Billy Taylor, ardent jazz promoter, dies at 89

Billy Taylor, an acclaimed jazz pianist and composer who became one of the genre's most ardent advocates through radio, television and the landmark Jazzmobile arts venture, has died at age 89, the Associated Press reported.

Taylor died Tuesday of a heart attack in Manhattan, said his wife, Theodora Taylor. "He enjoyed his life," she said. "Music was his love."

Though he had a noteworthy career as a musician and composer that spanned decades, and played with luminaries such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, Billy Taylor was probably best known as a tireless jazz booster, educator and broadcaster.

Dr. Taylor, as he preferred to be called, was the first black to lead a television studio orchestra in the 1950s. He helped found
Jazzmobile in the 1960s - which began as mobile, outdoor concerts on a parade float to bring free music to inner city neighborhoods. He was host of a popular jazz show on National Public Radio from 1977 to 1982.

And, in what he later called one of his more significant accomplishments, he profiled musicians for CBS' Sunday Morning show - winning an Emmy Award in 1983 for a piece on Quincy Jones.

When asked by an interviewer in 2007 how he would talk to a jazz newbie, Taylor said it depended on the "quality of the music."

"When it's well played, there's not a lot you have to say, because if you play it right, then people get that melody, the rhythm, or whatever the aspect of the music is that is attractive to them," he said. "But one of the things that we have not done is to put jazz in the position that it deserves in our society."

For Taylor, jazz was a central musical form for telling the story of America.