Billy Taylor Mid-career What was he up to during his mid career? In 1952 Taylor composed one of his most famous tunes, "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free Why was this a popular song? tune is widely known in the UK as a piano instrumental version, used for BBC Television's long-running Film... programme. Did he do anything other that compose music? Taylor's broadcast career also thrived. In 1961, he founded New York's Jazzmobile, which provides an arts education program via workshops, master classes, Was he affiliated with a tv network? projects. In 1958, he became the Musical Director of NBC's The Subject Is Jazz, the first ever television series focusing on jazz. Did he work in radio at all? notably the album with Cuban percussionist Candido Camero, entitled Billy Taylor Trio with Candido, My Fair Lady Loves Jazz, Cross Section and Taylor Made Jazz.
Was there a particular radio station he worked for?
Was there a particular radio station Billy Taylor worked for mid-career?
In 1952 Taylor composed one of his most famous tunes, "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free", which achieved more popularity with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Nina Simone covered the song in her 1967 album Silk & Soul. The tune is widely known in the UK as a piano instrumental version, used for BBC Television's long-running Film... programme. He made dozens of recordings in the 1950s and 1960s, notably the album with Cuban percussionist Candido Camero, entitled Billy Taylor Trio with Candido, My Fair Lady Loves Jazz, Cross Section and Taylor Made Jazz.  Taylor's broadcast career also thrived. In 1961, he founded New York's Jazzmobile, which provides an arts education program via workshops, master classes, lecture demonstrations, arts enrichment programs, outdoor summer mobile concerts, special indoor concerts and special projects. In 1958, he became the Musical Director of NBC's The Subject Is Jazz, the first ever television series focusing on jazz. The 13-part series was produced by the new National Educational Television Network (NET) and hosted guests including Ellington, Aaron Copland, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, Jimmy Rushing and Langston Hughes.  Taylor also worked as a DJ and program director on radio station WLIB in New York in the 1960s. During the 1960s, the Billy Taylor Trio was a regular feature of the Hickory House on West 55th Street in Manhattan. From 1969 to 1972, he served as the music director for The David Frost Show and was the first African American to lead a talk-show band. Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich were just a few of the musicians who played on the show.  In 1981, Jazzmobile produced a jazz special for National Public Radio, for which the program received the Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting Programs. Jazzmobile's 1990 Tribute Concert to Dr. Taylor at Avery Fisher Hall, part of the JVC Jazz Festival, featured Nancy Wilson, Ahmad Jamal Trio and Terence Blanchard Quintet. CANNOTANSWER
and program director on radio station WLIB in
Billy Taylor (July 24, 1921 – December 28, 2010) was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and from 1994 was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

A jazz activist, Taylor sat on the Honorary Founders Board of The Jazz Foundation of America, an organisation he founded in 1989, with Ann Ruckert, Herb Storfer and Phoebe Jacobs, to save the homes and the lives of America's elderly jazz and blues musicians, later including musicians who survived Hurricane Katrina.

Taylor was a jazz educator, who lectured in colleges, served on panels and travelled worldwide as a jazz ambassador. Critic Leonard Feather once said, "It is almost indisputable that Dr. Billy Taylor is the world's foremost spokesman for jazz."

Biography

Early life and career
Taylor was born in Greenville, North Carolina, United States, but moved to Washington, D.C., when he was five years old. He grew up in a musical family and learned to play different instruments as a child, including guitar, drums and saxophone. He was most successful at the piano, and had classical piano lessons with Henry Grant, who had educated Duke Ellington a generation earlier. Taylor made his first professional appearance playing keyboard at the age of 13 and was paid one dollar.

Taylor attended Dunbar High School, the U.S.'s first high school for African American students. He attended Virginia State College and majored in sociology. During his time, he joined Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. Pianist Undine Smith Moore noticed young Taylor's talent in piano and he changed his major to music, graduating with a degree in music in 1942.

Taylor moved to New York City after graduation and started playing piano professionally from 1944, first with Ben Webster's Quartet on New York's 52nd Street. The same night he joined Webster's Quartet, he met Art Tatum, who became his mentor. Among the other musicians Taylor worked with was Machito and his mambo band, from whom he developed a love for Latin music. After an eight-month tour with the Don Redman Orchestra in Europe, Taylor stayed there with his wife, Theodora, and in Paris and the Netherlands.

Taylor returned to New York later that year and cooperated with Bob Wyatt and Sylvia Syms at the Royal Roost jazz club and Billie Holiday in a successful show called Holiday on Broadway. A year later, he became the house pianist at Birdland and performed with Charlie Parker, J.J. Johnson, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. Taylor played at Birdland longer than any other pianist in the club's history. In 1949, Taylor published his first book, a textbook about bebop piano styles.

Mid-career
In 1952, Taylor composed one of  his best known tunes, "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free", which achieved more popularity with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Nina Simone covered the song in her 1967 album Silk & Soul. The tune is known in the UK as a piano instrumental version, used for BBC Television's long-running Film... programme. He made dozens of recordings in the 1950s and 1960s, including  Billy Taylor Trio with Candido with Cuban percussionist Candido Camero,  My Fair Lady Loves Jazz, Cross Section and Taylor Made Jazz.

In 1958, he became music director of NBC's The Subject Is Jazz, the first television series focusing on jazz. The 13-part series was produced by the new National Educational Television Network with guests such as Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, Jimmy Rushing, and Langston Hughes. Taylor also worked as a DJ and programme director on radio station WLIB in New York in the 1960s. During the 1960s, the Billy Taylor Trio was a regular feature of the Hickory House on West 55th Street in Manhattan. From 1969 to 1972, he served as music director for The David Frost Show and was the first African American to lead a talk-show band. Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich were just a few of the musicians who played on the show.

In 1964, he established Jazzmobile in New York City as a way to promote jazz through educational programmes. In 1981, Jazzmobile produced a jazz special for National Public Radio, for which the programme received the Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting Programs. Jazzmobile's 1990 Tribute Concert to Taylor at Avery Fisher Hall, part of the JVC Jazz Festival, featured Nancy Wilson, Ahmad Jamal Trio, and Terence Blanchard Quintet.

Taylor hosted two long-running jazz programmes on National Public Radio.  Jazz Alive! ran from 1977 to 1983, and Billy Taylor's Jazz at the Kennedy Center ran from 1995 to 2001. The former program won the Peabody Award.

Later career

In 1981, after being profiled by CBS News Sunday Morning, Taylor was hired as an on-air correspondent and then conducted more than 250 interviews with musicians. He received an Emmy Award for his segment on the multi-talented Quincy Jones.

In 1989, Taylor formed his own "Taylor Made" record label to document his own music. You Tempt Me (1996), by his 1985 trio (with Victor Gaskin and drummer Curtis Boyd), includes a rendition of Ellington's "Take the "A" Train". White Nights (1991) has Taylor, Gaskin, and drummer Bobby Thomas performing live from Leningrad in the Soviet Union. Then came Solo (1992), and Jazzmobile Allstars (1992). In 1997, he received the New York State Governor's Art Award.

Taylor suffered from a 2002 stroke, which affected his right hand, but he continued to perform almost until his death. He died after a heart attack on December 28, 2010 in Manhattan at the age of 89.

His legacy was honored in a Harlem memorial service on January 11, 2011, featuring performances by Taylor's final working trio – bassist Chip Jackson and drummer Winard Harper – along with long-time Taylor associates Jimmy Owens, Frank Wess, Geri Allen, Christian Sands and vocalist Cassandra Wilson. Taylor was survived by his wife of 65 years, Theodora Castion Taylor; a daughter, Kim Taylor-Thompson; and a granddaughter. His son, artist Duane Taylor, died in 1988.

Legacy
Taylor appeared on hundreds of albums and composed more than 300 songs during his career, which spanned over six decades. His 1963 song "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free" dealt with civil rights issues and became the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. It was selected as "one of the greatest songs of the sixties" by The New York Times and was the theme music of the 1996 film Ghosts of Mississippi.

Engaging and educating more audience and young people was a central part of Taylor's career. He was the Wilbur D. Barrett Chair of Music at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale. Besides publishing instructional books on jazz, he taught jazz courses at Howard University, Long Island University, the Manhattan School of Music, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he had studied under Roland Wiggins and earned his Master's degree and EdD degree in Music Education in 1975.

His extensive appearance in television series and jazz educational programs brought the music he loved to the masses at the grassroots level as well as more formal arenas. He was sometimes better known as a television personality than a pianist. He was quoted in a 2007 article in the Post Magazine: "there's no question that being an advocate eclipsed my reputation as a musician. It was my doing. I wanted to prove to people that jazz has an audience. I had to do that for me."

Awards and honors
Taylor had more than 20 honorary doctoral degrees and was the recipient of two Peabody Awards for Jazzmobile, NEA Jazz Masters Award (1998), an Emmy Award (1983) for carrying out over 250 interviews for CBS News Sunday Morning, a Grammy Award (2004)  Down Beat magazine's Lifetime Achievement award (1984), National Medal of Arts (1992), and the Tiffany Award (1991). In 1981, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from the Berklee College of Music.

He was honored in 2001 with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Jazz Living Legend Award, and election to the Hall of Fame for the International Association for Jazz Education. He served as artistic director for jazz at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where he developed many critically acclaimed concert series, including the Louis Armstrong Legacy series, and the annual Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival. In addition, he performed at the White House seven times and was one of only three jazz musicians to be appointed to the National Council of the Arts.

Taylor was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2010.

Discography

As leader
1945: Billy Taylor Piano (Savoy)
1951: Piano Panorama (Atlantic and 1957 as most of The Billy Taylor Touch)
1952: Jazz At Storyville (Roost 1952)
1953: Billy Taylor Trio (Prestige)
1953–54: Cross Section (Prestige) – released 1956 (includes all tracks from Billy Taylor Plays for DJs)
1954: The Billy Taylor Trio with Candido (Prestige)
1954: Billy Taylor Trio at Town Hall (Prestige) (Status 1965)
1955: A Touch of Taylor (Prestige)
1956: Evergreens (ABC-Paramount)
1956: Billy Taylor at the London House (ABC-Paramount)
1957: Introduces Ira Sullivan (ABC-Paramount)
1957: My Fair Lady Loves Jazz (ABC-Paramount; Impulse! 1965, ABC Impulse! 1968)
1957: The Billy Taylor Touch (Atlantic) - featuring tracks recorded in 1951 and 1957
1957: The New Billy Taylor Trio (ABC-Paramount)
1959: One for Fun (Atlantic)
1959: Billy Taylor with Four Flutes (Riverside; with Frank Wess, Herbie Mann and Jerome Richardson) 
1959: Taylor Made Jazz (Argo)
1960: Uptown (Riverside)
1960: Warming Up! (Riverside) - also released as Custom Taylored (SeSac) and Easy Like (Surrey)
1961: Interlude (Prestige Moodsville)
1961: Kwamina (Mercury)
1962: Impromptu (Mercury)
1963: Right Here, Right Now! (Capitol)
1965: Midnight Piano (Capitol)
1968: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free (Tower)
1969: Sleeping Bee (MPS) - also released as Billy Taylor Today (Prestige)
1970: Ok Billy (Bell)
1977: Jazz Live (Monmouth Evergreen)
1977: Live at Storyville (1977 recording for West 54 Records)
1981: With Joe Kennedy Where've You Been (Concord Jazz)
1985: You Tempt Me (Taylor-Made, 1989)
1988: White Nights And Jazz in Leningrad (Taylor-Made)
1988: Solo (Taylor-Made)
1989: Billy Taylor and the Jazzmobile All Stars (Taylor-Made)
1991: White Nights and Jazz in Leningrad (Taylor-Made)
1992: Dr. T with Gerry Mulligan (GRP Records)
1993: Live at MCG with Gerry Mulligan, Carl Allen, Chip Jackson
1993: It's a Matter of Pride (GRP)
1995: Homage (GRP)
1997: The Music Keeps Us Young (Arkadia Jazz)
1999: Ten Fingers – One Voice (Arkadia Jazz)
1999: Taylor Made at the Kennedy Center with Dee Dee Bridgewater (Kennedy Center Jazz)
2001: Urban Griot (Soundspot)
2002: Live at AJE New York (Soundspot)

As sideman
With Arkadia Jazz All Stars
Thank You, Duke!
With Johnny Hartman
Once in Every Life (Bee Hive, 1980)
With Coleman Hawkins
Timeless Jazz (Jazztone, 1954)
With Mundell Lowe
A Grand Night for Swinging (Riverside, 1957)
With the Metronome All-Stars
Metronome All-Stars 1956 (Clef, 1956) 
With Sal Salvador
Juicy Lucy (Bee Hive, 1978)
With Sonny Stitt
The Matadors Meet the Bull (Roulette, 1965)
What's New!!! (Roulette, 1966)
With Lucky Thompson
Accent on Tenor Sax (Urania 1954)
With Various Artists
Charlie Parker 10th Memorial Concert (Limelight Records, 1965)
"Jazz Tones" with Coleman Hawkins,1954, reissued 1984 Xanadu Records

References

External links

Billy Taylor Jazz
Official Website that includes extensive video
Billy Taylor's oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project
Billy Taylor Interview NAMM Oral History Library (2009)

1921 births
2010 deaths
American jazz composers
American male jazz composers
American jazz pianists
American male pianists
Atlantic Records artists
Bebop pianists
GRP Records artists
Hard bop pianists
Mainstream jazz pianists
Mercury Records artists
People from Greenville, North Carolina
Prestige Records artists
Radio personalities from New York (state)
Riverside Records artists
Savoy Records artists
Soul-jazz pianists
United States National Medal of Arts recipients
University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Education alumni
Virginia State University alumni
University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty
Musicians from Washington, D.C.
American jazz educators
20th-century American pianists
20th-century American composers
Jazz musicians from Virginia
Jazz musicians from North Carolina
20th-century American male musicians
Dunbar High School (Washington, D.C.) alumni
20th-century jazz composers
Tony Allan (22 September 1949 – 9 July 2004) was a British broadcaster and voice over artist.  He broadcast almost exclusively on pirate radio stations and was highly regarded for his professionalism, his distinctive voice and clear diction, and for his ability to produce highly professional commercials and promotions.

Career
Allan was 17 years old when he first worked for the pirate radio station Radio Scotland between 1966 and 1967. He had originally intended to work on another pirate station, Radio Caroline, but was rejected due to his age. When the Marine Offences Broadcasting Act (1967) was passed, he was the last DJ to broadcast live from the ship before managing director Tommy Shields's pre-recorded closedown programme.

He subsequently worked for Granada Television as a voice-over artist, and in Europe.

In the 1970s Allan worked first on RNI Radio Northsea International and did go later to the revived Radio Caroline, finally fulfilling his original ambition. When the Dutch Marine Offences Act came into force on 1 September 1974 it was Allan who announced that Caroline would continue broadcasting (following in the footsteps of Johnnie Walker who had done the same when the British law was passed in 1967). When Caroline's owner Ronan O'Rahilly announced that the station was to begin promoting his philosophy of "Loving Awareness", Allan became one of its most enthusiastic advocates, producing some of the most professional and memorable promotional ads for it.

Discussing Loving Awareness with fellow DJ Stuart Russell in 1977, Allan said:

Allan worked on Caroline on and off between 1973 and 1979. During this time he also worked on the Mediterranean Sea-based, offshore radio station The Voice of Peace which broadcast to the Middle East.

In the late 1970s he went to Ireland and worked for Big D and ARD, two of the first 24-hour land-based pirate stations in Dublin. He later also worked for Sunshine Radio, Chris Cary's Radio Nova and South Coast Radio in Cork, among others.

He was also for a number of years the voice of the Guinness commercials Worldwide.
 
He returned to Britain in 1990 to work for the now re-launched satellite Radio Caroline but was already ill from cancer. Despite this, he kept working as long as he could attending pirate radio conventions and fundraising events for Caroline until he became too ill to do so.

References

External links 
 Tony Allan page on The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame
 Offshore radio mp3 page featuring numerous Tony Allan recordings among others - part of http://www.azanorak.com/

Offshore radio broadcasters
Pirate radio personalities
1949 births
2004 deaths
British radio people Adrian Love (born 3 August 1944 in York – 10 March 1999) was a British radio presenter, remembered for his Love in the Afternoon programme on BBC Radio 2. He was the son of musician Geoff Love.

Early life 
Love attended Tottenham Grammar School. Before beginning his radio career, he worked for Burton tailors and as a song plugger in Soho.

Career
Love began his radio career in 1966 working for the pirate station Radio City on the Shivering Sands Army Fort. He moved ashore with a stint on the BBC Light Programme, which led to work on the BBC World Service.

In the early 1970s, he became station manager at United Biscuits Network, an internal radio station serving the factories of United Biscuits. Due to the lack of commercial radio in the UK at the time, the station became known for breaking new acts. While there he recruited Roger Scott and Graham Dene, with whom he later worked at Capital Radio, and gave Dale Winton and Steve Allen their radio breaks.

The launch of commercial radio in 1973 led him to move to LBC and then to Capital Radio, where he stayed for eight years, presenting an evening phone-in programme, Anna and the Doc, with agony aunt Anna Raeburn.

BBC Radio
In 1981, he returned to the BBC, presenting programmes on Radio 1, Radio 2 and Radio 4. In 1982 he was sacked from his award-winning show on Radio 1 for broadcasting while drunk. He later spoke of his alcoholism, and occasionally shared experiences with listeners.

Five years after being sacked from Radio 1, he returned once more to the BBC in 1987 working for Radio 2, initially presenting the daily afternoon show Love in the Afternoon. He was dropped from the schedule in 1990, but continued to present documentaries and special shows for the station such as Time Cycle and Pop Score. He also deputised for other presenters, including Ken Bruce and Sarah Kennedy, before leaving the station in 1994.

Later career
Other stations he worked at included BFBS, 102.2 Jazz FM and Classic FM.

While at Classic FM he was Chancellor of the Oblique University, from which listeners could get a degree.  The requirement was to apply for a research grant for something ephemeral, such as why a cup handle ends up at the back in a microwave, or to submit a basic truth such as "Women do not change their minds, they make further decisions." An A4 certificate was awarded to listeners whose submissions he read out. There were between 50 and 100 awarded.

Love spent his last four years as a presenter at BBC Southern Counties Radio.

Death 
In December 1997, he was injured in a car crash from which he never recovered, succumbing to a collapsed lung over a year later. He left a wife and three children.

References

External links 
 
 
 

1944 births
1999 deaths
British radio people
British radio personalities
British radio DJs
BBC Radio 2 presenters
Offshore radio broadcasters
Pirate radio personalities
People educated at Tottenham Grammar School
English people of American descent
LBC radio presenters
English people of African-American descent
Road incident deaths in England
20th-century African-American people