It's an oft-told story, but one so inspiring it bears retelling. On his first day in New York, the 22-year-old, bespectacled college kid made his way to Minton's Playhouse in Harlem, where all the giants came to play. He took over the piano chair during an extended jam session, and saxophonist Ben Webster, who had just left the Ellington band, hired him on the spot.
The first day he worked with Webster, Taylor met his idol, Art Tatum. For the next two years, Taylor was the blind virtuoso's protege, absorbing his elaborate yet precise style. During those feverish first years in New York, Taylor often worked with Gillespie, the ebullient trumpeter, and Parker, the brilliant, volcanic alto saxophonist.
A longtime advocate for what he calls "America's classical music," the 83-year-old Taylor will give his farewell concert Thursday at the Kennedy Center.
(Helayne Seidman For The Washington Post)
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"When they played together," he recalls, "it was like one instrument in two different ranges. Dizzy used to say, 'He's the other side of my heartbeat.' And when you heard them play together in those days, you could see what he meant."
Parker was the wild, fast-living jazz genius whose flame burned out at 34. Gillespie, outwardly comedic and eccentric, codified bebop as the dominant jazz language of the time and became the next great teacher in Taylor's life.
"Dizzy really was the key," Taylor explains, "because Dizzy was the one who organized the music. His concepts of harmony, rhythm and melody were the point of reference that many other people used. He was a teacher. He would literally reach over me [at the piano] and play his voicings."
For Taylor the glow of bebop's golden age has never dimmed.
"There was so much vitality, the spirit of the time was so infectious," he says. "I learned so much and experienced so much during that period. Never in my life, before or after, have as many different things happened to me."
Billy Taylor witnessed the birth of bebop but was never its leader. He has always been a pianist of considerable talent, but he hasn't changed the direction of jazz piano the way, say, Tatum, Bud Powell or Bill Evans did.
But Taylor is as comfortable with words as with music -- and that is a much rarer gift among musicians than many people realize. During the 1950s, he began to find ways to reach a wider audience with the message of jazz. He went on television, he became a disc jockey, he wrote for magazines, he taught in colleges and, with his Jazzmobile program, he took the music into public schools.
"His goal in life was more than to be a great piano player," says Chip Jackson, who has been Taylor's bass player since 1993. "He wanted to spread the word about jazz. He's taken what Dizzy did for musicians and done that for the public."
His "The Subject Is Jazz," broadcast by NBC in 1958, was the first jazz education series on television -- imagine finding that on TV today -- and from 1969 to 1972 he was music director of David Frost's talk show. His association with NPR began in 1977 with the "Jazz Alive!" series. In 1981, Charles Kuralt hired him to do jazz profiles for CBS's "Sunday Morning." He did more than 250 over the next 21 years, winning an Emmy Award in 1983 for a piece on Quincy Jones. He has written more than 350 songs, including "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free," which has become something of a civil rights anthem.
And, in case you wanted to know, "Dr." Billy Taylor comes by his title honestly. In 1975, he earned a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts, with a dissertation on the history of jazz piano. He also has 19 honorary doctorates.
"It is almost indisputable," jazz critic Leonard Feather wrote in 1987, "that Dr. Billy Taylor is the world's foremost spokesman for jazz."
Jackson has another way to describe it: "His grandfather was a minister. I almost think of him as a minister of jazz."
