We are filming a jazz archive series for Hamilton
College, and we have with us here today one of the great men of jazz, Dr. Billy Taylor. BT: Nice to see you. MW: Let me just ask you some opening questions. You - literally you are a history of jazz. I mean you know so much about this music. I wanted to ask you, let's start kind of chronologically
and kind of move up. What attracted you to playing the piano and
who were some of the other keyboard artists at the time that you started that kind of
got you into the music? BT: Well usually I answer that question by
saying that I had an uncle who was my father's brother, everyone on my father's side played
the piano. But this one uncle played jazz as opposed
to European classical music, which everybody else played in my grandfather's church. So my Uncle Bob was really the catalyst for
my interest. He gave me my first Fats Waller record, he
gave me my first Art Tatum record, and he introduced me to a lot of the local pianists,
many of whom were really terrific. And he knew everybody. And so he really got me turned on with this
very exciting music that these people were playing. MW: And how did you first start working professionally? BT: My first job was when I was about 13 years
old. I had been playing, you know, like little
high school and junior high school gigs and one of the people that I had met through my
uncle was working at the Howard Theater and he needed someone to replace him. For some reason or another everybody was busy,
and so he knew my parents and he came over and he said, "look, I'll be personally responsible
for your son. I'll make sure, I know he's very young but
I'm really in a desperate condition and I'd just like for him to cover for me for the
early part of the evening. And I'll bring him home and everything will
be all right, but, you know I'll take care of him. I'll make sure he's all right." And so that was my first job with older musicians,
professional musicians. MW: Now would you also say that that is an
important aspect of the music? Where the younger musicians get their bearings
and their diagnostic from the older musicians, they tell you, "yeah you're doing okay, just
keep at it you know."? BT: Well for me in the generation that I came
up in the relationship between the older, more experienced musicians and the younger
musicians was a good one. I mean they were very helpful, they were very
- throughout my early days there was always some older, wiser musician that I could go
to and say, "well how do you do this," or, "what about so-and-so" or "what happens if-"
and get an answer. And I didn't represent a threat to them and
you know, unlike the young man with a horn syndrome that people write about a lot, they
had no, they were so secure in what they do, I was a kid, they say, "yeah come on kid - do
whatever - you know, no problem." It wasn't teach you by shot. MW: There wasn't this gunslinger mentality. BT: No, not at all. Even when I was older, and I mean I was as
rash and brash as any other guys just coming out of college, man, I mean I thought I was
pretty mean, you know, so I'm ready to you know, shoot down anybody that came along. I mean I got spanked and put in my place,
just like everybody else. "Oh yeah you think you can do that? Try this." MW: And a little bit of that's healthy. BT: Oh, yeah, oh yeah. Because it went hand in hand with encouragement. I mean it wasn't a put down, you'll never
make it, or you don't have any talent, it was you know, "you can do that but you can't
do this." MW: Tell us some of the other people that
you admired their playing at the time. You say you finished college. BT: Yeah. I went to Virginia State College. MW: Okay, tell me some of the other players
that you admired when you finished undergraduate. Who were you listening to at that time? Who influenced you? BT: Well I was lucky, I was lucky, I grew
up in Washington, D.C. and in growing up in Washington, D.C., all the big bands came to
the Howard Theater. My father, who was a dentist, had an office
around the corner, literally around the corner from the theater. My grandfather's church was almost adjacent
to the theater. So much of my family, the things that I was
legitimately in place for, was close to this theater, where all of the great artists played. Where Duke Ellington, where Count Basie, where
Jimmie Lunceford, all the great players came. And so I got literally to meet many people
that I wouldn't have had access to had I not been in that proximity. I met Count Basie when I was in college. I mean I was, I had the local, like at Virginia
State we had a band that was the school band. It was an extracurricular activity. It wasn't something the school sanctioned,
but it was a dance band and a bunch of kids, and we had a faculty advisor, and it was a
very fine musician, a guy named Solomon Phillips, who taught me to arrange and do some other
things. But the Count Basie's band was playing one
night in Virginia. And they came through town. Well I mean we had all the Basie arrangements
and we had, you know because in those days you could buy "One O'clock Jump" and "Jumpin'
at the Woodside" and all those things for a dollar. I mean it was a stock arrangement, transcribed
from the record, by some, whoever the company was. And it was a good transcription because they
had the right, they had the Basie solo and it had everybody's solo in them. And so and we knew the arrangements. And so when the band came obviously everybody
in the band wanted to go to hear these great musicians. And so we went, this was in Petersburg, Virginia. And so we went to the place where they were
playing and we were standing around close to the band, nobody's dancing, everybody's
listening to the - none of our group is dancing, we were listening to the music. And so a couple of the guys in my band met
Jo Jones, who was a very accessible musician and said, "hey we've got a great piano player
in our band, why don't you get Basie to let him sit in?" Well I was embarrassed, I mean, because, hey,
sit in with this rhythm section? With Count Basie? Lots of luck, you know. I mean I was just happy to be there. Anyway, Jo said "oh yeah, let me check him
out." And so he got Basie to let me sit in. So here I am with Freddie Green, Jo Jones
and Walter Page. I mean a dream rhythm section you know? And that was my first meeting. I had seen them on stage and I had never been
able to get backstage to meet them. It was my first person-to-person encounter
with them. And from that point on, Jo was one of my mentors. So I mean he had a profound influence on my
career. MW: You know I want to ask you something about
that. Because you know many of the musicians that
we have interviewed have said the same thing. They said at some point early on in their
careers, someone had faith in them and they said okay I'll give you a chance. I'll let you sit in. Or you meet that one person that you may be
even intimidated by their status but they give you a chance. You know? And that's wonderful. I'd like to see more of that in the school
systems. BT: It's happening. It doesn't get the attention that it should
because jazz doesn't get the attention that it should. But it happened with me prior to getting to
Virginia State. I was in high school at Delmar High School
in Washington, D.C. and Henry Grant was the band director there. And he was just a wonderful band director. I mean he had Frank Wess, the tenor player,
we were in the same band. As a matter of fact Frank is the reason I
don't play the tenor, because I figured if the tenor was supposed to sound like that
I was doing something wrong and I went back to the piano. Because he was a monster when he was just
a teenager. I mean he was a wonderful player. And head and shoulders above most of us, you
know. And so the - being in that context, I was
lucky because not only did we have, did Frank and I have Henry Grant as a music teacher,
we had James Reese Europe's sister Mary Reese Europe, also on that faculty. Because of racial prejudice in Washington,
D.C., this was an all-black school. We had five instructors with doctorates on
that faculty. And so we got like a prep school education
and all of the artistic and cultural things that one would expect, and this was a public
school, but we got all the cultural things that one would expect in a private school. As a matter of fact, Senator Eddie Brooke,
a former Senator from Massachusetts, is from that school and any number of people that
have achieved all kinds of things went to Delmar High School in Washington, D.C. It was a marvelous school. So we're very lucky. MW: Let me ask you something about that. Okay, sometimes, and this is just my opinion,
I feel that as far as the music goes, as far as jazz goes, that the racial separation actually
did blacks some good. Because it made 'em play together. BT: Not only did it make us play together,
what happened is that the Duke Ellingtons, the Count Basies and the every strata of the
music was available because they had nowhere else to go. We were all pressed into the black community. So everyone was accessible. I mean a man of Duke Ellington's stature,
a man of Count Basie's stature, today would live, perhaps, in an area that I as a young
musician couldn't afford. So therefore he would not be as accessible
as if he lived upstairs in the apartment above me you know, as many of them did. MW: And sometimes I think about that and it
seems like as soon sometimes as you take the pressure off, then I find as an educator myself,
that it's hard to get blacks involved in jazz, young blacks involved in jazz. There are not the numbers coming into it that
there used to be. BT: Well it's deeper than that, unfortunately. One of the reasons you don't have African-Americans
in any number involved is that most of the traditionally black institutions ignore, in
the same way that white institutions ignore jazz, for a variety of reasons. Most of the people who teach are trained in
the conservatory situation, which does not consider jazz as the classical music it is. Therefore it's not studied, it is not given
the proper attention, it is not related to the music of the twentieth century as it should
be in an American institution. Now this goes black or white. It's particularly unfortunate in the black
universities and schools because those kids are coming, too many of those kids are coming
up not knowing their own history. And I think this is tragic. I've tried to do some things along those lines
to help, but I've been frustrated. I mean I've tried to work with specific institutions
and I just gave up because it was too time consuming and the interest wasn't there, the
help wasn't there. I've gotten much more - a project like this
is in an institution that is not essentially a black university. But it's taking place because it's important
and it's celebrating people who have done something of significance in the overall community,
not just the black community. It seems very difficult to get black institutions
to do this. Part of it is because of the tremendous brain
drain that they suffered in the 60's after, when it became possible for many of the professors
to go to places where they should have been in the first place - Harvard, Yale and other
places. But it's had a detrimental effect on music. MW: You know now I wanted to ask you, I'm
going to go around this way and come back at that issue. You are one of the few musicians who has gone
on to get the doctorate degree. Having been a professional and revered performer,
you went back to get all the credentialing. Tell us about that. Tell us what made you do it, what motivated
you and tell us a little about your research. BT: Well I was recruited, to be honest with
you. I had no intention of going back to school. I had studied privately and I was doing some
private study here in New York. But I was so disenchanted with the educational
system. I had been on committees, I had been on various
things. I've always been interested in education. But I just felt that the educational system
as it related to music was terrible. And it was not only ineffectual, it was doing
a disservice to musicians in this country. I still believe that to a great extent, for
other reasons. I think that we have all of these resources
we have all of this history, we have all of this and we only look at a very small part
of it. We only use a very small part of it for general
education and for specific education. I think that's unfortunate. Anyway, I was recruited by Dr. Roland Williams
from the Educational School at the University of Massachusetts. Roland Williams was, people don't know him,
but he was a brilliant - he's still around but he's not in that position - he had a brilliant
idea. He identified about ten to twenty people that
he said, these are people who are teachers and don't know they're teachers. But they, if you look at what they do professionally,
in everything they do there is some educational element. They are educating as they do their comedy
or as they do their music or as they do their social work, or whatever it is. So he said maybe we can get all of these people
up to the School of Education at U Mass and study them, and find some common denominator
and put that into the hopper and make education a little more palatable. So he identified, among other people, Bill
Cosby; Chris white, the bass player; Jimmy Owens, the trumpet player; Bill Barron, Kenny
Barron's brother; Yusef Lateef; and myself, and many others. I don't remember all the people who were there,
because we were there at different times. I was the musical director of the David Frost
Show and so I wasn't interested in going back to school. I mean at that point I had a plateful man. I had a major talk show and I was the first
black conductor on national television, and so I was as busy as I needed to be. But Roland was a very pervasive and persuasive
guy and he convinced me that they could work around my schedule and I could make this happen. Well it took five years, but I was able to
do that primarily because once I got into the situation I found many things of interest. I found that it was possible to expand some
of the other things that I was doing - Jazzmobile and some of the things that I was already
involved in, in both educational and from a community point of view. MW: Tell us about the Jazzmobile. BT: The Jazzmobile came about in 1958, well,
in the early 50's I had done a lot of lectures and I'd written some articles about jazz. I was very - Jo Jones had - when I first came
to New York, immediately when I got here said, "Billy you've got to write a book." And he said, "you've got a college education
and you know you're always spouting off about jazz this and jazz this, and you make a lot
of sense so you ought to write it down." I says, "right." And I forgot all about that and I went on
to try to learn how to play the piano. And ultimately in 1948, I did write a book
- I wrote a little pamphlet - how to play bebop. And the reason I wrote it was because everyone
had asked Dizzy and Bird to write it and they didn't, they didn't write anything at that
point. So I felt that, hey, you're not giving away
any secrets. Everybody is, as soon as you put it on records,
everybody can take it off, I mean so why not write down what indeed is going on in terms
of the harmonic, rhythmic and melodic expansions of this music. How Dizzy and Bird took what Basie and Ellington
and their predecessors had done and how they expanded, what some of the differences were
and what the similarities were. So I began to write articles about this and
do things. In 1958 I was invited to the Music Educators'
National Conference to give a speech and so was Stan Kenton that same year. And we both, not knowing - we knew each other
but we didn't confer before we went to the conference - and we both said the same thing:
you as music educators should be including jazz in your educational process. It is being done on an informal basis, but
it needs to be codified, it needs to be put into the general aspects of music teaching. They pat us both on the head, thanks a lot,
don't call us we'll call you. And I was furious. I said you knew I was a jazz musician, why
did you waste my time coming out here all the way from New York to California. I mean I come out to California to visit my
friends. I don't need to come out and be insulted you
know. I was furious. And so was he. So we both came back and began to put in some
kind of operation some of the things to say, you know, to thumb our nose at these people
that we had very little respect for at that time. And what he did was to use his band as a workshop
band. And what I did was a few years later - it
took me a while to find a vehicle to do it - but a few years later I was a member of
the Harlem Culture Council and they were looking for our first project. And I said okay, what we should do is have
jazz as a first project. And I couldn't find a way to make them do
that. And a woman named Daphne Onstein went out
to the World's Fair and said, you know, with all these millions of dollars of buildings
and all these things that people spent money on, here are people following a mobile bandstand
all through the fairgrounds. And they're listening to this live music. The city serviced our orchestra and they got
Ray Nance in there, they got some jazz musicians in there and everything, but basically they
were just playing nice music. And I said well why can't we do something
like that? And so, "you opened your big mouth, you got
the project." So I get the - we, Daphne and several other
members of the Council and I went over to Ballantine Beer and got them to give us a
parade float, and we put an electric piano on there, and went around the city. The idea was to update the New Orleans tradition. So we paraded - we took this float and went
in a circle from say 137th Street between Lenox and Seventh Avenue, in a ten block radius. And we started there in a ten block radius
and we came back playing as we went. And so we drew a second line. I mean kids were coming along and they were
running along behind the parade. We had two police cars as buffers so they
were safe, and it was like a little parade. We did this for a couple of years. Then the program began to grow. We started an educational part of it where
we did workshops, where we did school concerts, and so forth. But it really was a way to bring the Count
Basies, the Duke Ellingtons, the Dizzy Gillespies, the Lionel Hamptons, all of whom were very
supportive, in coming out and having the people this close to them. Because even by the 60's, the music, there
were very few big bands - being Basie, Ellington and Thad Jones and one or two others were
really the basic big bands. I don't think Thad had actually started his
when we started Jazzmobile. I think - what was the guy's name - Duke Pearson
had a big band and there was always some kind of workshop band that had the fine musicians
that were doing studio and stuff like that and wanted to play jazz. But Basie had a touring band, Ellington had
a touring band and those were really the mainstays for us. MW: A couple of other questions. This is marvelous. Do you feel that or can you give us specific
examples, do you feel you were treated different or better after you finished your doctorate? And how? When did people begin to listen to -
BT: One of the funniest things to me, when I was working on my doctorate I was introduced
to people as Dr. So-and-so, Dr. Such-and-such. As soon as I got mine it was Jim, Bill, I
mean all of that stuff - I mean thanks a lot, yeah, okay. I didn't know any more than I did before. Yes I was treated differently. Because it was an unusual thing for a jazz
musician to have an earned doctorate. And I rubbed people's noses in it. Because there was so much, when I was working
on my doctorate there was so much that I found that was - well- sloppy research. And I found so many opinions in the music
and so many things, in the research, and so many that were not identified as opinions. And I'll give you one example. The thing that has frustrated me for many
years, when I first came to New York, I had no idea of writing anything, I just wanted
to know about the music. And I worked, my first job was on 52nd Street. So Jo Jones took me around and introduced
me to many musicians. I was working with a friend of his, Sid Catlett. So I was working with it was Ben Webster's
quartet. And so 52nd Street, in 1946, was a history
of jazz. I mean you had everything from every kind
of jazz that existed up until that period was represented on that one, actually in that
one block, right down the street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue on 52nd Street just a few
blocks over. These were all speakeasys, formerly. They were now legitimate night clubs. But there were ten on either side of that
one block. There were four or five down in the block
between Sixth and Seventh. But the main conglomeration of clubs was in
that one block. So I, you know, naturally these are all super-stars
to me. I mean these are the guys whose records I
had heard and people who I had not heard of whose names I'd heard and never heard them
play and all that, and it was a great opportunity to hear in person what Sidney Bechet sounded
like or what Jimmy McPartland or some of the guys from Chicago who I'd read about and heard
on radio but never seen you know. So I went to these clubs and I began to ask
the musicians like Sidney Bechet and Wilbur De Paris what kind of music did they play
when you were a kid. They said ragtime. So I said well - ragtime - did everybody play
piano? I mean because I had read, by that time I
had read the histories of jazz by Robert Goffin and by some of the - Hugh Panassie and people
like that - who said that ragtime was piano music and it was pre-jazz. And these guys said something different. They said no. They said everybody played ragtime. They played ragtime in brass bands, they played
ragtime on string ensembles and, you know, it wasn't just piano music. So I said well was it dance music? I asked a lot of questions about the music
that was played when they were kids. And it turns out that it was the same time,
it was the predecessor to what they were playing. They were playing an extension of what they
had heard when they were kids. And they had modified it to their own generation
and everything. But basically it had remained pretty much
the same from before 1900 right up until the 20's or early 30's you know? And these guys, when they were complaining
about swing and some of the older guys were complaining about swing and saying well yeah,
even playing swing as we do here, people don't recognize thematic things and they were talking
about how they would improvise on the first theme and the second theme and whatever it
was. And there were certain breaks and certain
other traditions that went with that early music. And it was pervasive. It wasn't just on piano. So I come along later and I say well jazz
is America's classical music, and the first identifiable style is ragtime. To date, very few people - I mean there have
been a zillion books since my book came out. Most guys have gone back beyond my book and
instead of doing their own research, because a lot of the same statements that I said are
in print. For instance, in Louis Armstrong's written
work he says that. He talks about ragtime as early jazz. You know you guys didn't talk to Louis? I mean he was around for a long time. You guys didn't talk to Danny Barker? I mean there were a whole lot of old musicians
that, some of whom were still with us, you know. And many people just read what somebody else
wrote, copy that down, and then go on and put their own opinions in there. MW: Let me ask you one other thing. I want to come in on that. I want to ask you to delineate for us some
differences that you see between oral culture and literate culture. The reason why I say that is because we live
in a society now where if the average person sees something in print they just believe
it. Whether it's substantiated or not. And then the other thing -
BT: Beyond that is to hear it on television or radio. MW: Yes. In any aspect of media. Now if they hear it they believe it to be
so. And of course the media can be slanted and
it can be wrong and it can be extremely slanted. I'll give you an example then I'll let you
go on it. For instance, you know I've seen in the last
five years the way that people have kind of denigrated African-Americans in the media. I'll give you an example. Ted Koppel says something - "how witty, how
insightful." Bryant Gumble says the same thing - "arrogant." Look at the usage of terms. The man may have said the same thing. But it's the way that it's depicted and brought
to the public. But I want you to tell us for instance, what
you feel about oral culture. How is jazz a manifestation of oral culture? And how can we continue that and bolster that? BT: Jazz coming from an African-American point
of view, having been created by Africans and their subsequent generations, has continued
the same tradition, the griot, and since Africans and African-American slaves were, it was against
the law to teach them to read and write in many states, they had to continue the oral
tradition. It is my opinion that jazz would not exist
if the Virginia and North Carolina and South Carolina and the southeastern states, forbidden
the use of the drum because they felt it was a rallying point and so forth. If they had not done that, it's my opinion
that the music created in this country would sound more like West Indian music or like
Cuban music or like some of the other music created by people who came from the same circumstances
and same tribes that the Africans who were brought here but were taken to Cuba, taken
to Haiti, taken to places in South America like Brazil and so forth. The music - because they were allowed to keep
the drums - has a more direct relationship to the African - its African beginnings. Right now what you've got is you can't use
the drum so therefore you internalize this rhythm, you do something else with it. You clap your hands, you shuffle your feet,
you do other things to get the rhythmic context into the melody and the harmonies that you
use and the vocal sounds and orchestral sounds you use. That is exciting but I don't read, I don't
see that in print. I do see this, I do hear this, in the oral
traditions that have come down. So when you talk and you read or hear what
Jo Jones said or what Ellington said or when you hear direct quotes from Count Basie or
from other people, you see a lot of information, you hear a lot of information that does not
appear in the written versions of what the music is about. When you go to the Smithsonian and you hear
what the musicians said in answer to questions, when you listen to the Jelly Roll Morton interviews
that were years ago, when you hear Milt Hinton interviews, when you hear various people who
were there and who are talking history in the first person, it's quite different from
anything I read. MW: You know another thing I want to ask you
about, because you said you had relatives that were ministers in a church. I wanted to ask you if you have your own church
background and how that has become a part of your expression in jazz. Because you know the black church is like
the pillar of the black community. A lot of things spiral out from that. And then I want to ask you about the spiritual
nature of the music. Because to me the music has always been about
more than just my ability to play this complex scale or this complex chord. BT: Well in my case, my grandfather, as I
said was a Baptist minister. He was one of the founders of the [inaudible]
Baptist Church. We spent a lot of time in church. My father was the choir director. His sister and brothers played the organ. There were a lot of choir rehearsals in my
house. So I grew up hearing the spirituals, hearing
the black rendition of the traditional church music of the Baptists. And I recall many Sundays when after the eleven
o'clock service, we went back around three o'clock on a Sunday to hear a new preacher. And so this preacher was someone who had been
invited to preach to this church and you know, man I had a lot of things I would rather do
on a Sunday afternoon, but my father, the family went to church. So on those occasions, the choir sometimes
wasn't there. And I never understood why or when, because
sometimes it was but sometimes it wasn't. And they would sing things that I never heard
on other occasions. These were either older pieces of music that
seemed to start with some of the older beings some of the older members of the congregation
would start saying these things. And I realized later that they were some of
the older spirituals that were less formal than the ones that had been written down and
had been taught to us. But they remembered them. And for whatever reason felt that it was more
appropriate to sing those at that particular occasion. And it seemed to have something to do with
gathering the spirit and really just helping this guest minister feel the spirit. I mean like they'd say the traditional stuff
is not working, let's go back into tradition to help this brother, you know? And I found it interesting just as a musician. Because first of all it was music that was
different from what we normally did. And I couldn't figure what the difference
was. I mean I know now that the form was different. It was really like they were singing - the
closest thing I can relate it to is if you listen to the Georgia Sea Islands records
- those kinds of things - that's the kind of music basically that we heard in this context. And I don't know it just moved me in a different
way. It didn't, that was the part, I didn't care
for usually whatever the brother was preaching, but the music was going on. And I couldn't figure it out. It had to do with touching you, with music
touching you. I mean I have felt the same way later with
European music and with Indian music and with other kinds of music. And I didn't have to know what that was. It was just that that piece of music in that
particular context reached out and I said, oh wow, it just did something for me. And so this was that kind of association. For me it is an important part of everything
I do. I mean the most used piece of music I have
ever written is a piece called "I Wish I Knew How it Feels to be Free." And that is an unknown. I wrote it for my daughter because I was just
trying to show her about her traditions. She was growing up in the 50's and 60's and
really coming up with Motown and a lot of other things. And I'm saying, "well that's all right, but
you have a tradition that goes beyond what I play and Motown and all of that." And she wasn't getting that. We're Catholic. And so she wasn't getting that in church as
I did. And so I figured as a father I should do that. And she was saying, "right, sure, thanks Dad." Now she is grown and much more aware, having
gone through experiences of her own and gone back and looked and listened to things out
of her own tradition, so she's much more aware then she was, you know, then I tried to make
her. She did that on her own. But I wrote this trying to show her, I said
you know this is something I can make up. It's so important in your tradition. So I wrote the piece in about 15 minutes. I played it and I said that's good and I liked
it so I wrote it down. And it's only about a 16-bar piece. But since then, so many other artists have
done it. Nina Simone had the classic record on it in
terms of like most of the singers who sang it sang the version based, their versions
are based on her version. And her version is based on my instrumental
version, which I did at the piano. But spiritual, I've written in recent years,
something based on the concept that Ellington called "Sacred Music." Where you use your best shot as far as what
you do as a composer. And you try to say, using all the information
at hand, something that has a religious context. And this was based on the Psalms that say
"Make a Joyful Noise To the Lord." As a matter of fact that's the title of the
piece. It's a seven movement piece, and it's "Make
a Joyful Noise." MW: The reason why I asked that is this. Is - you said the piece was called "I Wish
I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free," but the thing I'm seeing in that is do you find
in a general sense that for African Americans that this music the Gospel, the church music,
the jazz, even the rhythm and blues, afforded some degree of sonic autonomy even if there
wasn't that degree of autonomy in the workplace? BT: Well this piece, "I Wish I Knew How it
Would Feel to be Free" refers to someone who wants to fly like a bird, someone who feels
that, you know it gave me an opportunity to do what I do best, I mean I wish I were free
to do the things, to break the bars that are holding me, to do the things that I know I
can do. And so that's the nature of the piece. It's been used by the women's movement and
it's been used by a whole lot of other folks that feel the same way. But
one of the I guess most lasting contributions we have made has been musical. What we do, which is inherent in jazz and
Gospel and in all of the, in rap, in all of the types of expression that come out of the
black experience, there is that degree of, "this is what I have to say." Now we may not all agree on what I have to
say but this is, I'm expressing it at this point you know? We may do it altogether at some point. But right now, I've got the floor. And this happens with Aretha, it happens with
Errol Nunn, it happened with Duke Ellington, it happened with Count Basie. I remember when I -
MW: Lord have mercy it happens with Patti Labelle. BT: Oh tell me about it. MW: She takes over. BT: She really does. She sure does. And you know you can, I remember being, I
was house pianist at Birdland for two years. And the Basie band played there frequently. And usually when the band played, Birdland
was a small club, and the band took up the entire stage and part of the band was really
down on the floor almost. And Basie was sitting at the piano and the
piano was on the floor. And so the exciting thing was to hear Joe
Williams get up and sing to - it wasn't a predominantly white audience in those days. Because it was the, at Birdland, it was a
very hip contingent of people who came downtown consistently. So you had 60/40 one night - white/black;
and 60/40 the next night - black/white. So it really was a very interesting balance
in that particular club. And so it was interesting to me regardless
of which way the balance was in terms of the ethnic background, Joe would reach out and
grab those folks with the classic things that he was doing with Basie in those days, and
it didn't make any difference, it was just a straight arrow to that audience you know. And it was really a very hip audience. I mean this is the audience that was so hip
that normally the piano was on the stage and I would be seated here and I could hear, they
didn't realize it, they didn't realize it, but the people sitting right behind me I could
hear their conversations. Sometimes I didn't want to. But I mean I could, you know, it was audible. And I'd be sitting there and the guy would
be sitting behind me talking to his buddy. And he says "man, you know Bird doesn't sound
as good tonight as he sounded night before last." "Night before last he was hip -" And he'd
name the players and these people were, these were not musicians. But these were people who had heard the music,
had valid opinions as far as what - as the quality of the music that they were listening
to was. I miss that. I miss that. Because in those days they were getting it
from Symphony Sid on the radio, on Nashville radio he was doing a coast to coast broadcast
from midnight to six o'clock in the morning every night in the week. There was much more music. There was music, jazz on television, there
was jazz all over. This is one - since we don't have this this
is one of the reasons that people don't relate to the music in the way that you and I perhaps
would like to see them. MW: I wanted to ask you one closing question. I just want to make a comment on that and
that is I feel that many times the audiences, they don't follow the music as closely. They're not as into it. They don't seem to be, there isn't the quality
of listener. Therefore the audiences don't seem to put
the same type of demand on the performers. They don't draw it up out of the performers
they way they used to. But I wanted to ask you one closing question
here. If you could see anything that you wanted
happen in jazz education. If the jazz education world came to you on
its knees and said, "Billy, you're the guru, lead us." And you could carte blanche write what you
wanted to have happen. Give us a, I don't know we don't have two
weeks, but give us a little scenario if you could have what you wanted in the jazz education
world. Just paint us a little picture. BT: Actually I wrote this in a book which
was edited by Dave Baker. I was asked to make some suggestions as to
where jazz could go. In education, where I'd like to see jazz go,
I would like for people to recognize the intrinsic value of the music and to use it. Because it is like an ostrich to have your
head in the sand and not realize that jazz has been the most pervasive music of this
century. I mean the kinds of things that have come,
that have been most popular, much of this music and the concepts that created the music,
have come out of jazz. To take these things and to put them into
their proper perspective, tells us who we are and what we're about. So it's beyond just music. It's beyond culture. What's going on as we speak with Congress
getting rid of the NEA and trying to find ways to de-fund the arts makes it more mandatory
to belabor a point, makes it really mandatory to put, to enhance, the 35,000 jazz ensembles
that are in place already in schools around this country, to improve the instruction,
to improve the visiting artist programs, to bring in to personal contact not just students
who are interested in music, but students who are just ordinary people who when exposed
to good music of any style will respond. You need to, jazz needs to be on television. It needs to be on video. It needs to, those of us who have the ability
to project it, should do more. I do the only program on national television
on Sunday morning that gives a look at the artists, an inside look, at the artists who
are important in jazz. And this is six, from six to ten minutes of
a 90 minute show. You know this is one time, maybe two or three
times a month that this happens. Of course that's not enough. We've got thousands of people that deserve
this kind of attention. You've got people who are doing other kinds
of things that people should see and should hear. So we need to use video and we need to use
radio still, because radio is still a valid place for people to get information. It is being disseminated in many ways, the
music is being disseminated in many ways by people who love it but don't know a lot about
it. And so they're putting music out there sometimes
in a strange context. The music business needs to be educated better
to realize that real jazz sells, has always sold. To take an example of Miles Davis, Miles Davis
sold as many records as any rock act that you can think of. But he sold that many records over a period
of years. He didn't sell them all the first week. I mean what happens in many of the very popular
groups, they sell a lot of records over a very short time. Then they're dead. Nobody buys a record ever again. With jazz, it goes on and on and on. And the problem has been distribution. We don't get it into the hands of our students. We don't get the music into the ears of the
people who are the mayors of the town or who are, I've run into too many people who say
well hey, I've got a doctor's degree, I never had any art, I mean who needs aesthetics? I mean you get that after you get rich or
something. These are people who honestly believe that
visual arts and music and the things that as far back as one can determine in Africa
and certainly through the Greeks and the Romans and in other civilizations, have proven that
this is what you remember a culture for. You don't remember, I don't remember who the
politicians were or who the generals were in those days. But I do see some of the artifacts that have
been left behind and experience some of the music in more recent, from more recent excavations
of those traditions. Count Basie was one of the most genuinely
modest people that I think I've ever met. I tried as a radio announcer, on television
shows, tried to interview him for many years and we were good friends. He would always talk to me, but he would always
talk about the guys in the band. And I once asked him how he'd like to be remembered
and he said, "as a guy in the band." But I did, I was fortunate in going to Kansas
City. I flew in from Chicago where I was working
and did a special interview for a documentary that was being done by Public Television. I did 55 minutes on Count Basie, where Count
Basie talked about Count Basie. It was the best interview I have ever managed,
on him. I'm so proud of that. Because Nebraska Television, it was done for
them. If you can ever get ahold of it, you get Basie
talking - in the interview itself - you get Basie talking about things that, how he sat
at the feet of Fats Waller, and how he learned to play the organ, and he said, "I put my
hands where his feet were so I would know where to go." And you get him talking. I asked Basie about, because his music was
so blues oriented. I said well, "how did you learn to play the
blues in Red Bank?" And he said, "well I didn't really learn to
play the blues until I came to Kansas City." I said well, "you're kidding. You came out here with a blues act." And he said, "Oh, no, no, no, no." He said no, because he had been stranded in
Kansas City, having come there with a vaudeville act. And he said "no everything was billed as blues
in those days. They were singing other, what was kind of
a pop music for those days" and so forth. And he said, "but when I got here, I really
heard the blues." And it really infected everything that he
did. And it was the kinds of bands that he put
together, the kinds of singers that enhanced that band, like Joe Williams, like Jimmy Rushing
and Helen Humes and they each had a particular perspective that he was interested in. When Billie Holiday sang with the band it
was a kind of a special relationship. And he had, I don't know whether she sang
with the band on a regular basis. I saw her with the band, as a matter of fact
the first time I ever saw her was at the Howard Theater with the Count Basie band. And I was really, this was the classic Basie
band. I really didn't want to hear Lady Day, I must
confess, because I wanted to hear Herschel Evans and Lester Young hook up. I mean I'd been hearing about these two guys
and I heard a little bit on "One O'clock Jump" and all that, and I wanted to hear them tangle
you know. And they didn't do that on that particular
show. But there were, there is so much of the tradition,
the individuality when you look at the Basie band and the Ellington band, and you look
first of all at what the band sounds like. You listen to what the band sounds like. Then you look at the fact at how can that
band sound so together with individual sounds that are so different? I mean when you think about the Basie reed
section - the traditional reed section - I mean you've got Lester Young and Herschel
Evans, how can they sound good? I mean it's totally different sounds that
you're blending together. That's one of the beauties of jazz. The Ellington band with the Hodges and Ben
Webster and Otto Hardwick, and how do you make those things come together? There is a camaraderie. There is a mutual respect musically that musicians
earn, therefore when they work together, something happens that does not happen when they're
playing singly. And so you hear this mass of sound from the
Basie band, and someone will get up and you will say well gee that works, and it will
be Sweets Edison or somebody. And someone will get up at another point and
you say well that sounds like Sweets but it's different - that's Joe Newman. And I mean and so you come up with, then you'll
have the two Franks battling or you'll have all of these kinds of sounds. When Lockjaw Davis went with the band, this
guy was such an individual, I said he can't possibly sound good in that context. Because I had heard him at Minton's and playing
all his own stuff, and he was so individual. I said he's going to stick out like a sore
thumb. But he didn't. I mean you know? Clark Terry in the band and you hear Clark's
sound through everybody, but in that band, it just was a part of the Basie sound. And I think this is something that jazz musicians
do that needs to be studied. I think that if we could find out what that
is, what makes that possible, we'd be, we'd go a long way to understanding what it is
that makes music have the kind of impact that it has on the psyche of people who are not
musicians. Why Joe Williams instead of a zillion other
male singers? You know? I mean he had something that reached out and
grabbed people. I mean this guy standing in - no show biz
- just standing there singing you know? Singing the blues. And singing - always wanting to be a ballad
singer and singing gorgeous ballads, but in that context, primarily singing three or four
blues things and tearing it up every time. Because it reached out and grabbed people. Jazz is an individual expression which I believe
takes all of the - takes one particular element that we hold dear in our society, and that
is the individual, the right of the individual to express himself. And when you look at jazz, that's really what
it's about. Every great jazz artist makes a personal statement
and you would not mistake any of the major artists for any other artist. Even though Dizzy Gillespie was highly influenced
by Roy Eldridge, who was highly influenced by Louis Armstrong, you know. Miles Davis, highly influenced by Dizzy Gillespie
but had to go somewhere else. He didn't have that kind of facility you know? Lee Morgan was tremendously influenced by
Clifford Brown. Freddie Hubbard, tremendously influenced by
Clifford Brown. All have to do something else, you know? MW: I think that's what makes it so beautiful
is the fact that it allows for individual expression, it allows for exploration, and
you eventually have to arrive at that exploration in order to find yourself. BT: I liken it to the way we learned to talk. And trying to explain this to young students,
you know when I learned to talk I learned from my family, I learned from my mother and
father, the way they pronounced certain words, or older cousins and uncles and aunts and
so forth. But even as I got to be, before I got to be
a teenager, I mean I was saying things that were my own voice. I didn't sound like my father or like my brother
or anyone else. I mean this is the way I expressed that. You know, right or wrong, that was the way
I felt about it. And that is what I think one of the main contributions
of the music is. MW: Well thank you Dr. Taylor. It's been marvelous talking to you. Wonderful insights. And I'm sure that Hamilton College will be
delighted to have this interview. Thank you.
