York 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.
