DR. BILLY TAYLOR NEVER RESTS

It is almost indisputable that Dr. Billy Taylor is the world’s foremost spokesman for jazz. “Spokesman,” in fact, is too limiting a term.

Since his arrival in New York after graduating from Virginia State College, he has evolved from his original role as pianist to other, often overlapping activities as composer, arranger, conductor, radio host, author (“Jazz Piano: A Jazz History”), actor (he played Jelly Roll Morton in a CBS program, “You Are There”), magazine writer (for Down Beat, Keyboard, Saturday Review), commercial voice-over (for everything from cars to beers to soups), teacher and lecturer (this week he is in residence at the University of Massachusetts), and his most significant role in terms of audience size, that of regular host to jazz and pop artists about once a month since 1981 on the CBS “Sunday Morning” program. His profile of Quincy Jones won an Emmy in 1983.

The “Dr.” is not an honorific title; though he does have honorary doctorates from six other colleges, he earned a combined master’s degree and doctorate from University of Massachusetts in 1975.

Nobody with all these credits can be expected to sit still, but even by his own standards, 1987 so far has been, as he puts it, “a fantastically busy year.” Last month, he was one of a group of American composers and educators who met in the Soviet Union for 10 days with their U.S.S.R. counterparts. The object: to lay the groundwork for more cultural exchanges, not only of musicians and composers but of musicologists.

“This glasnost thing, as far as we were concerned, worked very well,” he said in a phone interview between recent college commitments. “Both sides were interested in getting some activity started as soon as possible; consequently, negotiations we thought would take a couple of days to hammer out were completed in two or three hours.

“They’re going to send over four or five musicologists to attend a national convention here in October, and they agreed to host at least three U.S. musicians a year on an educational basis--for example, Clark Terry and David Baker, who are well known also as clinicians and historians. They are very much aware of specific people like this. And these plans are in addition to tours by various American and Soviet groups that are being set up on a separate basis.”

Taylor was in Moscow to speak rather than to play; however, after arriving in Leningrad he found himself at a keyboard, as part of what he calls a happening.

“They have some unofficial musicians--people who don’t have the approval of the state, but who are nevertheless active. This was in a small hall way on the outskirts of Leningrad, and it seemed as if they had put the session together specially for us. These guys were terrific!

“One keyboard player, a very young-looking guy, Sergey Kuryokhin, had an impromptu session with a percussionist; he played acoustic piano but also had a couple of electric hookups and used a DX7. These guys were improvising all kinds of stuff, mixing classical music, jazz, rock, you name it. I was surprised about the DX7, because one problem they have over there is getting their hands on instruments.”

When Taylor played, he was joined by Oliver Lake, the composer and saxophonist best known as a member of the World Saxophone Quartet. “Oliver had come alone; in fact, in Moscow he had played alone and opened up one session with a long cadenza that completely wiped everybody out.”

During the Leningrad session a bass player told Taylor that he was there in the hope of playing with him. “I told him I had to leave at the crack of dawn to return to Moscow, so I couldn’t stay. But the next day he was on the train bound for Moscow. He told me he had a gig with a sax player named Guttman, who was leaving for the States, and I ought to come by and hear him.”

Taylor found the place, which he had heard was the only jazz club in Moscow. “I was also told by the club owner that I was the first American to play there; and it was on the Moscow television.”

Prior to the Soviet trip, Taylor took a trio on a five-city tour of Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, as part of a jazz festival that also involved the Modern Jazz Quartet, Betty Carter and others.

“This was something new for them, although we met a lot of people who were quite knowledgeable. They’re going to try to make it an annual event.”

Another item on the Taylor agenda this year was a series of concerts involving his trio and several symphony orchestras, usually playing his own compositions. Among his best-known works is “Peaceful Warrior,” dedicated to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and originally commissioned by the Atlanta Symphony. Other symphonies have performed his six-movement suite, “Make a Joyful Noise,” a jazz worship service, and his Suite for Jazz Piano and Orchestra.

In between symphony gigs in Honolulu, New Haven, Norfolk and Omaha, Taylor managed to find time for a jazz-and-dance project. “Rod Rodgers has a dance company, and we talked about the fact that dancers really don’t get to improvise much, the way jazz musicians do; we wanted to work out something where there could be some improvisation between the dancers and the musicians. He choreographed some Ellington pieces that I had arranged, and a few of my originals. We did this during Black History Month. One performance was given at the Apollo Theatre, where we had a special show for the Harlem School of the Arts.”

In case he might find himself with five minutes to spare, Taylor has continued to fill such gaps with appearances in the media of which he has long been a part, radio and TV. He was the first black musician to be appointed director of the orchestra on a series (“The Subject Is Jazz,” for NBC in 1958, with a young trumpeter named Doc Severinsen as one of his sidemen), the first black man to host a daily show on a major New York radio station, WNEW, and over the years has been music director on “That Was the Week That Was” and “The David Frost Show,” and host or featured artist on everything from “Salute to Duke” and “Bravo Access” to “Captain Kangaroo.”

Asked how he could possibly continue on “Sunday Morning,” he said: “Somehow I work it into the schedule and do it about once a month. We did a piece on Benny Carter recently; I’m now working on a Dave Brubeck profile, and I’ve been assigned a couple of others.

“All these things like television and radio are the outgrowth of a decision I made a long time ago. I just decided that since I had had such rotten luck on records, I didn’t want to have a career that was strictly dependent on record sales, as mine was in those days. (Taylor has made about 35 albums, but most are no longer available.)

“So I just gravitated toward radio and TV and documented all my activities that way. It’s worked for me; it’s kept me busy.”

That, it’s safe to assume, is the understatement of the year.