Billy Taylor

I = Interviewer
B = Billy Taylor

There are quite a few inaudibles but for the most part I think it is one word.

Side A

I ...ranger, actor, author, teacher, composer, radio and TV personality and I'm sure other things that this introduction doesn't include. We're sitting in one of his studies and you can see in the background photographs of his friends and his family and some of his achievements that have been documented. Billy, first I'd like to ask you a question which you normally get. Can you tell me something about when and where you were born and something about your early life?
B I was born on July 24, 1921 in Greenville, North Carolina and one of the reasons I'm hoarse today is because I had a five hour rehearsal and we played until 4:00 this morning and in all occasions like that my voice goes because I sing when I play. My fingers feel fine but my voice is up for grabs this afternoon. In Greenville, I guess one of the reasons I was born in Greenville, or the reason I was born in Greenville was that my father who was a dentist decided that he wanted to practice in Greenville. He had a very dear friend. His best friend, was Dr. James Battle and Jim Battle and my dad were very close and so they wanted to practice together. The set up offices together, a dentist and a doctor and it seemed like a good idea except I guess neither my father or mother really liked Greenville and so that didn't work out and so we moved to Raleigh and stayed for a short time. I've no memory of either Greenville or Raleigh from those days. I went back as a child, was taken back by my family and so I met relatives and friends and the Battles and many other people...delightful people, but I only knew them as a young fellow.

I How old were you when you left Greenville?
B I don't know. I guess a year or something like that, very young. I have some vague recollections from looking at pictures that I evidently went to some kind of preschool in Raleigh and my mother tells embarrassing tales about my having a crush on a couple of young ladies in that area and I met them when they were a little older and I could see why I might have had a crush on those young ladies at a very early age. At any rate I have really no memory of the South in that period of my life. The only thing I do remember is Washington. I mean my family was in Washington and I remember just vaguely. I remember a place where we used to live, but I can't honestly say that I remember from that period. It's got to be from having been taken back to it and having someone point it out and say, well, this is where we used to live and this is what it was all about.

I So, the homestead still exists there, but someone else is living there presumably?
B I have no idea. I haven't been there in years.

I Let's establish where Greenville is. Is that where East Carolina University is?
B Yes it is. [inaudible] East Carolina University and where I lived evidently in Raleigh was not to far from [inaudible] University. Right, so wherever the black community was there that's where my dad practiced.

I I see. Now, you mentioned your dad was a dentist. He worked at Virginia State also, didn't he?
B Yes, as a matter of fact my early recollections of Virginia State were going down. He played the [inaudible] tennis there and he went down and played in a tennis tournament and I went down and somehow just loved it. It was a great place.

I Is your mother a college graduate also?
B Yea, she went to teacher's college. She went to Minor Teacher's College in Washington, D.C. She's from Washington, D.C.

I How do you reconcile those two careers? I know one was [inaudible] maybe in some families, but...
B Well, you know in the black community even in those days it was all right for a woman to teach no matter what. That was genteel and that was all right. That was okay for her to teach. It didn't threaten anybody.

I Who in the family was a musician other than yourself? Was anyone else?
B Well, yea, everybody, all my father's side. My dad played the piano. He played some brass instruments, played several instruments and [inaudible] conducted the choir in his father's church, [inaudible] Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. and he and all his brothers and sisters played piano and [inaudible] So there was a lot of Mozart and church music of all kinds both as related to the black church, Baptist hymns and so forth and as related to really choral singing for the most part and organ playing that are the things that you would want to build in a church service.

I Is this where you first got your opportunities to work with keyboard?
B No, the piano was a hard instrument to get to in my house because everybody played it so I had listened to my uncles and aunts play and some of the people who came around to rehearse with the choirs and various other groups and my father and his brothers actually had a quartet or quintet, I guess, that would sing in the church every now and then and on special occasions and my grandfather would join them. He had a nice voice too and so music was very much a part of what the family did and we had an old player piano that you pumped and it had all kinds of piano rolls and everything which I liked and I had these two uncles who were the youngest of my father's brothers and actually they were the middle brothers, I guess, Clinton and Robert. Clinton, who was an artist, [inaudible] played his way, I guess, through art school, played the piano and he played a really nice, dry piano. It was really played by ear...self taught, but he played [inaudible] and I liked the style, but I wasn't as close to him because he was away a lot. He was working on his degree.

I Was he an older brother?
B This is Clinton, my father's third brother. There was...my dad was the oldest. His next brother was Reverend Julian Taylor. Clinton was the next brother and H. Clinton Taylor became the head of the art department and A and D College so he was a very well known artist himself, but in addition to being a fine digital artist he always had this talent for playing music which he just never developed. The next brother, Robert, was the one that affected me the most. Bob was the big oldest football player type fellow and he was just a neat guy. I mean I really liked him very much because he was always down to earth and he seemed the most worldly of my father's brothers and he played just a terrific [inaudible] piano. He too was self taught. I [inaudible] R No, no, no, I'd look over his shoulder all the time. I couldn't play the piano these days. I'm just a kid running around getting in the way of all my uncles and aunts and so my father gave me music lessons...sent me to a music teacher because I really wanted to play the piano, but I wanted to play like my Uncle Bob. I didn't want to play that other stuff so I wasn't really interested. I started with this Elmira Streets and I really wasn't interested in playing. I must have been about six or seven years old, something like that and I had to be seven I guess because my brother also began taking lessons shortly after I did and so he would have been about two or something like that. He started much earlier than I did and he was good. He was the one that everybody said, he's a musician, because he got his lessons and everything, but he turned out not to be really interested later, but my Uncle Bob was the person who turned me on to...I liked the music he played and I bugged him so much that he finally gave me a Fats Waller record. He said, listen to this guy. I never heard of Fats Waller and as a matter of fact I thought his name was spelled wrong. I thought it was Walter. I couldn't relate to it. I'd never heard the name Waller and so the first time I saw it in print I said, okay, [inaudible] but I liked what he did. He was just very exciting and in the black community in those days in Washington there was several [inaudible] that you could build to and so I would save my money. It cost, I think, 15 cents to go to the movies around noon or before noon...something like that and the price went up to maybe 35 cents later, but at any rate you could sell a few Coca Cola bottles and take them back to the store and get the deposit back and I think it was a nickel on big bottles of Ginger Ale. So if you hustled around and got a few bottles you could go to the movies and so I did that and I sold some papers and everything and I was able to go hear people like Fats Waller because they always played before the movie in one theater, the Lincoln Theater would sporadically have someone playing. It wasn't a well-built house, but every now and then they had the capability. They just never did it and every now and then they would have someone like Fats Waller come in and play the organ or play the piano or something like that and so I got to hear him a very early age. He was just marvelous. I was going to the Hollow? Theater to hear Duke Ellington and Count Bassie and all the other great artists that would come there on a weekly basis.

I Did you try to imitate any of the artists or pianists?
B Oh, sure...sure...I wanted to play like everybody I heard. As a matter of fact I heard Jack Orinehoff? play the guitar and I wanted to play the guitar and so I took up the guitar and fooled around with that for a little while. I played the drums for a while, a lot of instruments, but ultimately I came back to piano.

I By the time you got into high school were you seriously interested in the piano?
B Oh, way before then...in junior high school I became very interested in piano.

I Was it classical or was it...
B Jazz...I was never interested in playing classical music. I loved to hear it and I mean I would go when I was in Dunbar High School George Walter, who was a student there, and he just played so beautifully and I would say, my goodness. Gee, I wish I could play like that, but I didn't want to play like that well enough to practice because that took time away from playing jazz and that's what I wanted to practice.

I How many brothers and sisters did you have? You mentioned two so far, I think.
B One...my brother and I have a half sister. I A half sister, so there were three of you.

B No, there was just two of us growing up. My father many years later remarried and he and my mother divorced. He remarried and I have a half sister by that marriage.

I And the other brother that you have is younger than you.
B Yea, he's five years younger.

I And he played piano...
B Well, he took piano lessons, but he was more interested in playing saxophone and so every now and then he still pulls out the saxophone because he still has one, but he's in real estate now so he doesn't...

I Did you do any professional work before you went out?
B Oh, yea.

I What was the first professional job that you can recall that qualifies as that anyway?
B Well, I guess I got paid for playing very early. I mean I would play at school dances, parties and stuff like that so I guess one could consider that a professional is engaging because I did get paid a dollar and a half or whatever it was, but I played in some of the cabarets and nightclubs. The first one I ever played in I was about 13 years old. I had to get special permission from my mother, but I was big for my age so they were very lax. They didn't pay any attention. No one said anything and I just went in and did it, but a local musician came around to my house and lied to my mother. He said he had a job playing at the Hollow Theater with a local band so it made a big difference in salary from what he was making in a nightclub, but he needed someone to cover for him and for some reason or other there was no one available so he came around to my mother and said we'd like to have your son play this job. It's a very nice job and the musicians are all gentlemen and they'll look out for him. He'll be very well taken care of. Don't worry about a thing. You know he'll be in good hands and as soon as I got in the car the guy lit up. I had never been around anyone who smoked weed before. So, there was this funny smell in the car. It was Winter so I rolled the window down I guess. I've got a bad cold, you know. Don't do that and so it's a wonder in hindsight that I didn't get [inaudible] but I was sitting right by the window and I kind of kept it cracked because it smelled terrible. At any rate this is my first job and I went for my first real job with honest to goodness professional musicians and it was a terrible dive. This guy was one of the roadhouses where they had ladies working on all kinds of stuff and strippers and it was a terrible place. So it really opened my eyes to the other side of nightlife.

I Did it shock or titillate or what?
B Very titillating...I was 13 years old. I had never you know...I was looking at girl's ankles. I had never seen somebody with no clothes on, you know, so a bathing suit was a big deal, you know I came out of...this was in [inaudible] White place and it was a black man in a white place so it was just across the line in Virginia so I came and I had to go to the bathroom and so I came out of the lavatory and was going back into the little musicians room and this woman came out of the ladies room and evidently there were no dressing rooms per say, so she needed to change into her G-string from whatever it was she had on before and so here's a woman with less clothes than I'd ever seen anybody in and my eyes jumped out about a foot and she laughed and said, you [inaudible] before and so [inaudible] 13 year old [inaudible]

I How much were you paid for this first job?
B I think I made...it was only one night because it was just that one conflict that he had...I don't know what the occasion was...some difference in their normal schedule of the theater and the nightclub and it was just this one night so I think I made $5.00 or something like that. It was a great deal.

I How long did you play? How many...
B I think we played shows and a dance or something. We did two shoes or something like that, a couple of dance sets.

I So that was pretty good pay, I guess, for a 13 year old.
B I'd never had money like that for playing the piano.

I I'm sure after that you probably had a lot of other appearances similar and then seeing something other than ankles might have prompted you into going into sociology. Why did you decide to go into sociology at Virginia State, for example?
B Well, my father, like any other middle class parent, had no intention of supporting his oldest son for all of his normal life, you know, so he said, I understand your attraction...how music is attractive to you, but you really should think in terms of being able to support yourself and I'm perfectly willing to send you to any schools you want to go to, but you know part of the price for my sending you to school is when you come out you'll be able to support yourself. So you figure you can do it one way or the other. You make that choice and so he was very persuasive in terms of not choosing music in that regard because he pointed out the difficulty in those days of maintaining any kind of steady work. You see in Columbia, the fellows that you're admiring they either play very well and the kind of life that they have to lead in terms of the economics it's very very difficult unless you're exceptional talent which you may not be, you better think about something to fall back on. I wanted to go to Julliard and so I knew that I'd really have to work. By the time I had studied classical music and realized that I had to practice and really work at that in order to qualify for any music school or to do the things that I wanted to do musically because I had played around enough about year and all the things that a young, talented music student would do on natural talent to realize that hey, I'd better start getting it together because there's a whole lot of guys out there with natural talent and something else and so I'd better try to get my craft together if I'm serious about this at all and I was. So, I did go back to the piano to study the European tradition and began to really seriously apply myself to it. So by the time I got ready to go to college I could qualify for music school I doubt now that I could qualify for Julliard at that point, but I was interested and I would have worked to it if I could have gotten in the first time I would have worked and probably worked up my talents to the point where I could qualify for it, but at any rate sociology seemed to be a good field. I was very interested growing up in a segregated society and seeing all of the problems that black people were confronted with. I was very aware of the fact that something should be done and I felt that like most people in Washington, I had gone to Dunbar High School and Dunbar High School was like an academy and so we were all given the gung ho treatment. I mean you are our achievers. You're our next generation and you will learn and you will get out there and make something of yourself and those teachers were very very serious about that and they really gave us academy type training. I mean you know we got mathematics and English and arts and we got everything that anybody in any high paid fancy school could get and more because we were convinced by these people who we had great respect for and had [inaudible] for that we too could aspire to the kind of models that they were. We had about five people with doctorates in the high school. We had, I thought, Mary Ann Addison and Rollin Hayes and Paul Robison came to everybody's high school. They came to mine. We heard all kinds of...assembly was not the kind of traumatic experience that I later found it to be in other schools that I visited as an adult. It was a joyful occasion for me. As I said I heard George Waller play. I heard...and so my peers got an opportunity to do what they did, but more than that we got role model after role model showing up for these weekly things. We heard the source of really remarkable people and got to talk to them. They either taught class or came to some type of form reception thing where some classes or some selected groups of people were privileged to meet with them and so forth and it was just a fantastic experience, I realize now, in terms of growth because you were given a shining example of what someone of your ethnic group could do despite all the things that you would read in the local papers about people who were being lynched and all the experiences that you might have as an individual going to the downtown department stores and being able to buy a hotdog at the Woolworth's store and not being able to sit down and eat it in the nation's capital or having a great singer like Murray and Edison invited to come to Washington and not being allowed to sing in Constitution Hall and indeed persons like myself once my appetite was whetted to hear fine artists in the European tradition not being able to go to Constitution Hall and hear them. So, there were a lot of reasons for me to say, hey, I'd like to be a part of changing this because it's a drag.

I Did Dunbar High School bring in equally as many jazz artists and droves of popular music artists?
B No, they were surprising liberal at Dunbar High School because of a man named Henry Grant who was the musical director of the orchestra and who was not only a first rate musician, composer, [inaudible] conductor, but really taught us a lot about music. He was my piano teacher also, but he taught us all a lot about music and he's one of the few people that Duke Ellington studied with and he's very proud of his relationship with Duke Ellington and he was on the music faculty with Mary Europe who was James Reach Europe's sister and between the two of them they gave us...she was strictly from the European classical tradition and she really kept us on our toes about singing properly and being aware of what was good in music of any kind.

I I like that word, good. I know in my own background what was good in black schools, elementary, junior high, was not like music ironically. When I say black music, more popular...jazz, blues, the gut bucket stuff, but what was good were the spirituals and some of the gospels. Some of the gospel wasn't too good either. The classical [inaudible] music we advertised constantly on that because they assumed that that was to be sought and to be...well, to be sought. Do you think that attitude existed at Dunbar?
B Oh, very much, but as I said, you had this interesting balance between these two teachers, one who was typical of the black teacher who wants to raise the level of awareness and consciousness of her students and expose them to the very best in classical music.

I And you say you became a jazz musician in spite of Dunbar, not because of Dunbar?
B No, because of Dunbar because Henry Grant was there.

I So, it was Henry Grant.
B Well, not because of him, but he encouraged me and he more than encouraged. I was allowed to play jazz in the assembly and to play in the music room during lunch hour and stuff like that and he just looked the other way. I mean if I had done that in this in Mr. Europe's he would have hit me right in the middle of the head [inaudible]. She, on the other hand was terrific in that she made us aware of the [inaudible] Cooks and the really great black composers who worked in the European tradition and she was very careful to say that, you know, there are fine white composers, Copeland and all sorts of...but we have people who write in our tradition who do things that you must be aware of and she gave us chapter and verse on people who played the violin in concerts. She was the first person to really tell me about heroic performance [inaudible] about Roland Hayes how he went to St. Peter in Germany the year I was born as a matter of fact and a gentleman said, how dare this man of African descent come and desecrate our music and hooted and hollered and made lots of unpleasant sounds and here was this very gentle person standing in the middle of the concert stage with his accompanist staring him down and just stood there until it was obvious that he was not going to walk off the stage and they quieted down and once they listened to him they heard his magnificent voice and were completely enthralled and she told this story in heroic terms. I mean she said, now all of you guys that are running up and down the football field, this is what valiance is about and it was a very valuable lesson because I had never thought of it in that context. You figure here's a guy just standing by himself with a thousand or more people out there really coming down. He's literally alone. It's pretty [inaudible].

I Let's speculate a while. Do you think that if your teachers and peers and well, leaders and parents had been equally vigorous in giving you information about the current blues and jazz idiom that we might have gone further? When I say, we, we black musicians might have gone further? When you think about how far black popular genre music has gone very often in spite of our schools and in spite of the community, what do you think would have happened if we had teachers, several Mr. Henry Grants? It's hard to say.
B Well, as a matter of fact we did. We had them in other places. I've learned over the years about Mr. Diet out in Chicago and several other people like Grant in other towns who did not dissuade the musicians that they knew played jazz from becoming good craftsmen and learning about music in general so that their jazz would be on the same level as any other kind of music. Dunbar was unique. I can only speak to that because that's my experience. Dunbar was unique in that it was an extension of the family and so because there was that closeness even Miss Europe would be more tolerant of me playing jazz than a wayward son, if you will, a wayward nephew or something, than she would if it was obvious that I was just not interested in any other kind of music. I mean she said, well, you know, he's interested in that stuff. He will work on his Debussy. He will work on his Bach. So, maybe if I work hard I'll drag him around. So, she was tolerant and with Grant, he took it a step further. He showed me and other musicians, you'll be interested, how Duke Ellington handled 9th and 13th chords and where we could find that in Debussy and Ravel and how with certain kinds of voices one would hear in orchestral presentations of Fletcher Hemston? and Jimmy Lunsford one could find that kind of thing in Chopin and one could find that kind of thing in scores of other types of music and the point he made was that music is music. Now there are many different styles and if you go to Bali you find people doing something and if you go to Africa you find another something. So, you know, keep your ears open. See what you can hear if you're going to be a really creative person then take all of this information in and see what you can do with it. He was a very good man.

I Were the greats at Virginia State when you got there?
B No, I only met one. I met another woman, I guess the most influential teacher I ever had, Evadean Smith Moore. Dr. Moore is not only a remarkable musician and just a perfect composer I just used to love to hear her play the piano at chapel. I hated to go to chapel when I was a student at Virginia State, but one of the rewards that I got for suffering through the rest of that stuff was to hear her on the occasions when she would play.

I You mentioned that at Virginia State there was a kind of a [inaudible] by the name of [inaudible] that was in high school that debuted the...
B Grant...

I There was a Grant in the name of [inaudible] Moore, but this guy had a range of composer and how did she give you the motivation to go further into jazz because she certainly was not into jazz.
B No, she wasn't, but I [inaudible] sociology major and so the first two years of my tenure there I was very much into all kinds of preparatory courses. I was taking a lot of electives and it turned out that all of the electives that I took were music. So, I took everything that I could take in music.

I Was there jazz in the music department?
B No, no, just [inaudible] theory and I sang in the choir. I played in the orchestra. I played extracurricular in a local band that was composed of people from Union College which was in Richland...some local musicians from Richland and some local musicians from Petersburg, a man called Benny Laden's Band. It was a dance band and so because there was no dance band on Virginia State's campus at that point and so I played with Benny Laden and we played dances all over the place and so I played a lot of jazz because as soon as I got out of [inaudible] I immediately looked around for a place to play and some musicians that could play jazz and so forth and so it was...the head of the music department was Jay Harrell Montague. Montague was a fine choral conductor.

I How do you spell that name? M-o-n-t-a-g?
B No, it's Montague, but you pronounce it Montage and I think he's from Oberlin and really a terrific first rate choir director and his choirs were just really remarkable black choirs. I mean they sang the choral reparatory of all the church...A Mighty Fortress is My God and those kinds of things and Bach choral. They sang everything that a choral group...I think one of the things that he liked to compare us to the Westminster Choir of that day and it was neat with people like Camilla Williams and others it was very favorably...it could very well compare with any good collegiate choir, but he was strictly in the European classical tradition and would come into my practice room and stop me physically from playing jazz. He said, look, now, that has no place in these practice rooms. If you want to do that in the gym or someplace else, but not in these practice rooms, I mean you must do something else. We had some really...first of all I was a music major so I was really in trouble. So, I had to really sneak into the practice rooms and do a whole bunch of things in terms of accompany...I got my accompany people doing [inaudible] practice quietly I hoped, but it was small and so there was no hiding place.

I Who did I [inaudible] first hear you play jazz or...
B [inaudible] he was there.

I He came to some of the gigs or something...
B Well, it was freshman talent night that I played and there were many occasions where students put on things and any chance I got to play, I played. So, if I was playing for someone or doing a solo or playing in the band...you know I was playing and so you heard me a lot because I was one of the more musical students even as a freshman.

I I guess it's not too far fetched to say that you learned your art as an integral part of your education but you didn't learn it as a systematic education in school.
B I had systematic education from a master/pupil tradition. I learned to play jazz, as I said, from listening to my uncle, looking over his shoulder, from listening to records, from going to a record store and just playing recordings by a guy named Waxy Maxey in a Washington, D.C. record store in the black community and I would go in there and he was very nice. I mean he'd let me come in. Now records cost 35 cents and 75 cents a [inaudible] The better records cost 75 cents at least for 78's and the Victor's cost 75 cents. It was a lot of money for me. I sold papers and I couldn't buy all the records I wanted and so I would go in under the pretense of auditioning for the records because in those days you could play the records before you bought them and so I would go in very businesslike and say, well, let me hear this Nat Cole. Let me hear this Fats Waller. So, he wasn't stupid. He realized that I was just coming in to hear. I was just listening. So, finally he said, look, why do we go through this charade? Now, why don't you go back and take the records you want to listen to. Just be very careful. Don't mess them up now and what he did was he had a thing that they would have demonstration records. So when the new things would come in they would have some records that they would demonstrate. You want to hear something? Play the demo records, just those and don't play with the ones...he was very nice. He didn't have to do that, but his shop was right down the street from my father's office so he was just very supportive, very nice.

I One might describe what you just explained, and understand this, as a haphazard was of learning your craft if you compare it to the more systematic classical arts tradition.
B It was indeed.

I Are you saying that...or would it be fair to say that most jazz and blues musicians magnates learn their art in that way and by listening to others rather than from going from an educational process and perhaps it's not bad or good. What do you think?
B I think it wastes a lot of time and you do learn about he music you're interested in much more directly and I think much more succinctly in terms of evolving personnel approach to that music because you're forced to do it. When I was coming along it was not acceptable to play just like Fats Waller or Art Tatum or Earl Hines or whoever. You had to glean whatever you could from their style and put it in your own perspective. If I had learned something note by note or each note the same as a record and I played it for someone my peers kind of looked down their nose and that and said, oh, really? I mean it's all right to study if you want to do it just to show you can do it, but if you're doing that and say this is my best shot, well, lots of luck. I mean you don't have any imagination or creativity. You're just an imitator. So, that doesn't count and so very early I was taught by people that I respected to search for something that was an individual means of communication. So, Billy Taylor at the piano sounded different from Art Tatum or Nat Cole or Earl Hines or Fats Waller...anybody who I really would have given my eye teeth to play like. I mean Danny Wilson, I thought that was marvelous. I would have loved to have been able to do that, but I didn't want to do note for note it wouldn't have been acceptable.

I You want some of those things that you just said do you think we can teach what you have, the qualities and the skills that you have, we at the university and at the high school and so on?
B Oh, definitely. It is being taught now and my problem with teaching is I think I would like to see some of the same flora meters drawn so that one can produce on a broader level more people who can add to our cultural experience in the same way that Duke Ellington and Don Redman, Coleman Hawkins and Nat Cole and Earl Hines and just an endless list...Muriel Williamson, Larada Snow and so many people who were just fantastic artists and left so much for us as a vocabulary for us to use as an encyclopedia of musical information for us to draw on.

I Well, then you obviously think that the schools can produce because I talked with Muriel Williamson. Of course she believed it too and after she died was associated with Duke and everything and she was trying to do this but she had a feeling of almost desperation in a sense that what she tried to teach was not being consumed the way she wanted it to because they had so many other things coming at them in terms of what the buck she said, she thought that the kids were running after the money and not after the skills and the techniques and try to develop the unique Billy Taylor as opposed to the imitation type of thing that sells. I That's a problem. We don't live in a vacuum and you don't have that expanded family that I was talking about when I was in school where you could have an [inaudible] Moore or Henry Grant to take you aside and say, look, there are musical qualities in your work which should be developed and here is the starting point. You have a nice touch on the piano. You should do this to develop that. You have interesting sets of harmony, embryonic, but why don't you study this book and see how the tradition of that goes. Why don't you look at these compositions. Analyze these things and see how did this composer solve this problem and how does this apply to what I'm doing? These are concrete examples presented to someone on the level that he is as a student by a teacher that is not only a tremendous artist, but has the ability to communicate the kind of information that is necessary to move that student from one place to another. Now, my problem with most schools is that we have segmented teaching to such an extent that if you're going to be a performance...if you're a performance major then all you do is sit there and get your fingers to sound like pistons and you play like a computer. I mean whatever it is. You can play faster and more accurately than anyone. You can really technically do the impossible. That's not music. I mean that's punting, but a musician is a person who uses that finely tuned technical facility and ability to perform on an instrument to really uplift and make me feel one way or the other or make me feel very sad if that's what the nature of the communication is, but it's some emotional impact that I get or it's not music to me. I When we were talking about teaching and those kinds of skills one word that was absent from that description was improvisation. Were you taught to improvise?
B [inaudible]

I No, but can it be taught?
B Of course, improvisation is only the spontaneous application of compositional techniques.

I Why don't more of us do it?
B We're taught not to do it traditionally. We're taught if one studies in the traditional conservatory type training you must stick to the printed page. You must follow the guidelines of the composer stylistically and in terms of the accepted modes of expression in terms of the presentation. If it's Beethoven it's played a certain way traditionally. If it's Chopin it's played a certain way traditionally. You must stylistically and terms of your performance be aware of these parameters.

I Do you find that somewhat incongruous knowing full well that even at the end of a concerto where they have the credenzas you would have the long improvisatory part that comes to the person who indeed had the opportunity to improvise, yet we will teach the Beethoven sonata or the Beethoven concerto and we don't give them...
B We teach them a credenza that was written out by somebody else and that's ludicrous because obvious writing in the way that he did Bach did not write out a complete keyboard part every Sunday for what he was doing. He wrote out the bass probably or maybe he didn't write anything because he had everybody else doing it and so he was improvising in a sense for accompaniment and for the music that he was playing. It was considered if you couldn't do your own credenza as great artists in the past could do you weren't considered a full musician.

I But like with the organist though you get the trained organist of today and they improvise very well.
B And they're taught how to do that.

I We didn't [inaudible] tradition in the other keyboard instruments. Event he harpsichord is improvised more than the others. Well, the pianists are notorious for being not improvisers.
B ...pianists and violinists and the people who play all kinds of other instruments because in our conservatory approach we have a different agenda and our priorities are performance oriented in a way that adheres to the tradition as it is envisioned by the [inaudible] of our time. I think nothing could be a bigger mistake. I think that's one of the things to cause some of the audiences to dwindle. Blake Blangu? was one of my favorites because he did not play Bach in the way that everybody else played it and I thought it was interesting and I liked his taking liberties with what most people would consider the absolute way to do Bach and so you can teach improvisation.

I Yet you weren't taught it. How did you learn it?
B Well, I wasn't taught to speak. I was taught the language and I was taught by example.

I Are you saying you were taught the language of improvisation?
B No, no, it was verbal language. In verbal language I was taught. I imitated my parents in my speech patterns and so I acquired a Southern accent. As I grew and traveled and studied English and was influenced by drama teachers and other people who had done well and it was interesting in college, I developed my own way of handling and language and speaking and so as a result whatever I've been doing here for the length of this particular interview is the same kind of improvisation that I would do if I were playing the piano. Now, if there's a point that I want to get across I don't stop to think of the construction of the sentence or how I put it together. I saw whatever is on my mind. So, the same thing happens when I play music. I play whatever I want to communicate.

I I was looking for a more general answer maybe it's not a specific question. A lot of people who can improvise verbally, for example, because of the skills required are a little bit different. In fact if they were the same we would do a better job in schools and music for example and teaching improvisation, but the fact that so many good black musicians improvise so well, it's often contributed to the fact of the environment, the musical environment in which they developed. What I would like to know is while certainly you're speaking in a way to improvise and live has been based in environment, was there something unique about your musical environment that permitted you to improvise and permit you to be free in order to improvise, not just you but any other musician.
B Yea, I wanted to do it. I felt a need.

I I want to do it too, but I can't do it.
B Let's back up. Your problem is that you have not been put into a position where you could develop that part of your capability. You obviously, having the facility to do what you do, could improvise if your talents were directed in that way. At the stage where you are this moment you could be taught to improvise up to whatever your personnel level is. It's not that you have a physical facility to do certain things. So, that means that you can handle A vocabulary. So, if you pick a specific style and say, okay, for the sake of argument, I'm going to improvise in bebop style...now bebop has certain parameters. There's certain melodic, harmonic and rhythmic parameters which differentiate playing in that style from ragtime or from swing or from funky or cool or from other styles. Okay, if you studied what those parameters are and decide, okay, I'm interested in expression certain ideas rhythmically like this, melodically like this, you can do it because what it would entail is just studying the models in the same way that one studies models in composition and so you say, Tommy Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and others did these kinds of things. Now, according to Jake Monahan and the way that I feel the rhythm in that context, this is the way I would do it.

I It's amazing to see, of course maybe it's common sense, if you're going to do something you have to do it. So, to improvise you have to improvise.
B You have to physically do that because what it is is you are spontaneously creating something which has to have a beginning, a middle and an end as any composition has. So, you take whatever form you're going to use and you say, okay, here's where I start. Now, this is where I'm going musically and in order to get there I have to do this, this and this and I end up over here.

I Taking all that into consideration let's take a quantum leap sort of. Why did you go to the University of Massachusetts?
B That was many years later and I had taught. I had researched. I had done any number of things to help me share the information that over the years I had experienced and I again drew experience through both trial and error and to writing through many avenues. I felt that I had something unique as far as knowledge was concerned about both black music and specifically about jazz.

I I understand that you didn't need anything about jazz from the University of Massachusetts? Side B
B I didn't get anything about jazz from Massachusetts. I took [inaudible] there. My going to the University of Massachusetts was the result of a very interesting experiment. Matt Rollin Wiggitts who was a tremendously gifted educator and a very fine musician had an idea about education. He is an educator and he had an idea which I think should be explored. I wish that he had been allowed to explore it to its fullest. He correctly assumed that there were certain things inherent in the manner in which Bill Cosby worked, the manner in which I worked, the manner in which Roberta Flack works, the manner in which Yusef Latif works and the manner in which many other performers who for whatever reason are interested in education, whatever it is that we do, every performance has some educational potential and sometimes its developed more or presented in a way that's more accessible than others depending on the circumstance, but he saw this line extending throughout the entertainment group people who were black entertainers and he recruited. He recruited Bill Cosby first and then he recruited me. Then he recruited several other people, but the idea, his original idea, was I would like you to come to the University of Massachusetts. I would like for you to share whatever it is that you feel strongly about when you try to educate people. You're busy educating people and you do this consciously. What are you trying to do? What can we give you as a tool, as an institution, that will better prepare you to do this and while we are trying to do this what can you give us out of your personal experience that we could package and merchandise and give to people who don't have your specific talents? Now, the educational establishment said, what is this man talking about? I mean this is ridiculous, you know? But they were smart enough to give people with the kind of visibility that [inaudible] musical director [inaudible] great visibility...Bill McArthur was a star. They used him for all kinds of stuff. He had great visibility. So they went about to say don't bring these people in our university. They said, well, let's see what's going to happen and they did and what he was able to do was to pick out [inaudible] and to document some things that we did and try to put them to use on an elementary level, on a junior high school level, high school level or college level wherever it was practical and this was never...this information was never really put together in the logical and extensive style that he had envisioned because the educational department changed directors and many things happened at the institution during the period that we were there and so as a result these things never came to full fruition, but the result for me was that I was able to put down in sub concrete form the things that I felt were important and to outline the history and development of jazz from the perspective of a jazz pianist in a way that had not been done before.

I Since you mentioned that I found it interesting that you also tacked on, I think tacked on and you can attack me for saying that, from the music teacher's perspective, why did you do that? Was that because of your decision committee in terms of time of your extension?
B No, that was really...that was what the dissertation was designed for. That dissertation was designed for...I was teaching at the time I wrote that at a [inaudible] Ivy post and so I had tried out this material in the field and what I was saying is though I'm a pianist, though I'm a practicing jazz musician, someone who is conservatory training who cannot play ragtime, who cannot play bebop, can use this discography and bibliography and as a musician present this material, even though he or she can't physically do it, in a way that can be helpful to students who are interested in learning. Any musician can take my material and go through it and utilize it to some extent and present the history and development of jazz and by using this research material in my dissertation and that's what it was designed for. I had hoped to add to that other kinds of support.

I Speaking of improvisation and jazz in general and of course your interest in this with your dissertation and later on in the book, Jazz Piano, what classes would you recommend, or would you recommend towers of classes that might be used at the college level?
B It could be used in a history of jazz class. I would like to see it used as a reference for anyone who is interested in dealing with the subject matter of jazz from the perspective of the player because most people who write about jazz are people who are fans, people who are not talking in the first person about it. They are quoting someone. So they may, on some occasions, read into what a person says about why he or she does a particular thing or how that's done. What I tried to do in my book was to isolate my personal anecdotes and the things that were subjective from the things that I researched so that when I say the blues were essentially spiritual these are things which I honestly believe and I think are substantiated by other writers and these are things which one can go into other sources and say, well, I can look at James Cohen's book and find something along those lines or I can read, Blues People by Le Roy Jones or I can go into another source and get an idea from another perspective. So, what I do is view my book as A; a model of how a practicing musician can deal with the subject matter of his field from the beginning to the present from a personal perspective. I would like to see a book like this written from the perspective of the drummers say by Max Welch or somebody like that...a basis...or Bridgett Davis or someone like that. I would like to see other musicians who are really articulate and who have experienced interesting things as players, Jimmy Burrell on guitar, you know to talk about how their town where they grew up shaped their playing, how the music moved from one place in the early days...guitar for instance, let's take guitar. In the early days of black music we played the banjo or the banjar or whatever and whether it was the African instrument or the American version of that African instrument and how through the years that kept being utilized in a certain way until it arrived at the place where a guitarist plays it today with the electronic equipment and the phase shifters and all kinds of other stuff, you know, and I think that would be very valuable to have.

I Would it be...knowing how educators like workbooks, that may be good or bad, would Jazz Piano, the book, profit from a later edition of a workbook, not necessarily a how to, but an example being used and another example that you do?
B Not the way William C. Brown wrote that. We have just such a book both for teachers and for students.

I Oh, that's already out?
B It's been published by William C. Brown.

I What is the title of that? Is it [inaudible] Jazz Piano?
B Yea and it's the work...

I And it goes with the...
B It can go if someone buys it for that purpose. I mean if someone goes into a store, a [inaudible] bookstore and buys the book that's one thing, but if someone is a teacher and is interested then the workbook and the cassettes of the 13 shows that I did for NPR are available as parts of a package that would help make the material much more accessible.

I Now, let's see if I can establish this. As a professor the Jazz Piano text by itself could stand alone.
B Can you stop for a moment?

I Yea, sure. Sometimes in trying to speak about the process of improvisation becomes a little bit difficult so it may be better to have a student see an example, hear an example, than try to work it through a workbook. How do you feel about that?
B I think they're both compatible. You can do both. One of the things that works in schools for a variety of reasons is the workbook concept and you have a visual entity to correct and to point out things. The only comparable thing to that in jazz is a cassette. You can make a cassette on a small machine and say, okay, here's what you did. You listen with me. Now this is right or wrong or that's good or that's bad and you can critique it right there and so the person can hear what the process is say, well I meant to do...well, no it didn't come out that way, you know, and so those two things I don't see those two things as mutually...of having any conflict because I think that you can write certain things down. You say, okay, what I want you to do is to...we harmonize a piece of music the way a jazz musician would do as the first step...might do as the first step in improvising. So, a person can write down an improvisation and you can point out, okay, now here this isn't a logical progression from this chord to that chord or here's the voice lead in and it might be better improv if you did this instead of that, but you have it down so the person can see that and in the process of doing it...what do you mean? What did I do? And so it sets a purpose there for analyzation. It should not be confused with the process of doing that because you say, okay, now that we have written this down and you see I want you to do that or I want you to do something different and I want you to do it spontaneously.

I Okay, I think maybe what I was emphasizing was my own university and the university type of work that for students in music schools whether it's Eastman or Illinois or Michigan or Indiana are more eye bound than ear bound. That's why they do Clay well. They can read anything, but then you have them to hear and to try to write down what they played and also to do the dictation they have a problem. So, I think much of it has to do with our earlier comment that we've taught them not to do certain things rather than taught them to do it.
B It's mandatory in this situation given the point that you just made that the ears be retrained if one is to handle this material at all. No jazz musician can be a good jazz musician unless he or she has a good ear. I mean you've got to be able to hear what you do and what you do in relation to other people that you may perform with. It is absolutely essential for a good jazz performance to have the element of give and take very much present because the spontaneous creativity that goes with improvisation has to take place on a level, on the same level with three or four people playing as it does if I'm sitting here just playing a solo by myself and so if we don't respond to one another by ear and by what we hear it won't work. One of the problems that I have working with symphony orchestra is that you're playing to the ear of the conductor and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. It depends of course on the conductor. In the orchestra he might have fine players I mean they know what to do, but they're bound by what the conductor says to do.

I It's up to the sound he wants. This is going to be a digression, but I'm going to do some what we call some little quick answered questions. I know you mentioned earlier in 1969 you were a musical director on the Frost Show. Was this some type of a first. I know I read a lot about it in terms of a fine musician such as yourself being the first on David Frost or a black musician. What was the hoopla about it?
B Well, I've had a couple of firsts. That was one. I was the first black musician to be musical director of a daily show which was a coast to coast show of a talk show variety and it was so visible because David was a controversial figure and so visible that a lot of people wondered why he would choose a black musician as a conductor.

I Did he do this deliberately?
B Yea, he did. I had a meeting with him and he asked me...he told me what he was interested in, what he was looking for as a musical director and he was satisfied from my interview that I could do it and it didn't bother him one way or the other that I happened to be black which is quite different from the pressures that some of the American hosts ?

I After you had been hired and you had begun to work he seemed to make it obvious that hey, look, Billy, we knew you were there in other words. It wasn't as if you were an invisible director from behind the scenes almost as Johnny Carson and Max Jefferson and so forth. Was that just his natural way or was he trying to do something that was sociologically important at that time relative to blacks not having opportunities in that area generally speaking?
B David Frost was a person who seemed less bound by those kinds of hang-ups than anyone I've worked with in television. He was dating a black girl when he won his first Emmy and it was one of the funniest things that I've ever seen in my life. The Emmy awards took place in Carnegie Hall and we were all seated. We hoped he would win so we ready to cheer for him and so we were all seated in the same row and he was sitting with this lady and Johnny Carson, I think, was the MC and he announced that the winner is...David Frost. David jumps up and runs up to the stage to get his award. Now normally the cameras focus on the guy as he jumps up and they follow him and he gets his award, he makes his statement and they follow him back to his seat. Okay, they followed him all the way until it was obvious that he was going back to kiss this black girl and the camera just went all over the place. It went everywhere but him kissing this black girl on national television, but he was really...the three years that I worked with him and I worked with him the length of the show...for the length of the show, one of the easiest and most cooperative bosses I've ever had. I mean he told me what he would like for me to do and let me do it. I mean it's rare that you get that kind of feeling of confidence from someone typical to his manner in which he allowed me the freedom he allowed me. He called me in his office one day and said, Billy, we're going to make a Christmas album. I said, oh, that's fine. What are we going to do? He said, well I'm going to read a poem. You're going to do the rest and we did. It's one of the best albums I've ever done and he did a little more than just read a poem. He introduces the album. He tells a little anecdotes in between each of the cuts, but the album really is a great album from my perspective. It couldn't have been better.

I Where did the show tape from?
B Here in New York at a little theater.

I How often?
B We did five shows in four days for three years because he had other commitments in England he would come in on Sunday night, do his shows, leave on Thursday and go back to England and do things whatever he had to do there.

I Did you learn anything from that new experience, again the musical director, the one thing that you learned about the business, that type of business?
B I don't think I could say one thing. I learned many things. I mean it was the first time I'd had the responsibility of being a conductor. I conducted for all kinds of people. I was really responsible for the way the band sounded in a variety of settings. I played for all kinds of people ranging from opera singers to comedians and country western and rock and roll and all kinds of things. We just did everything and that was one of the things that he asked me when I had an interview with him. He said, as an outgrowth of my interest in various areas that people come from we'll be doing all kinds of stuff. We'll be talking about women's lib. We'll be talking about medical problems. We'll be doing all kinds of things. What I need is a band that can play for Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett if they come on the stand and Loretta Lynn if she comes on and who can do [inaudible] Price or anything that we want to go to musically I want to be able to do that. Can you put together such a band? And I said, yes, and I did and for three years we were able to do all those things for him, but the Latin music or any kind of music that was available was on that show. I mean we went through all kinds of stuff and so it was a great learning experience for me.

I Tell us something about the tribute you did as host and I guess organizing writer for the Duke Ellington tribute that I saw recently. What was the genesis of that?
B Well, I was called by the producer, Robert Harich? and asked if I was interested in working with him on a project which would be a salute to Duke Ellington and because he did two or more really great jazz shows, Billy Holiday was one of the people, I was very interested. He was a very magnitude? person and so we worked together. We formulated the approach. He didn't want a stage. He wanted to be free to move his cameras in and get shots that had a lot of audience, but which were more in keeping with the music we were playing and so we [inaudible] denied and he relied very heavily on me and other people who knew Ellington to guide him as to how to put this show together and have the music speak for itself. He wanted a lot of music and very little talk and he wanted the talk integrated with the music so it would not be intrusive and a classic example of that was the little Minuet that we did with Ella Fitzgerald where you heard my saxophonist playing a solo, Sophisticated Lady and we cut to an interview with Ella who was talking about the [inaudible] influence and the camaraderie that Duke Ellington had on her and the camaraderie that they shared when they recorded and so forth and all that she loved and respected in him. Then it came back to her comments to the saxophones still playing Sophisticated Lady. This was the kind of imagination that he brought to all of his productions and I was delighted to work with him.

I Is it a high budget show?
B Relatively high...it was the kind of budget that was necessary for a quality show and you can always use more money, but in this case we had enough money to do the things that were necessary in this context.

I How many principals did you have on there? I know there was Joe Williams...
B ...Sarah Vaughan, Harold Nicholas...we had Max Roach and then the band was put together on an individual basis. Everybody in the band was handpicked for that particular band. Joe Kennedy was playing violin and it was just the kind of thing where I had an awful lot of leeway in picking musicians and suggesting the context in which...

I Where did you find Joe Kennedy? He had created the biggest stir and the University of Michigan String Department that you've ever seen. I was just flabbergasted with people asking about him.
B He is head of the...he is one of the heads of the educational department at Richmond, Virginia. He did play with the Richmond Symphony for many years. He is a first rate musician. I've known him for many years, but I've known his work for many years because I used to play his records when I was a disc jockey. I met him recently and was just on a tour in his house and when we played with the Richmond Symphony he was in the orchestra and I told him how much I admired him and he said that at that time he was going to take a leave of absence because his kids were grown and he was going to come back to playing and he wanted to play more jazz and do some of the things that he had been teaching people for the last few years and so I was [inaudible] background...classical background and studied extensively and really a first rate violinist in the European tradition, but one of the great jazz artists also.

I This bears out again that if you've got the classical grounding, the scales, whether it's classical or no, you can go in any direction you choose to.
B That's true and another prong to that particular thought is one can learn everything one needs using nothing but jazz as the meeting which addresses everything you need to know in terms of melody, harmony, rhythmic treatment can't be learned from studying ragtime and the various styles that lead through jazz. It requires as much technical facility to play some of the ragtime pieces as it does to play Bach Tacoma? It requires...Scarlatti doesn't ask anymore of a keyboard player than James B. Johnson or Rod Taylor's compositions or arrangements.

I It's very interesting even Yitzhak Perlman, he came in November, mentioned, had I heard about Kennedy. I said, well, I saw him on television so I was quite surprised. If you had to describe yourself in one sentence, not an old shoe, would you? It's kind of not easy to be humble when you do this, but how about your style?
B Well, my style is eclectic. It's a combination of all the things that I've experienced. It includes consciously things which express different aspects of who I think I am. I mean there's a very romantic and part of me that really relates to beauty in music. There's another part that comes from my Baptist background and has really got to have a good feeling and foot stomping and finger snapping pulse and then there's another part that is very abstract. I mean it goes into some other things that are not as easily defined and it includes electronic keyboards. It includes a lot of things. Even though I don't use it a lot when I perform I'm very interested in it.

I Since that early influence [inaudible] piano with your uncle and so forth does that still hang in there at all?
B Oh, yes, as a matter of fact tomorrow I'll be doing a tribute to Eubie Blake on his 100th birthday and one of the things that I'm going to play is a piece that I used on a show that I did with him called [inaudible] which is his composition and I'm doing three tributes to Eubie tomorrow so I'll use several compositions. I'm doing Dick T's on 7th Avenue and Memories of You and I just [inaudible] Uncle Harry, but I do them in a little different fashion. The only two, Dick T's on 7th Avenue and [inaudible] will be played in stride fashion or at least in one of the stride light fashions that I like to do and the others will be played in a much more contemporary fashion.

I If you had to explain a sideline here, Dick T, I've heard that in my mother's...she's Dick T or she's trying to be Dick T. Now Dick T's on 7th Avenue, would you explain for the [inaudible]
B For those who do not belong to the club, Dick T's were people who were called strivers or in another context very self consciously proper. They were very careful of their appearance and very anxious to be considered to be upper class.

I Great...now obviously students that you had were constantly run to an artist's recording to try and get the real Billy Taylor or the real Yitzhak Perlman or the real Oscar Peterson. What recordings or recording would you recommend that student maybe try first and then later on go to as a culminating experience to get the real one or two of you?
B Well, the real Billy Taylor, I'm afraid, is not on commercial records. I have not ever made a record that I was totally satisfied with and most of the records that I like best are not in print so it has been very difficult in the last few years for people [inaudible] concerts in the last five years who have done considerable concretizing? and it's not possible for them to get that Billy Taylor that they've heard on records. It's possible to hear me on some cassettes that with my book and on some of the performances there which is the NPR, the NPR series. Some of the NPR shows when they replayed give a better example of how I sound and what I really do with the instrument, but records do not...some television shows, but the Duke Ellington Show that you mentioned is a good example of how I played. There's one which was done by WBGH where it had to do with a composition I wrote called, Make a Joyful Noise. That's a good example of how I play, so I'm represented on the media, but not in the traditional recording end of it unfortunately.

I Why did you do the Whitehouse as often as you did? When I say, do, I'm thinking about some of the photographs I see on the wall and here you are with Mr. Carter. You're over up there with Mr. Ford. There are some people who think that people, the nigger...Nixon, right.
B That's right I'm there with my friend Mr. Nixon.

I There are some people who feel like they don't like musicians doing the Whitehouse. Well, I'm not sure what reasons they have. I don't know if I personally agree, but I'm curious about your feeling in the Whitehouse. Everyone seems to be doing the Whitehouse if you will and what do you think about that?
B Well, it's an honor to perform for the president of the United States and usually on the occasions when I performed there they usually have been state dinners. On one occasion I played the Whitehouse with David Frost it was a Christmas party and on another occasion is was a birthday celebration for Duke Ellington and on the occasions I played with my own group they were state dinners and it's really quite a high honor. It's like being presented at court. I mean that's the first person and his lady in our country. So regardless of what your opinion about the man himself, the office is one in which certainly deserves respect and you are actually...it's one of the high honors that does allow us to get to be presented in that context whatever one may think of the audience that you're playing for. It's usually people who quite honestly are not jazz fans and it's been fun for me to play. I remember playing for Ford and the tradition is you play a relatively program and the president has been informed of your concluding selection and as soon as you play it you announce it and as soon as you play it he stands up and says, well, thank you very much Dr. Taylor and now ladies and gentleman we'll repair to the rooms where there is wines and dancing and whatever. So, we played our final selection. I said I was privileged to perform for you and so forth and so on. This will be our final selection. We played it and President Ford kind of sat there and smiled and nodded his head and looked at me. It was obvious he wasn't going to get up. So, I hadn't prepared any encore and we were playing for Prime Minister of Bogotá and Pakistan and so we improvised a piece in the style of Oraca? and it's really very interesting. It's really one of the performances I'm most proud of because that was real improvisation. I did not dare look at the two musicians who worked with me, Larry Riley and Bobby Thomas because they didn't have the foggiest notion of what I was going to do and so I announced, well, we would like to play yet another number. This is race a jazz oraca and they sat down and they began to play and they came in and played whatever they played and it turned out really nice. The crux of the performance came when the prime minister leaned over and explained to Mrs. Ford what I was doing.

I Are you able to get tapes and the documentation of your appearance at the Whitehouse? Did they give you a tape?
B Oh, yes, not video, but audiotapes...I don't know whether they videotaped, but we do have audiotapes.

I I see. Tell us about what I think is one of the greatest contributions that you've made to American music, Jazz Mobile. Everyone, not everyone, but people whom I talk with know about Jazz Mobile as I travel around the country. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
B Well, Jazz Mobile came as a project of the Holocaustal Council. Dr. Kenneth Clark did a study while a youth in the ghetto and in the study he determined that the cultural aspects of the black community could be very helpful in the development of our young people and that we were falling down in that respect. We needed to upgrade our approach to the cultural information given to our young people and the kinds of models that could be presented in a cultural sense that would be helpful in the development along more positive lines for our youth and one of the things that I felt Jazz Musician would be very helpful would be for them to hear jazz and hear it in a setting which was not a nightclub but rather in their own neighborhoods to realize the musical value and the aspects of the music which they could relate to. So Jazz Mobile came about as a result of my doing a first concert in this kind of series and then prevailing on people like Dizzy Gillespie and Rod Lamton and many others to follow my lead and to do the same kind of thing along the streets of Harlem and Bedford Sturveysant and other places in the black communities in New York. It was so successful the first year that we were able to get further funding. We were funded by a beer company, Balentine Beer and I think New York City Cultural Council I believe and the musicians union and we put together, in subsequent years, various kinds of funding from banks, from federal government, from state government.

I When you say, we, this is your board or your...
B Well, we organized a Jazz Mobile board as a result of wanting to do these things on a regular basis and out of the outdoor concerts all of which were free and all of which were taking the music to people rather than having them come to the music, we organized a workshop which now takes place, which from the beginning has taken place in a junior high school in Harlem. We have had as many as 800 or 1000 people as students in a particular semester and as few as a couple of hundred in a variety of circumstances as to who was available to come to us. We've got 26 instructors who share or master on an apprentice basis their considerable expertise and who are good teachers, who are articulate, who can say, this is what is done on my instrument in jazz and this is how it's done and [inaudible] level it can be. It can be used as a means of moving from one place to another by students of the music.

I Do you have a geographical boundary in which you operate?
B No, we are limited only by the financial amounts of money we can get. If we get enough money we travel all over the country. If we don't we limit what we do to the areas which can afford or which will pay for us because all of the services that we offer at this point are free. We do concerts which we charge for, but we do that as a means for providing money for free concerts. Now when I say free, it's free to the consumer, but a musician is a technical people...

I [inaudible]
B [inaudible] because professionals should be paid for their professional work and so we're not asking anyone who doesn't and so as a result what we get...this picture was taken at a concert that we gave in which we honored Count Bassie. Now Count Bassie is one of the all time greats and for him to play a free concert where anybody can come and be this close to Count Bassie and shake his hand and get his autograph and all that kind of stuff it's a big deal still in any neighborhood.

I Is that you introducing him there?
B Yes, as a matter of fact I'm about to give him an award.

I What year was that?
B This was about four years ago, I guess.

I We videotaped an interview with Count Bassie at Interlochen in 1974 and again in 1978 and he's very much interested in young people.
B Oh, yes, he's an incredible man.

I Tell me about your collection. You have a collection at Howard University I believe which brings together your memorabilia and the materials that you've collected over the years. Is that right?
B Mmhhm.

I If we wanted to get in touch with anyone there who would be the contact person to get in touch with at Howard?
B I'd have to look it up. I don't know. It's in the Fine Arts School of Music. The ethno...

[Tape fades out.]

I So, you did have a collection, the material that you donated to Howard University, probably the black music center.
B I think so. When Mabel Butcher was there I had great respect for her so she talked with me about it and I brought just a whole trunk full...threw a whole bunch of stuff in my car and took it all down there and just said, here you are and in connection with the collection as it stood, which has some films, actually kinescopes, some recordings, music, published music, memorabilia and a whole bunch of books and stuff like that, in addition to that I did a series of Billy Taylor lectures so I came to Howard to the Department of Fine Arts and gave lecture demonstrations on several occasions. As a matter of fact it was an annual thing for a while in which I talked about specific aspects of music as I saw it and demonstrated things about jazz in response to questions from both students and faculty and on other occasions just the general public who were invited to these things and then we had a couple of press conferences. I'm not sure if they were recorded. During this period they had some things which were from a project that I had or a design for the public school system in Washington, D.C. which had to do with jazz education and utilizing the talents of some of the local jazz musicians in trying to have them use these musicians as a resource. So, they have a fair amount of stuff there, I don't know what condition it's in now. I have to go and take a look at it now because I have a lot of other stuff I'm...[inaudible]...what do I want to...if they have intentions of using it, fine, if not I'm probably going to bring it back up and use it with Jazz Mobile.

I I see. It's very likely it also might be associated with the Dorothy Lamoure collection which is there. It has a great deal of black stuff and they've done something on black women that's sought after throughout the country. Do you have some type of arrangement whereby you will continue to provide materials for them assuming that the collection is intact and meets your approval at this point?
B I did have such an arrangement, but it was really a verbal arrangement with Butcher and so it really has to be renegotiated at this point. So, the first chance I get, a break in my schedule, I'll go check on it.

I Tell me something briefly about your family. I think I see on the wall perhaps your son who is in a central location up there. How many children do you have and where are they now?
B I have two children. I have a son and a daughter. This is my wife. This is my son and that's my daughter out there at the front end. This is my daughter here with me.

I Where is your daughter currently?
B She's practicing law in Washington, D.C. and my other public defender. I Did she graduate from Howard?

B No, she graduated from...her undergraduate work was at Brown and she graduated from [inaudible] Law School. She's the family brain so I'm very proud.

I What kind of law does she practice?
B She's a generalist and she's with the public defender. She's currently defending adults now. She, for the last year or so was working on children. I guess that's the way you start them out.

I I see.
B But she graduated at the top of her class at Yale, so as a black woman lawyer she was very much in demand. She got a very good job with Coleman Mooring which is a very prestigious firm in Washington, D.C., but it really wasn't what she wanted to do. It paid very well and she got to travel and as a matter of fact they sent her to Tunisia at one point, a very glamorous job, but she's very sincere about her career. She wants to be a lawyer and so she just felt that she needed to get a [inaudible] to really do that?

I Did she go to public schools here in New York or private school?
B She went to private school. She went to Calameto? Sacred High down [inaudible] in New York. Both my children were very [inaudible] I sent them to parochial school. We're Catholic so I sent them to parochial school in Harlem and the nuns realized that both Dwayne and Kim were not being sufficiently challenged in those schools and so they suggested we put them in schools which would help them develop their potential better and they're absolutely right [inaudible] because I put Dwayne in St. David's and Kim in 91st Street and they both did very well and went on to create very productive lives for themselves.

I When they go to private schools like that in New York do they have to take the [inaudible]
B Yes, both of them did pretty well in the region.

I I see. Well, tell me something about your wife. That's her right there behind you, right?
B Yea, that's one of them and this is her with Dwayne, our son and [inaudible] here and...

I [inaudible]
B This is [inaudible]

I Is he okay?
B This is my mother.

I Is he still living?
B Yes, she lives here in Washington, D.C.

I Do you see him frequently?
B It just occurred to me I don't have a picture of my father up here.

I When I come back you'll have to have a picture of your father.
B I know why in hindsight it's not there because it's in an album and Terry put these up. [inaudible] not in albums.

I How did your children cope with any [inaudible] of having such a mobile father, that's not always easy on the family.
B No, it's been very difficult and I see a lot more of my children now than I have at other times during their lives, but I came off the road when Dwayne was five years old I came off the road because I thought that I should spend much more time with my family. It didn't really work out that way because even though I was not traveling in order to support our family I had to do so many things that were time consuming that I still didn't spend as much time with him as I would have liked to, but considerably more time than I would have if I had been on the road.

I Did you prove to be closest to your daughter or your son?
B I guess my daughter because the tradition of father/daughter relationship and the mother/son relationship, but he's much closer to his mother. We are very close now that he's grown and I get to see him quite a bit and I'm very proud of him. He's the regional director of installation at the Herman Miller Company which is in Los Angeles and he travels a lot and he's really made a very good life for himself. He's comfortable. He's got a nice place and things seem to be going well for him. He seems to be very happy.

I Another question you don't have to answer, but I'm going to ask it anyway because I've had [inaudible] from fathers are so often pointing out that at certain periods in their lives when their children were growing up and especially from sons if you were a father that they will tell you, when I really needed you you weren't there. Do you ever get that from either of your children?
B Oh, yea, both of them on a couple of occasions when they really would have liked for me to have been there to share something important to them. That's a sore spot for all of us and sometimes you don't realize those things until maybe time has past. Fortunately for me that didn't happen a lot. Terry has really been a great mother. She has been available to them at all times. She gave up a very promising career as a model to become a wife and mother and has really done that better than I had any reason to expect and she's really been there getting dinner and taking out...they had some parent, a parent, whenever it was necessary even though the problem wasn't me on a couple of occasions they had their mother there and it was very helpful.

I Would you agree with several of my fathers that would say that that's a part of the business that if you choose to go into the title business you're going to also have to except the fact that you're not going to be around much of the time when your children need you. Do you agree with that?
B Oh, yea, it's not just the business of being a musician. It's the business of being an artist of any sort. Every artist is wedded to--if he or she is dedicated--is wedded to that art form and whatever the art form is it takes an enormous amount of time and that time is really...it intrudes on family time and other kinds of time that is available to other people. You don't practice between 9:00 and 5:00 and then forget it. You don't write music at any particular hour and then say, okay, I'll stop now because the clock has just run out. You do things when you have to do them and quite often you work around the clock on some project and that, like any other business or any other endeavor, gets in the way of your family and friends, the associations that you have with your friends. Your friends suffer. There are a lot of things that I would like to do and I have great friends that I don't see nearly enough. I don't have time to come to some of the things that are very important for them because at the time that it's going on I'm working and people do things on Saturdays and Sundays and holidays and holidays are times when I'm likely to be very busy.

I For someone who had been born in 1921 you don't look like you're born in 1921. Do you jog? I notice you have a bicycle over there, an exerciser. Are there any other kind of sports that you do seem to keep you in such remarkable condition?
B No, I try to...Terry is a very good task master. She keeps me on a diet most of the time despite the fact that she's a very good cook and evidently I just go crazy with something she makes. She makes great cakes and all the things I shouldn't eat she makes very well, but generally speaking I try to exercise and because of my schedule I can't do some of the things...the bike is very good for me. I used to jog, but I can't do that now because I had a bout with phlebitis in this leg and the doctor advised that I not jog anymore and so I can't do that anymore, so I ride the bicycle so it doesn't cause...I used to play tennis across the street until my partner moved away and I can't get Terry interested in playing tennis so that's gone [inaudible] so my exercise has been sporadic so whatever I look like is a result of all the genes and all that nightlife or something.

I Well, you've been delightful and quite gracious to give me so much time and for someone who started out [inaudible] you're in remarkable form now and we usually ask a question about things like, what do you want to be remembered by, but I'm going to put you on the spot to ask you to invite me back sometime, whether here to your very charming home or on the road, and we'll continue this sometime and I guess we'll end it on that note.
B Thank you.

I Thank you. You've been quite gracious

END OF INTERVIEW