Billy Taylor Hits the Road

It is doubtful that any individual now active has had a greater effect on the appreciation of jazz than the genial, protean pianist and educator Dr. Billy Taylor. Once a month on average, during Charles Kuralt’s “Sunday Morning” show, he is seen on CBS-TV interviewing a jazz personality, reviewing and analyzing the artist’s work, and generally spreading the word for this music in a style that is accessible to the millions who tune him in regularly.

His involvement with the teaching and propagation of jazz has tended to overshadow a long standing reputation as a fluent and inventive pianist and composer. As if to remind audiences of his original talent, Taylor recently took to the road for a concert tour, armed only with his two sidemen (bassist Victor Gaskin and drummer Bobby Thomas), but occasionally joined by a symphony orchestra.

“This is the kind of thing I’ve been trying to set up for years,” said Taylor during a recent five-day stopover in Los Angeles. “We started on Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, playing one of our first dates with the Albany Symphony in Albany, Ga., and since then we’ve been all around the country from Maine to California.

“Our programs were inspired by Black History Month; we’ve had the trio in residence at various colleges, all three of us involved in educational activities. We’ll rehearse the college jazz band, or I’ll give a lecture for the harmony and theory students in a classroom, or we’ll talk about the history of jazz, each from our individual perspectives.”

Interspersed amid his trio concerts are occasional duo piano dates with Ramsey Lewis. Playing with other keyboard artists has long been a special pleasure for Taylor.

“Three years ago I did a series of programs for Bravo cable television in which I invited other pianists as guests, and we’d play solos and duos--much the same thing Marian McPartland does on her National Public Radio shows. In fact, my first guests on the show were Marian and George Shearing; we were giving a joint concert in Florida, which we taped and edited into a one hour pilot.

“Bravo liked it, and the series ran regularly for a while. We had Les McCann, Dick Hyman, Blossom Dearie, John Lewis and other good friends. That’s how the Ramsey Lewis thing came about; he called one day and suggested doing a two-piano concert. I invited him on the show to see how it would work.

“Did it ever work! It felt so good that we set up an in-person concert in Kansas City--no rhythm section; just the two of us playing non-stop for two hours and 10 minutes!”

The partnership evolved into a recording date for CBS Masterworks. “We did compositions by other pianists--Chick Corea, who wrote the title tune for us, ‘We Meet Again,’ and Duke Ellington, Denny Zeitlin and others. When the record comes out this summer we’re going to do a complete tour together.”

Taylor’s commitments to playing have long been interwoven with his educational ventures, which date back three decades. In 1958, heading the house band in the NBC series, “The Subject is Jazz,” he became the first black musician to lead an orchestra on a network station. (One of his sidemen was Doc Severinsen.)

In 1975 he received his doctorate in music education at the University of Massachusetts for a dissertation called “The History and Development of Jazz Piano: a New Perspective for Educators.”

Of all his good works, the one dearest to Taylor’s heart has been Jazzmobile. Beginning in 1965 as a project to bring live music to the streets of Harlem, it has expanded into a series of workshops and seminars.

“We now have our own building. We’re trying to fashion it into a small recording studio combined with a rehearsal hall, so that young musicians who cannot afford to go downtown will have a place to try out their ideas.

“Jimmy Owens, who was a trumpeter in my ‘David Frost Show’ band, is supervising this logical extension of our workshops. What I like about it is that people come from all over Harlem every Saturday to 127th Street and Madison Avenue, and despite all the bad-mouthing you hear about how dangerous Harlem is, we have about 65% female students; we also have a large percentage of Asians. The age range, from 11 to 67, cuts across all sorts of lines.”

With the concert tours, the college residencies, the literary forays, the composing and arranging, and recordings, how does Taylor continue to fit “Sunday Morning” into his schedule?

“I can answer that in three words,” he said with a laugh. “With great difficulty!” But the results, he says, have made it all worth while. “We’ve done some very rewarding shows with Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Carter, Maynard Ferguson, and non-musicians like Max Gordon, who’s in his 80s and still runs the Village Vanguard.

“Peggy Lee was particularly gracious. She hadn’t been well, and to make things rougher there was a long delay in getting the camera crew to her house. She just said, ‘No problem. Let’s all have some coffee,’ so we spent the whole afternoon with her and got a nice interview.

“One of the funnier moments was the time I had Bobby McFerrin as a guest. I had a chance to bring on his father, Robert McFerrin, who is an opera singer--in fact, he was the first black opera singer to play major roles at the Met.

“Thinking about the contrast in their musical approaches, I said to him, ‘You’re into opera. You teach voice. How do you feel about Bobby?’

“His reply was, ‘Well, I have some problems with the way he dresses. He looks like he’s been sent on stage to move the piano.’ ”