Dr. Billy Taylor, a good (sometimes great) player and composer, and inarguably one of the great popularizers of jazz music (an ambassador to the larger world in much of his work as an educator and dj and television bandleader/music director) died yesterday, as Jeff Meyerson, via Rick Robinson and Bill Crider, informed many of us this evening.
Not the best sound quality, but an example of one of the sessions he hosted as the musical director of the 1970s DAVID FROST SHOW:
A fine perfomance of one of his own best compositions, "C A G":
And an old favorite embed of mine...a complete episode of Taylor's 1950s tv series, The Subject is Jazz:
I saw him in concert only once, but would have difficulty toting up all the hours I've heard him on radio or enjoyed the music he helped present on television.
4 comments:
He appeared on CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt, if I'm not mistaken. I recognized the name, but it took me a minute to remember his appearances on the show.
That was his last regular series, if I'm not mistaken, as music correspondent for CBS SUNDAY MORNING, into the post-Kuralt days.
Sad to read this. He was a fine jazz pianist.
2010 was a tough year with the loss of so many pioneering giants.
As so many years are, David...he snuck a lot of jazz to folks who either wouldn't or didn't know they'd like the music...
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