#music, Jazz, America’s «Classical» Music… Billy Taylor

“Jazz is really America’s classical music,” he said. “Like our country itself and especially like the people who created it, jazz is a music born of struggle but played in celebration.” (Bill Clinton at the 40th anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival)

Well, if Bill Clinton said it I am buying it! The greatest president that ever served the US talking about the greatest musical invention of the US! Wow! It cannot get better than that! Unless Jerry Lewis was there to dance and sing…

But I want to bring you the music of Billy Taylor, a great ambassador of Jazz. He was an American pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was a distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville. And since 1994 the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. So I think this man is a true authority on music, as well as on the prevalence, complexity and compositional qualities of Jazz.

Dr. Billy Taylor, (he received his Masters and Doctorate degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst) was a jazz educator. He gave lectures in many colleges and universities and served on panels, travelling the world as an authentic jazz ambassador. It was said by critic Leonard Feather that «It is almost indisputable that Dr. Billy Taylor is the world’s foremost spokesman for jazz.»

Dr. Billy Taylor was born in North Carolina in 1921… In 1944 he moved to New York City and started playing piano professionally with Ben Webster’s Quartet and on his first night with the boys he met Art Tatum. He also worked with Machito and developed a love for Latin Jazz… By 1946 he was the house pianist at Birdland and played with major stars like Charlie Parker, J.J. Johnson, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. Actually he was Birdland’s longest lasting piano player… In 1949 he published his first book, a textbook about bebop piano styles… Then in 1952 Billy Taylor composed one of his best known tunes, «I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free«. This tune (song), recorded by Nina Simone was known in the UK as a piano instrumental for the BBC’s «Film…» programme… Dr. Billy Taylor died of a heart attack in Manhattan in 2010.

So, although «classical» music is intrinsically, historically and culturally European, Jazz is intrinsically, historically and culturally American, especially having been «born» in the USA.

CHEERS