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Year round, this unique outreach organization offers an arts education enrichment program in music, dance, drama and poetry; jazz workshops for students over 16 taught by professional jazzmen; public school lectures and demonstrations. All Jazzmobile activities are free, with both public and private funding. In the early 1970's, Taylor was named Musical Director for the popular daily television program, The David Frost Show. Many feel he had the best jazz band on TV at that time, which included Frank Wess, Bob Cranshaw and Bobby Thomas. They played an hour jazz concert every night for the studio audience, and at least twice a week, Frost booked guests like Louis Armstrong, Mel Torme, Tony Bennett, Pearl Baily, Count Basie, or Buddy Rich to play and be interviewed. The band made two recordings before the show came to an end three and a half years later. Billy Taylor then returned to WLIB, this time as a broadcaster and the program director of the station and began to build the largest jazz audience in New York City while also hosting a popular local television program on New York's Channel 47. By now, on television and on the radio, Billy Taylor was synonymous with Jazz. Never one to rest on his previous accomplishments, and clearly a man driven by the need to keep growing, Billy took Teddy Wilson’s recommendation and Billy began piano studies with Richard McClanahan in the late 40s, continuing for many years. In 1975, his dissertation on “The History and Development of Jazz Piano, A New Perspective for Music Teachers,” earned him a combined Masters and Doctorate in Education from the University of Massachusetts. Billy has also been a Yale University Duke Ellington Fellow, and Yale Fellow at Calhoun College. He has since received twenty two honorary doctorate degrees including Humanities degrees from Fairfield University, Carlton College, University of Massachusetts, Clark College and Bank Street College and Honorary Doctorates in Music from St. Johns University, Berklee College of Music, University of Minnesota, University of Michigan-Flint, George Washington University, and from Virginia State University, his father’s alma mater. Billy Taylor has strived to maintain a balance between the performance and educational aspects of his career. In the midst of his performing peregrinations, he has been an adjunct professor at C. W. Post College in New York and a visiting professor at Howard University. And every summer, he leads the Jazz in July program at the University of Massachusetts, where he is the Wilmer D. Barrett Professor of Music. He was appointed to the National Council for the Arts by President Nixon in 1970, and although this was a tremendous honor, the amount of time required to be an effective arts advocate took precious time away from practicing his music. Nonetheless, he tackled the task at hand, alongside his distinguished colleagues, Maurice Abravenel, Eudora Welty, Beverly Sills, and Nancy Hanks, who were doing so much to help make the arts available to everyone. It was a highly productive and rewarding period for Taylor. All the while, Billy Taylor continued his work in broadcasting, as Musical Director for Tony Brown's Black Journal Tonight (PBS); and from 1977-1982, as host of NPR's most listened to jazz program of its time, "Jazz Alive." Back | Next |
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