Post Magazine: Jazz's Legendary Champion

Jazz has long been held up as America's music, and few have done more to keep it alive for generations of listeners than Billy Taylor.

In this week's issue of The Washington Post Magazine, Wells Tower celebrates the musical achievements of this piano great, who was honored this spring as a Living Jazz Legend at the Kennedy Center.

Wells Tower is a contributing writer for The Magazine.

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Wells Tower: Greetings all. Good afternoon, and thanks for joining me today to discuss Sunday's magazine profile of Dr. Billy Taylor. I'll do my best to get to all of your questions and comments.

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Frederick, Md: The broad public awareness and acceptance of Jazz is certainly as bleak as you paint it. However, one bit of light that still shines is non-commercial radio. Locally, WPFW still programs a jazz repertoire of impressive depth. My favorite radio station is WWOZ from New Orleans, streamed over the internet. Their programming ranges from the earliest recordings, from the 1920's, right up to present day. Yes, I have heard Billy Taylor on OZ.

There are hundered of stations below 92 on the "dial". A significant number of these stations are jazz-formatted or have jazz in the weekly mix. A great deal of my jazz education has come from individual broadcasters who have taken it upon themselves to teach jazz to anyone who'll listen. A good site to search out these stations is www.radio-locator.com.

With 80+ years of recorded music and new and worthy artists still coming up, there ARE sources to hear jazz locally and on the internet. It just takes a little effort.

Wells Tower: Thanks for the comment, and the point's well taken. While one of the story's thrusts was to show jazz's lamentable retreat from America's mainstream media over the course of Billy Taylor's career, and Taylor's efforts to forestall it, I should have talked more about the still-vital community of smaller jazz stations on the air and online. While commercial jazz stations have dwindled to just about nil, there are still lots of dedicated broadcasters doing great things to support the music, WWOZ being one of them.

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, WWOZ is a community-run, non-profit station in New Orleans, and their programming is phenomenal, and their support of the local jazz scene (which is still thriving, with plenty of club shows to choose from, seven nights a week) ought to serve as a model for others. Even after Katrina, WWOZ's still going strong, I'm happy to say. You can catch them online at www.wwoz.org.

Thanks, too, for the tip about www.radio-locator.com. Go have a look, folks. They've got a great inventory of jazz stations whose good work I wish I'd had room to mention in the piece.

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Clarksville, Md: Where is the complete listing of all of the musicians who were honored at Kennedy Center?

Who decided that these musicians were worthy of being honored and not other living jazz warriors?

Wells Tower: The roster, I imagine, was drawn up by Billy Taylor, with the help of the Kennedy Center's programming staff. The Kennedy Center may still have materials related to the celebration posted on their website (http://kennedy-center.org/) but I'll go ahead and paste in a complete listing of honorees, clipped from the K.C.'s press release:

Toshiko Akiyoshi, pianist and bandleader; David Baker, conductor/artistic director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra; Louie Bellson, drummer; Dave Brubeck, pianist; Donald Byrd, trumpeter; Ornette Coleman, saxophonist; Sir John Dankworth, saxophonist; Buddy DeFranco, clarinetist; Paquito D'Rivera, clarinetist; Frank Foster, saxophonist; Curtis Fuller, trombonist; Benny Golson, saxophonist; Chico Hamilton, drummer; Barry Harris, pianist; Jimmy Heath, saxophonist; Jon Hendricks, vocalist; Freddie Hubbard, trumpeter; Ahmad Jamal, pianist; Al Jarreau, vocalist; Hank Jones, pianist; Dame Cleo Laine, vocalist; Michel Legrand, pianist; Abbey Lincoln, vocalist; Wynton Marsalis, trumpeter; Marian McPartland, pianist; James Moody, saxophonist; George Russell, composer and bandleader; Jimmy Scott, vocalist; Dr. Billy Taylor, pianist; Cecil Taylor, pianist; Clark Terry, trumpeter; Frank Wess, saxophonist and flutist; Gerald Wilson, composer/arranger; Nancy Wilson, vocalist; Phil Woods, saxophonist

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Buckeystown, MD: Wells,

Nice article. I've been a fan of Billy's radio show for years. He does the jazz world a great service with his advocacy. I feel the need, however, to take exception with one of your statements:

"...the surging dynamism of pianists such as Ahmad Jamal or, later, Bill Evans, whose playing is so haunted, so gracefully grief-racked that his live recordings at the Village Vanguard conjure an image of the pianist quietly snugging a noose around his neck to the audience's jolly din of table chatter and chiming glassware."

I understand what you're going for here, but I have to say that in my entire life of playing and being around jazz musicians, I've never heard a single one of them portray these crystaline recordings in such a negative light. I would hate for the people who may read this article and wish to approach this incredibly important music, do so with that particular image in mind. From everthing I know about his life, Evans was a tortured and troubled man, but that is not what I heard on "Sunday at the Village Vanguard" and "Waltz For Debby" when I first listened to them thirty-five years ago.

That said, I feel that the beautiful air-i-ness, the resilient silences, and the zen-like quality of thought are still there, waiting for the new listener to embrace, hopefully without the baggage of the Romance-of-Death cult that seems to haunt jazz history.

Thanks for your time.

Mark

Wells Tower: Mark, thanks for writing, and I'm sorry if I wasn't quite in control of my resonances in the line about the late, great Bill Evans, whose playing means about as much to me as any jazz musician out there. What I was trying, and evidently failing to get at in that passage was the jarring discontinuity one sometimes hears in Evans's live recordings between the profound personal melancholy of some his performances and the seemingly oblivious night-on-the-town chatter and cocktail glass clinkage coming from the audience. If my rather overwrought and too gruesome description of Evans's playing wards anyone away from him, I issue a full retraction and shame-faced apology. He's just the sort of brilliant, accessible player anyone new to jazz should listen to obsessively.

And you're absolutely right that journalists have far too often gone in for the cheap sensationalism of the "cult of death" business (that is, the lurid tales of musicians' addiction and morbidity) rather than write about the music in its full complexity. It's a practice Taylor himself deplores, and if I'm guilty of it in the story, I couldn't be sorrier.

Any any rate, for those interested in a fuller portrait of Evans than the short, grim shrift I gave him in the piece, allow me to let me recommend a book called "How My Heart Sings," by Peter Pettinger, published by Yale University Press. Thanks again, Mark, for checking me on that point.

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Gardiner, Maine:1. Give us your ideas on what might be done to bring jazz back, find a larger audience.

2. Regarding Billy's presumed "failure" as an ambassador, it wasn't a failure. Many, many people learned about jazz and learned to play jazz (like Denny Zeitlin) from Billy Taylor. Is he sad, resigned, remorseful, or what? He really has nothing to regret, including the "loss" of his pianistic career. You documented, and so have the records, his great talent and ability as a pianist. That, like so much good jazz, is just not widely known.

Wells Tower:

If there's a tidy prescription for how jazz might be revived for mass listenership, I'm sure I don't know what it is. (It's important to note that we're talking about instrumental jazz , here. Vocalists like Cassandra Wilson and Diane Krall, I mentioned in the piece, are still selling records in pop volume, I believe). Observers of the jazz scene I talked to in the course of my reporting described a hope for jazz to reinvent itself, to take a bold new tack akin to the swing, or bop revolutions, and draw new listeners to the music in the process. How that might happen is anyone's guess, and the really radical things that have happened in the avant garde in the last decade or so, at least what I've heard of it, have tended to be pretty rancorous, non-listener-friendly sonic experiments that haven't exactly wooed new audiences. I guess we'll just have to leave it up to the musicians, and to the media and recording industries to keep their ears out for music that needs to be heard and to promote it when it comes along.

Thanks for your second point. I certainly wouldn't call Billy Taylor's career a failure, and I doubt anyone else in the jazz world would either. In fact, it'd be hard to find anyone held in fonder reverence by jazz musicians than Taylor, who has done so much for the music. "Resigned" is probably a reasonable way to describe Taylor's feeling about his recording career. He does feel that his records should have gotten wider distribution and play than they have, and he's made some albums that I think are truly remarkable. I hope this story encourages people to seek out more of his music, most of which is available through Dr. Taylor's website billytaylorjazz.com.

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Washington DC: I would like to purchase a copy of the famous picture "Great Day in Harlem". I have seen the picture before and today it was featured in the Washington Post Magazine. How can I get a copy?

Wells Tower: I think it's available online at http://www.harlem.org/.

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Baltimore, MD: I recently had the opportunity to see a documentary called "Chops" at the Maryland Film Festival. It chronicled the story of a high school jazz band from Jacksonville, Fla. and its victory in the 2006 Essentially Ellington competition at Lincoln Center. The quality of these young musicians was astounding (even those who didn't win, place, or show), not to mention their heart and soul. And there were a lot of them. Does anyone see these kids as hope for the future of jazz?

Wells Tower: Thanks for the comment. Sounds like a great documentary. I'd love to have a look. And yes, I think lots of us are looking to these younger players to carry jazz forward. While I was reporting the profile, I was lucky enough to spend a couple of days listening to a young pianist named Christian Sands, one of Taylor's proteges, who I think will go onto great things. Musicians like the pianist Jason Moran, too, are doing much to keep the music alive, and are well worth a listen.

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Centreville, VA: Dr. Taylor as a student of African American history and jazz I have learned from your example. I am encouraged by the legacy of the past, but worried by the prospect of the future.

I am a young jazz enthusiast (32) of African heritage that is looking for strategies to advocate and educate young people on the significance of jazz education in leadership and creative thinking. What are some references and directions you would give me?

Wells Tower: I think we may have gotten our signals crossed, Centreville. Dr. Taylor's not with us for today's chat, though you may be able to contact him through his website, billytaylorjazz.com.

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Washington DC: Why no mention of WPFW community radio - (the home of the real jazz in DC which is doing all it can to keep jazz alive) - in this rather lugubrious article about the state of jazz today. It was almost a death notice.

Wells Tower: Sorry to have omitted WPFW, whose omission Frederick, MD cited as well. I should have made space for them in the story.

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Arlington VA: Jazz isn't dying, it just kept on moving, said good-bye to the pork pie hat, changed instrumentation and has evolved into jam-band music. The Allman Brothers' "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" is a child of "Kind of Blue." Ornette Coleman and Branford Marsalis fit right in on stage with the Grateful Dead. Swing, Bebop, Post-bop, modal, free, fusion and a lot of little steps in between, it keeps evolving, sometimes taking Giant Steps along the way.

Wells Tower: That's a nice insight, Arlington, and it's well worth mentioning that jam bands like the Dead, Phish, and the rest of them did something notable in keeping a broad American listenership interested in improvisational music. It's also true that none of those influential rock bands (or even rock and roll itself) would have existed if not for their forbears in the jazz world. But Branford Marsalis's performance with the Dead notwithstanding, I'm not sure how much solace Taylor or Wynton Marsalis would take in the idea that jam bands represent jazz's latest evolutionary phase.

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Clifton, VA: Wynton Marsalis has done a great job continuing Dr Taylor's mission of educating the public on jazz. Shame most of us can only listen to Mr Marsalis on XM Channel 70 on Saturday mornings. And here in DC WPFW is just to weird and left wing for most of us. I was turned on to jazz by hif fi mags like Stereo Review and Audio and later The Absolute Sound. Home Theater has basically destroyed this.

Wells Tower: I agree wholeheartedly about Marsalis, who catches a lot of heat for his ideas about where jazz ought to be headed, but who is undoubtedly the music's hardest working ambassador these days. Would that his music, and his message were broadcast more widely.

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Washington, DC : Dear Wells Tower:

Thank you for your article and the positive things you wrote about Billy Taylor-truly one of the greatest pied pipers, leaders, educators the music has ever had.

There is no question that jazz faces an uphill struggle to be appreciated and understood in, ironically, its native land. I just returned from lecturing on jazz in Hungary and Germany, and found great interest-Hungary is dotted with jazz festivals, and in Berlin, there is a 24-hour jazz radio station, and Germany publishes at least three full-color, glossy jazz magazines.

In part because of the challenges facing jazz, we at the Smithsonian Institution in 2001 established a national jazz month, called Jazz Appreciation Month, or JAM, whose purpose is to promote jazz as both a historical and living treasure--to encourage schools, colleges, libraries, museums, musicians, concert halls, and broadcasters to do special programs on jazz, just as many do for Black History Month. In an effort to go beyond "preaching to the choir," we have enlisted 29 national partners in this effort, ranging from PBS and PRI to the Grammy Foundation and the American Library Association. And now, this April, the 6th Jazz Appreciation Month, saw events in all 50 states and in 31 countries.

While the Smithsonian wasn't mentioned in your article, this institution has a 35-year track record of leadership, beginning with publishing the 5-LP Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, which became the "textbook" for many college courses on jazz, and continuing through the establishment in 1991 of the 18-member Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, a series of exhibitions and traveling exhibition, and a series of educational offerings for teachers and students.

Besides the Smithsonian Institution, the Kennedy Center, and Lincoln Center, many other institutions are working to introduce young people to jazz, and I don't believe the situation is as gloomy as your article presents it to be. But it will take the combined efforts of lots of teachers, parents, jazz fans, and organizations to make sure that jazz keeps on being heard-and appreciated-in the land of its birth.

John Edward Hasse

Curator of American Music

Smithsonian Institution

Wells Tower: John,

Thanks for joining the conversation, and for the emails we exchanged as I was pulling the story together. The Smithsonian, too, should have gotten a mention in my piece. Yet another omission. Thanks for letting us know what the Smithsonian's up to, and for making the important point about the good fortune America's classical music is enjoying in Europe.

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Long Beach, CA: Frankly, I'm offended by the question "does jazz still have an audience" advertising this chat.

I'm constantly turning 20 somethings onto hard BeBop and they routinely say "I thought jazz was that Kenny G garbage". When my friends and I visit LA's greatest jazz club "Charlie O's" we sit at the foot of the stage - with other people at least a decade younger. BeBop is cool in LA, contemporary pop-jazz music is derided.

With consumers shoosing distinct favorites and going out to clubs to hear Jazz, the only place where jazz is dead is on radio - which is run by people who are llegally paid by corporations like clear channell.

So before you go insinuating that Jazz has no audience perhaps you ought to investigate who is paying illegal compensation to clear Channell to fill the air with sugar-pops.

Wells Tower: While I'm not in command of the facts about payola's role in the death of commercial jazz radio, all I can say is that you're not the only one picking that particular bone.

And I think your point about older forms, e.g., bop still having a dedicated listenership gets at a question the piece was trying to ask, namely, that sure, there are still plenty of us listening to Byrd, and Miles and even Ornette Coleman, but why does contemporary jazz have so comparatively few devotees?

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Las Vegas NV: My interest in jazz is as strong or stronger than it was fifty years ago. Public radio is about the only legitimate jazz stronghold. I am much more knowledgeable about jazz these days, despite for some dislike a few later trends in jazz, such as "smooth jazz". A problem which I see is that fewer younger people have much interest in jazz, which will lead to a decline in jazz audiences. As with Classical music, there may always be a following, albeit limited.

What often passes as music, let alone jazz, reflects changing tastes. Jazz requires more active listening, and I think a lot of people want background music, so much of its subtlety is lost on a mass audience. The relationship between the standards of Porter, Gershwin (and others) and jazz reflects fundamentally on what I see as American traditional music, but I don't see the same level of interest and appreciation today.

Wells Tower: All great points, and there's no question that winning younger audiences to the music is a major challenge the music's facing these days. And I think you've gotten at something in bringing up the notion that we're increasingly reluctant to try to understand art forms that require us to meet it on its own terms. What's happened to jazz has also happened to forms like poetry, and literary fiction and nonfiction. The accessible stuff sells, while the subtler, more nuanced work has an increasingly tough time finding an audience.

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Riverdale, NY: Jazz lovers should listen to WBGO out of Newark, NJ. They play all jazz genre 24/7

Wells Tower: Thanks for the tip.

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Baltimore, MD: It is a wonder that I became interested in jazz. I learned about it sort of by accident, as a teenager. The Left Bank Jazz Society used to have a Saturday night radio show on a public radio station in Baltimore. I stumbled upon it one night, and I liked what I heard. That was 34 years ago, and I have been hooked ever since.

Anyway, what do you think can be done to get children interested in jazz? Do you think that infusing Hip Hop might be a way to go? I know that alto saxophonist Gary Bartz has utilized it in recordings.

Wells Tower: Thanks for writing, and sharing your enthusiasm. I'm sure there's plenty to be done with hip-hop and jazz, though I guess the question is how to strike a balance so that jazz doesn't simply get subsumed under the hip hop aesthetic. Recall Herbie Hancock's "Rock-it" back in the mid 80s? A big hit, and I suppose it was jazz, after a fashion, but for me, and other listeners, I thought it was nowhere near as inspired as his earlier work.

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Columbia, MD: I find a lot of jazz-related information from the All About Jazz message board (http://forums.allaboutjazz.com). It is very informative, and I learn a lot of stuff from very knowledgeable people from all over the world.

You might want to pass this site on to those who are not familiar with it.

Wells Tower: Much appreciated.

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Reston, VA: Whenever I attend jazz concerts I am always amazed at the diversity of the audience, especially young people. This gives me encouragement. I am also encouraged by Dr. Taylor's efforts in expanding the jazz programing at the Kennedy Center from virtually nothing to outstanding. Notwithstanding Dr. Haase's efforts, I think the Smithsonian Institution can do a lot more, as well as Wolf Trap. Jazz is a bedrock of American culture, but these quasi-Government institutions do little to support jazz and the non-commercial jazz musicians.

Wells Tower: You've gotten to the heart of another hot controversy in the jazz scene these days. I guess another way to look at it is that if big institutions weren't nourishing jazz, who would? But yes, there are plenty of folks out there who fault the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center, etc, for wooing crowds at the expense of the music's grass roots.

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Burke, VA: The Blues, Bluegrass and real country music to include honky tonk is under attack from the mass market and its attempts to homongenize and pastuerize everything for public mass consumption. Jazz and blues artists need to talk with Jimmy Buffet and learn how to sell records without a hit on the radio, grow an audience and mae some money too.

Wells Tower: Thanks for the comment, and absolutely, country music has undergone a pretty troubling dilution from Hank Williams and Waylon Jennings to what passes for country these days: songs that sound like Green Day tunes sung with a southern accent.

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Rockville, MD: While the public at large may not appreciate jazz (or art in general) the music called jazz is far from dead - it's played every week here in DC by many smart, creative musicians who struggle to make a living yet who refuse to let the music disappear. What seems like it should be reinvented is not the music itself, which is still growing against all odds, but better funding of artists and art education. How will jazz survive if jazz musicians can't make a living at it? Or if young children don't hear about it because their school arts program is cut? If people and governments are willing to spend more money on things like war than on the arts, not only do art forms like jazz suffer but our society as a whole becomes less cultured, less educated, less compassionate and less peaceful.

Wells Tower: Great remarks, Rockville, and a fine exhortation on which to end today's conversation. Many thanks to all of you who joined us today. Keep playing, keep listening, keep seeing live music!

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