Dr. Billy Taylor, a Conversation on Jazz

The jazz pianist and scholar discusses the history of jazz, and its different forms.

What are your criteria for naming someone as a jazz legend?

[A jazz legend is] someone who has added immeasurably to the growth and development of jazz, and that growth could be in many ways. It could be as an artist, or someone like John Hammond, who discovered Bessie Smith and people like [her], and made their careers possible.

How did cultural, social and economic forces affect the music and the people creating the music?

The cultural, social and economic forces affected the music and the people creating the music in a very personal way. Back in the early 1800s right up to probably 1970, racial prejudice kept Blacks and Whites apart, and fostered many misunderstandings of the music. Race prejudice was built into the culture, in terms of the attitudes from White to Black and vice versa. It worked both ways, [though] not to the same extent.

How did New Orleans Ragtime differ from Ragtime elsewhere?

It was more blues-based. The Ragtime stride refers to the piano style. Stride had to do with the way your left hand was articulating the rhythm of what you were doing

How did Ragtime Stride differ from New Orleans Ragtime and standard Ragtime?

Each attempted to do the same thing, but each expressed what ragtime was in a completely different way. Ragtime stride and New Orleans Ragtime were from various time periods when the music was undergoing specific changes.

Did those styles and periods overlap each other?

Yes. Ragtime was a particular period in the early 1800s and had some of these elements, but not all of them to the same degree. But, it basically referred to that style. “Umph chink,” we used to call it.

What affect did World War II and its aftermath have on music and musicians?

The Second World War broke down many of the existing [barriers] in terms of where people went and what they could do. Not to the extent that later happened in the 1950s and 1960s, but to a greater extent than before. After World War I and through World War II, Jazz was more widely understood and supported by people outside of the United States. They began to and hear it unadulterated and they were supportive.

Was that mostly through live performances or radio?

All kinds. For instance, after the First World War jazz musicians went to China. They went to Russia. This was documented in many places where the music, even back in those days, was accepted as a statement of freedom, which most people in those countries didn’t have. Even though they were enlightened and better educated and had other things, they didn’t have that. And they recognized the fact that they didn’t, so they responded to it.

In the 40s, radio and movies and recordings were pervasive. People were buying records; they were dancing to records and so forth. You could turn on the radio and hear, for free, great concerts and all kinds of music. Much of the music was some of the best that has been created in our society.

You heard this kind of music all over. It was very pervasive and you heard it very well performed. Gershwin or Harold Arlen or any number of other people who were writing for the Cotton Club and for other places in Harlem and so forth, were trying to do what they heard as music of the period, but which was highly influenced by the manner in which this music was created, composed, and performed by Black people and for Black people.

Did bands tour as well?

Yes. Many musicians, even after the First World War, went [abroad] and stayed because they were treated in ways that they were not at home. I went over in 1946 and I was with Don Redman’s band, the first American band to go to Europe after the Second World War. We were treated like royalty, because they hadn’t seen jazz musicians before, live musicians. We went to about eight countries. We went to Scandinavia, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. When the tour was over, several of us stayed several months afterward, and I stayed for almost nine months. I had to come back because my wife got sick. That was the only reason I came home, because we were having a ball.

How did the musicians’ strike affect jazz musicians specifically?

That was in the early 1940s. There were two strikes. One really hurt many of us [more] than we thought. That was the strike when ASCAP pulled all of the ASCAP music off of the air. They said, “you can’t play this music unless you pay a fee”, which is fair, because nobody was paying. Then a group broadcasters started BMI. But they weren’t as fair to the composers as ASCAP was. There were many things wrong with ASCAP, but they really related to the composers and authors as artists and tried to give them the money that was deserved. Today the two are much more alike than they were then.

When they went on strike you did hear many other types of songs. Many composers that probably wouldn’t have been discovered at that time were discovered and got to be on the radio. After a couple of years, they settled all of this. One thing never returned. After the strike, all of the instrumental musicians were taken off the radio. We were on the radio, and everywhere you went they had radio orchestra music and people danced to it. All of a sudden, about a year [later] or maybe a little longer, that was cut off. [Instrumentalists], as artists, never returned. From that point on, the dominant artists were vocalists and it’s been that way ever since, for all these years.

Let’s talk about Bebop.

Around the early 1940s I became aware of Dizzy Gillespie. He was a trumpet player with Earl Hines. [At the Howard University Theater,] I went back stage and I met three people who were just coming out of the stage door. And they were Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughn. They were all playing with Earl Hines.

I liked Dizzy Gillespie because he sounded like Roy Eldridge, who I heard a lot on records, and so forth and had seen him in person. I didn’t particularly care for the tenor [saxophone] player, because Charlie Parker was playing tenor instead of alto those days. My favorite tenor player was Ben Webster. So, my ears were tuned in to a different color in the saxophone. And this lady that I had been introduced to, was singing with the band. But when I went out to see the show, she was sitting there playing the piano. And she was a good pianist. She was the piano player when Earl Hines got up to lead the band. Then finally, she got up and sang. And I said, “Wow, this girl sings pretty well.” My ears were opened to the Ella Fitzgerald at that time, so I didn’t nearly appreciate her to the extent that I quickly became oriented. I recognized even then she had a remarkable voice and she was doing some different things with her voice. So, two out of three wasn’t bad.

Is there a point where Bebop started, or a person or persons with whom it started?

Well, the three that I mentioned were perhaps the premiere people. The word had gone out that these guys are on the cutting edge of something. So everybody was trying to do some of the things that Dizzy was doing, or some of the things that Charlie Parker was doing, or singing like Sarah, which was quite different from Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. But, there were many others. It’s a disservice to just name those three because they didn’t do it by themselves.

I heard [pianist] Bud Powell, and I heard Kenny Clarke, who was one of the early drummers of Bebop, when I heard some of the other musicians. When I first heard [tenor sax player] Don Byas, who was in a band with [arranger] Don Redman, he was playing Bebop. He was never a Bebop player, but he knew all of the Bebop melodies. He was one of the people in the band when Dizzy Gillespie finally brought the first Bebop band to 52nd Street [in New York City]. Max Roach was the drummer. The bass player at that time was Oscar Pettiford. And Oscar Petriford had taken all of the things that he had learned from Duke Ellington’s bass player a few years before and updated them to include the kind of phrasing on bass violin that was being done by Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

It was [at] the Onyx Club where I first heard them. At that time, the whole history of jazz was on 52nd Street. I had graduated from college, and my first job was with the Ben Webster Quartet. I was working opposite the Art Tatum Trio. Across the street was Dizzy Gillespie with his band, and everybody was coming in to hear because it was so different from anything else that guys were playing; melodically, harmonically and rhythmically head and shoulders above what everybody was doing. Whereas in the swing eras the melodies were four to eight bars long, now eight bars were common and it was going for even a longer time, just overlapping between some of the phrases and so forth. These were all techniques that were being expanded and practiced by the guys who played the music.

Was Bebop a response to the Swing music that preceded it?

No, it wasn’t a response to it; it was an outgrowth of it. Most people who were hearing Bebop for the first time during that period didn’t like it, because it came out of nowhere. For most people, the only thing they had as a point of reference was the music of big bands. This was small band music, and it was much more complicated. It was not dance music for them and they didn’t think you could dance to it.

As a matter of fact, many people said at the time when they had finally heard Bebop and it was recognized as Bebop, “Well, you can’t dance to it and that’s what we don’t like about it.” But you could dance to it. People in Harlem danced to it and they’ve never stopped dancing. People kept dancing. As a mater of fact, in the Black community, people danced right straight through in the cool era and many of the things that followed in the 1950s.

When did Cool Jazz start?

At the end of the 40s. It was a response to Bebop, because of people like Miles Davis and others. Miles realized at an early age that he could not play as fast and as effectively as Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, and Clark Terry. They were all his early idols. He couldn’t play that fast. He didn’t feel that. So, he slowed things down, and there were other people that he talked to and that he was hanging out with in those days. They got together and came up with the concept where everything was put together in a very audible way. They weren’t playing as loudly as we were playing on 52nd Street. Miles and people who were coming along at that point in the late 1940s played more quietly and wanted to bring everything down to the level of the acoustic bass violin. Many musicians were bringing things down so they could hear all of the elements and you could hear everything in context. Like a symphony orchestra when it’s playing very quietly.

How much did the two styles overlap and coexist?

Very much. When I worked at the Royal Roost and a couple of other places where Miles played, we were playing Bebop. As a matter of fact, many of the people who were playing Cool Jazz were playing less cool than when they made a recording, because you couldn’t hear things in live performances in a nightclub the way that you could on the recording. So, they tended to play a little louder and little more rhythmically than they do in the cool period.

Did that mark more of a beginning of listening to jazz?

No. They had begun to really listen carefully on 52nd Street back in the 1930s. Because these were small nightclubs and there was no place to dance, so you had to sit and listen. It was like a church. People were quiet and, everybody listening to what he was doing.

Can you talk a little bit about the role of women in the 1940s and their role in jazz?

I am annoyed and very offended of the treatment of women in jazz. For them not to be celebrated to the extent that they should, I think it’s criminal. I’ve been very upset because the magazines have not given them the attention that they deserve, that they give other women. You can pick any of them and I guarantee you she’s as good as any musician you have heard play jazz, any one.

Do vocalist tend to receive more attention than instrumentalists?

Vocalists receive more attention because, they tend to sing directly to an audience. They’re standing in front and they’re singing directly to the audience. They were penalized for being women, because most women singers, with some exceptions, are looked down upon as musicians. They’re not considered to be as good as some musicians who are not singers. They may or may not have the musical training that some players have, but most of them do. Most of them have studied and most of them have gone through the same changes that any instrumentalist goes through.

Do you still practice every day?

Sure. I had a stroke, so I have to practice just to get back to the way I was a couple of years ago. I’m working on that. It’s coming along very well. I’m back playing, but it’s really something to give you pause when you think about the fact that I’ve been playing all of my life, since I was seven years old. I’m now 83. All of a sudden I woke up one morning and I couldn’t play. Just like that. It just won’t do what I want it to do, and that’s indescribable. But, the good news is I’m back to doing what I do. So, I’ll keep on working until I get it right.