礼物“什么是爵士乐”Billy Taylor Part 1

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Billy_Taylor三重奏是20世紀2最具影響力的爵士樂,

Billy_Taylor本人演奏的鋼琴，大提琴貝司手Chip Jackson和鼓手Steve Johns 。

音樂劇選曲:

"Tom Vaguely," "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child," "St. Louis Blues," "Picture This."



Billy Taylor的錄音生涯跨越了近60年,創作了超過350首歌曲。

1942年畢業於弗吉尼亞州立大學的音樂學士學位，後來又獲得了碩士和博士學位在音樂教育從美國馬薩諸塞州阿姆赫斯特大學。

他還擔任了艾靈頓公爵在耶魯大學的研究員。他自1944年以來一直發揮專業鋼琴，與本韋伯斯特的紐約第52街四方開始。

在伯德蘭,那裡他與查理帕克，Dizzy Gillespie和邁爾斯戴維斯喜歡表演。他也是爵士樂鋼琴藝術泰特姆流派。

1958年，他在美國全國廣播公司擔任爵士音樂總監，第一次主持與永遠爵士樂的為主題電視系列。



1961年，泰勒博士創立紐約Jazzmobile，通過講習班提供最優質的藝術教育課程，

大師班，示範講座，藝術增益課程，戶外移動夏季音樂會，特別室內音樂會和特別項目。

1989年，泰勒開始了他自己的“泰勒制”的唱片公司，以他自己的音樂文件，發布四個專輯。

擁有榮譽博士學位，兩個皮博迪獎，NEA的爵士大師,艾美獎（1983年為“傑出信息，文化與歷史編寫）”，

一個格萊美獎，國家藝術獎章（1992年），蒂芙尼獎和終身成就獎。

他還榮獲2001年，美國作曲家協會，作家和出版商協會（ASCAP）爵士樂爵士樂的生活教育國際交流協會傳奇獎併入選為名人堂。

已經年過八十，正式從積極的巡演和錄音退休，他仍然積極地與他的教育活動和演講活動的一個在電台和電視上露面的全部日程。



Billy_Taylor其貌不揚，戴著一副笨重的黑框眼鏡，

年輕時候是短得不能再短的短髮，隨著年歲漸長，頭髮倒是長了一點，

卻變成了一個平庸的南方髮型，加上他一貫的露齒微笑，跟一個平常的美國黑人大叔沒什麼兩樣。

泰勒一九二一年出生於北卡羅來納州Greenville ，老爸是彈鋼琴的，老媽是一位歌手，泰勒早早得被送去學鋼琴。

十三歲的時候他進行了自己的處女秀，在一個樂隊裡司職鍵盤，那一場演出的報酬是像徵性的一美元。

接著泰勒進入弗吉尼亞州立大學學習社會學，大學畢業之後，他做出了一個明智的決定，起程去紐約，世界爵士樂的中心。

來到紐約的第一天， 泰勒就直奔當時紐約爵士樂酒吧雲集之地，第五十二號大街，

然後衝進了敏頓俱樂部（The Minton's），當時本-韋伯斯特（Ben Webster）正在台上即興（jamming），把泰勒看呆了。

不過兩天之後，泰勒就成了韋伯斯特四重奏的鋼琴手， 從這時起，韋伯斯特也成了他一生的音樂導師，

有時候聽泰勒彈搖擺樂，真能聽出一點韋伯斯特的影子來，永遠是那樣的平衡，連一絲不和諧感都找不到。

泰勒在第五十二號大街可謂是如魚得水，他給“眩暈”-吉列斯比（Dizzy Gillespie）做鋼琴手，給曼奇托（Machito）的非洲-古巴爵士樂隊做鋼琴手，

代替埃羅-加納（Erroll Garner）參與斯蘭-斯特伍德（Slam Stewart）的三重奏，

還加入柯茲-科爾（Cozy Cole）四重奏給比利-羅斯（Billy Rose）的百老匯名劇The Seven Lively Arts做配樂。

一九四八年，泰勒離開了第五十二號大街， 加入了唐-蘭德曼（Don Redman）的大樂隊在戰爭的硝煙中開始了歐洲巡演，巡演是成功的。

巡演結束後，泰勒和妻子在法國和荷蘭滯留了幾個月，然後回到了紐約，然後他的顛峰期到來了。

紐約已經有一年沒有聽到泰勒的鋼琴聲了，大家都顯得有一點迫不及待。

泰勒一回到紐約就和鮑伯-維阿特（Bob Wyatt）組成了鋼琴-管風琴二重奏，

並和比莉-霍樂黛一起在百老彙為霍樂黛量身定做的諷刺劇Holiday on Broadway中參加演出。

緊接著泰勒就開始在紐約各個有名的爵士樂場所進行演出，其中包括社會咖啡館（Cafe Society）以及公園大街（Park Avenue），

還和阿特-肖（Artie Shaw）組了一個四重奏在冰原（Iceland Restaurant）做了幾週的短期演出。

一九五O年，泰勒進入了帕克一手創辦的鳥國俱樂部（Birdland），他駐留的時間長達兩年，並且沒有間斷。

在這期間他既自己做領隊，又給其他來鳥國的好手做鋼琴手。

他在鳥國接的第一個活是給帕克做鋼琴手，還和帕克一起錄製了那張有名的暢銷唱片Bird With Strings。

接下來他合作過的樂手有邁爾斯-戴維斯、寇崔、斯坦-蓋茨、強生（JJ Johnson）,還有莫根納-金（Morgana King）等等。

就是這兩年為他奠定了咆勃鋼琴大師的地位。

離開鳥國之後，泰勒建立了自己的三重奏，也就是文章一開始提到的。

泰勒的三重奏和重拍俱樂部（Down Beat）簽定了兩個星期的演出合同，

誰知聽眾的反映實在是太好了，於是重拍俱樂部的經理當機立斷無限期的延長泰勒的演出合同，結果泰勒在重拍整整又駐留了五十個星期。

一個鋼琴大師再加上兩個年輕的天才，

從搖擺一路彈到咆勃，間或插入幾首美得要讓人醉倒的芭樂曲，怪不得當年紐約的媒體要驚呼，泰迪-威爾森（Teddy Wilson）又回來了！

不過泰勒跟威爾森倒也有幾分相像，喜歡在行進中插入一連串的單音，樂句與樂句之間的突然過渡，以及靈活多變地運用對位的技法。

六十年代以後泰勒所做的工作主要是以推廣爵士樂為主，

他為電台和電視台製作爵士樂節目，做報紙和網站的專欄記者，出版爵士樂書籍，組織爵士樂演出（比如在卡奈基大廳的系列演出），

在大學做老師，總之和推廣爵士樂有關的事情他都做。不過泰勒也沒有忘記自己的老行當，出片的熱情也絲毫不減當年。



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詳細請點:Website www.BillyTaylorJazz.net :)

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Interview: Billy Taylor (Part 1)




Pianist Billy Taylor has always been perceived as lucky. It's a trait that  owes as much to his extraordinary talents as his charismatic and gregarious personality. Billy also has been one of the great jazz evangelists. In New York, he started Jazzmobile in 1964, an education program that has been responsible for exposing hundreds of thousands of teens to the joys of jazz.




I still recall when Billy came to my junior high school in Manhattan in 1968, performing  and then handing out 45-rpm singles of his composition I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free. I still have mine. Seeing Billy that day as a 12-year old was my first real exposure to live jazz. When I think back, all I can remember is a sun-warm guy with a huge smile whose playing won the hearts of every restless kid in the school auditorium that day.



Billy first recorded with jazz violinist Eddie South in 1944. His Town Hall performance at  age 24 in 1945 as part of trumpeter Bill Coleman's quartet was recorded by Commodore and instantly made him a sensation. His subsequent trip to Europe with Don Redman in 1946 marked one of the earliest post-War jazz tours, and by the late 1940s, Billy was leading his own trios. He then began playing and recording as a sideman with virtually every major jazz artist. In 1952, Billy began developing a trio sound that was years ahead of its time, relying on new, cooler chord configurations and swinging harmony lines.

In Part 1 of my five-part interview with Billy, 87, the legendary pianist talks about growing up in Washington, D.C., his one regret when seeing Fats Waller backstage, being unimpressed with Charlie Parker in Earl Hines' band, developing a chord structure based on a Duke Ellington passage, and landing a dream gig on his first day in New York in 1943:

JazzWax: Where did you grow up?



Billy Taylor: I was born in Greenville, N.C. My father was  a dentist and my mother was a schoolteacher. She didn’t like what was going on in Greenville, so we moved first to Raleigh, VA. But my mom didn’t like that either. She didn’t like the school system in Raleigh and didn’t want her children going to school there. So she convinced my dad to move to Washington, D.C. [pictured in the late 1930s]

JW: Did you enjoy Washington?




BT: It was a fascinating place. My whole life revolved around a 20-block radius. There was so much going on.  We lived a couple of blocks from Howard University, a couple of blocks from the hospital, and a couple of blocks from Griffith Stadium, where the Washington Senators played. My dad was an athlete and played tennis and baseball, and my grandfather was a minister. His church, the Florida Baptist Church, was on Georgia Avenue at the time, right around the corner from Florida Avenue, right behind Griffith Stadium. [Photo: Joe DiMaggio at Griffith Stadium]

JW: Do you have brothers and sisters?

BT: I have a brother and sister who are both younger than me. My brother Rudolph was closer to me when we were growing up than my sister Joyce while I was away at college.

JW: Was there a lot of music in your home growing up?

  
BT: My Uncle Bob was a pianist. I tried to emulate him. He was a self-taught stride player. Several family members had taught themselves to play piano. My  mother’s sister’s husband taught himself to play classical. Everybody on my father’s side played—and he had five brothers and a sister. My Uncle Percy went to Juilliard. He was the conservatory-trained musician in the family and became well known in Washington as the organist at his father's church. My dad played piano and several brass instruments. He also had a great voice. I didn’t inherit that. [laughs]. My dad led the choir at his father's church and was one of the principal singers there.

JW: Where did you listen to jazz records?




BT: A friend, Wallace Conway, who lived nearby  introduced me to many different records. His father painted movie posters for all the black theaters in our neighborhood, including the Booker T, the Republic, the Lincoln [pictured] and the Howard. He and Duke Ellington had gone to school together as art students when they were teenagers.

JW: Art school?

BT: Duke was very much into art before he became a piano player.

JW: So you had plenty to listen to?

BT: Oh, yes. Wallace had everything you could think of on record. As a matter of fact, he had the first record player that turned the records over automatically. And this was the early 1930s.

JW: Which jazz artist left the deepest impression?




BT: Art Tatum. When I was learning how to play, I asked  my Uncle Bob to teach me to play the way Tatum did. He said, “I’m self-taught. I can't do that. You’ll have to teach yourself.” But he gave me my first record: The Shout by Art Tatum [1934]. All I could think when I heard it for the first time was, “Wow, who are those two guys” [laughs].

JW: Listening to Tatum didn’t discourage you?
BT: I didn’t have sense enough to be discouraged. I heard this guy play, and I said I had to learn how to do that. It was years before I even got close. But back in those days, we listened to all kinds of records.

JW: How did you get so good on the piano so fast?




BT: By practicing and studying a lot. Once I decided I wanted to soak myself in good music, Henry Grant, my  music teacher who lived across the street, encouraged me. Duke [Ellington] had studied with Mr. Grant. I remember taking lessons with him and the phone would ring. Mr. Grant would excuse himself for 10 to 20 minutes. When he returned, he’d apologize and say it was Duke Ellington. Of course, I’d ask tons of questions. It was an amazing feeling to be taught by the same guy that had taught Duke.
JW: How often did you practice as a kid?
BT: A lot. My mother would sometimes have to chase me out to play ball with the guys.

JW: Did you see live music as well?




BT: Of course. At the Howard, every week there was a  different show, usually a big band like Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford or Tiny Bradshaw. The Howard was so close to our home, and I knew who all the musicians were from the radio and their records. I was too young to play worth anything at that time.   
JW: Which band stood out?
BT: Duke Ellington’s. Many of the other big-name bands had come into the Howard once or twice before Duke came for the first time. So when he played there, it was a really big deal. His music was so different from everything else you heard. And everything about Duke was special. I remember standing outside and watching the guys in his band. My father’s office was a block or so away. I was too young to say anything. I just stared in amazement.

JW: Did you ever get to talk to your jazz heroes?




BT: When I was 10 or 11 years old, Fats Waller came to the Lincoln Theater, where he played the organ and piano. .He was playing organ out in the middle of the audience, so I could see his feet moving on the pedals. After the show, I went backstage. By this time I had been listening to his records. He was bigger than life. Literally. He was a huge guy. As I’m standing backstage, Fats passed by with his entourage, and I just stared at him. I didn’t have nerve enough to say anything. I was in awe. He was one of my idols. He walked right by me and I just stood there.
JW: Did you follow him?
BT: Yes. Fats went around the corner on U Street to a hamburger place. I came in soon after and took a seat as close as I could but far enough not to be noticed. I just sat and listen to him tell some stories. Then he and his group got up and left. And I hadn’t said a word.
JW: What did you do?
BT: I went back to the box office and paid another 15 cents to hear Fats do the show all over again. I deeply regretted not having talked to him. From that day forward I promised myself that if I ever got that close to someone I admired, I was going to bend his ear like he’s never had it bent before.

JW: Did you keep that promise?




BT: From that point on, if I was in shouting distance of someone I wanted to know, I'd remember the Fats  incident and became a pest, asking dozens of questions. The art of asking questions and listening to the answers is highly underrated. Years later, when I was playing on New York's 52nd Street, I was bending everyone’s ear and learning a great deal. By then, of course, I had gone to college and had been a bandleader, so I had more confidence. I got more information bending people's ears in that short period when I was playing up and down the Street.
JW: Where was your first paying job?
BT: At the Republic Theater. I was paid a dollar to accompany a singer.
JW: Did your dad want you to become a dentist?
BT: Not particularly. But he definitely didn’t want me to become a musician. This was the Depression, and everyone was scuffling to earn a living. My father didn’t want me in an occupation that wouldn’t let me earn a living. He said, “You have to think about how you'll support yourself. I won’t be around forever.”
JW: Did that knock the wind out of your sails?
BT: No. But my father was very convincing. So convincing that when I went to college at Virginia State, I was a  sociology major. That made sense to me. I told myself, “I can always play piano.” But I was so far into music in those days, it was too late. I also was fortunate to have had a music teacher in college who changed my life: Undine Smith Moore. She was a wonderful teacher and a remarkable lady, and had many students who went on to do marvelous things.
JW: Were you in the college band?
BT: I was in everything—the band, the choir, you name it. I also was playing on the side with a band in Richmond as a freshman. As you can see, I was already committed to music. Then in my junior year, Professor Moore called me into her office and asked me what my major was. I said, “Sociology.” She said, “Wrong” [laughs]. From that point on I was a music major.
JW: What was your dad’s reaction when he found out?
BT: My dad was a bit shocked. He said, “As long as you’re big enough to change your major and not tell me, you can pay for the rest of your education." So I had to pay my own way in my junior and senior year, mostly by playing gigs. I learned later from a frat brother that my father had said he would pay if I defaulted.

JW: What was your first major paying job in college?




BT: I played with a band led by tenor saxophonist Benny Layton and another one called Johnson’s Happy Pals. But when I was in college  I worked so hard at my studies and playing to pay the bills that I nearly ruined my health. I came down with tuberculosis but didn’t know it. When I got out of college I was drafted. But when they took one look at me, they said they needed soldiers but not that bad. In those days they didn’t have a cure for TB except extended rest. So I took a year off in 1942 to rest, with my mother looking after me.
JW: Did you practice while you were resting?
BT: Yes, during my recuperation, I practiced at least eight hours a day. A short time after I was better, I was able to get a job, and I started saving to go to New York.

JW: Did you meet Charlie Parker during this period?




BT: Yes, before he was Charlie Parker [laughs]. I met him when he was with the Earl Hines band, in 1943. That band sounded wonderful. I was close friends with trumpeter Little Benny Harris, who was around my age and was in the band. So when Little Benny came off the bandstand during a break, I wanted to talk to him. When he walked backstage, he was with Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan and Parker, who at the time played tenor saxophone in the band. Everyone was talking about Parker and how incredible he was.

JW: What did you think?




BT: I didn’t care much for Parker's sound on the instrument. I had  been listening to Budd Johnson [pictured] at the time and thought this guy Parker wasn’t anywhere near Budd’s level. But after listening to Little Benny and a couple of other musicians rave about him, I paid another 15 cents to hear what I might have missed in next set.
JW: Did you miss anything?
BT: Not I didn't [laughs]. I said to myself, “He’s still no Budd Johnson.” I liked Coleman Hawkins, Johnson and Chu Berry—guys with a big tenor sound. I liked the big sound. It was in my ear.
JW: How was your New York savings account?
BT: By 1943 I had saved enough. I arrived in New York on a Friday night and went to the home of my mother’s brother, who was a dentist. I figured I wouldn’t get a job playing right away. As a fall back, I decided I'd hang out and learn something. So as soon as I got to my uncle's house, I dropped my bags and told him that some people were expecting me.

JW: Were they?




BT: No. It was a big lie. I didn’t know anyone, but I didn’t  want to waste any time. I wanted to go right to Minton’s, which was in Harlem on 118th Street, just a short bus ride away. So that’s what I did.
JW: What happened when you got there?
BT: When I walked in, I introduced myself to the piano player, whose name escapes me now. I remember asking him if I could sit in. I had played in college and in Washington, so I felt comfortable enough asking. He said, "Sure."

JW: When did you go on?





BT: I sat around all night, from 9 pm to 2:45 am. Then I  finally got my shot on the last set, which ran from 3 to 4 am. So there I was, sitting at the piano playing when I look up. Who's there? Ben Webster, and he’s standing right in front of me. Ben was one of my idols. I had wanted to play tenor like he played when I was younger.
JW: Did he like what you were playing?
BT: He stood close to the piano and looked over my shoulder at my hands. Most people aren't aware that Ben was a fine pianist. There were now 10 or 15 guys on the bandstand playing. This was a jam session. The music was on time and fast. They were showing off. Ben was beautiful.
JW: Was he happy with your playing?
BT: Even though I wasn’t playing anything but comp [merely playing the song's chords behind musicians], Ben was curious about what I was doing. On the break, he came over and asked who I was. I didn’t know at the time that his first instrument was the piano. So when he had looked over at me, he knew exactly what I was doing on the piano. He was interested because I was playing an accompaniment that was unusual.
JW: How so?
BT: It was based on something that Duke Ellington had done.
JW: Tell me technically what you were doing.
BT: I was harmonizing the way Duke had done on In a  Mellow Tone. In Duke’s left hand he played a 9th chord with four notes. In his right hand he played an octave with one note in between, on the fifth. I began to do that, and I created a sound. I used that as the basis for harmonizing behind horn players.
JW: How was this different?
BT: Most guys who played comp were conducting business in the middle of the piano, which is where most things were written. But if you listen to Duke Ellington’s introduction to In a Mellow Tone, that’s the way I was playing. I wanted the sound Duke got when he did that. I built a whole style on that approach.

JW: What did Ben think?




BT: He loved it very much. He asked me who I was. I told  him. He asked what I wanted to do. I said I was looking for work. He said, “Why don’t you come down to the Three Deuces on 52nd Street on Sunday night, when it’s quieter. I’ll listen to you, and we’ll talk."
JW: Were you excited?
BT: Saturday took forever to pass. On Sunday I went down to the Three Deuces and got a gig. On the first day I was in town I played with Ben Webster. By the third day, I got a gig with him [laughs].

JW: Was Ben a generous guy?



BT: Ben was a very nice man. He was jolly. He was funny. When I worked with him, he made me want to make the piano really sing. By the time I finished with Ben and joined violinist Eddie South's band several months later, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I was confident.
JazzWax tracks: To hear the music that  inspired Billy Taylor during his youth, take a listen to the following at iTunes:


     

Fats Waller: Rarities. The joy and genius are both present on this fabulous album. You'll find Art Tatum's The Shout on Art Tatum: Classic Piano Solos  (1934-1937). Duke Ellington's In a Mellow Tone can be found on many compilations. You can hear the intro Billy was referring to by sampling the track on The Best of Duke Ellington. As for Budd Johnson, one of my favorite tracks by the tenor giant is Serenade in Blue, off Let's Swing from 1960.

dm0504

杠杆

前排学习，顶了再看

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要不上傳Part 2?

比利泰勒(Billy Taylor)的確是一位很偉大的音樂家和教育家:)

rattie

好帖！收藏下来慢慢学习。谢谢分享！

P.S.　当然要part2！！！

Walkin'Bass

收藏了，感谢书虫老师

dadihalo

伟人！！！

阿蹦

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如果无法播放，请点击此处在新窗口打开

鸦城八千流

收藏了

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Interview: Billy Taylor (Part 2)



Billy Taylor's recording career spans 65 years. During those decades, the  pianist has appeared on sessions and in concert with virtually every jazz great of his generation. A master of jazz piano styles dating back to the 1920s, Billy has never missed a chance to experiment with chords and tone, always working toward a more sublime sound and enriched sophistication. While Billy could play as fast as any of his bebop peers back in the 1940s, he knew from the start that there was more to the piano than a race to the finish. Beauty had to play a role.

Few musicians in the history of jazz have had Billy's meteoric rise. Over a single weekend in 1943, Billy went from a complete unknown in New York to an in-demand accompanist. His serendipitous club job with tenor saxophonist Ben Webster established Billy as a star, a promise that quickly became fulfilled. The more solo time Billy was given, the greater the realization that he was introducing a new, cooler approach to the piano and the jazz trio.
In Part 2 of my interview series with Billy, the legendary pianist talks about playing with violinists Eddie South and Stuff Smith, drummer Cozy Cole, his triumphant Town Hall debut in 1945, and his conversations with Don Byas over the tenor saxophonist's frustrating struggles for recognition:

JazzWax: On 52nd Street in early 1944 with Ben Webster, were you playing bebop?




Billy Taylor: Not much. Swing was still the thing, but bebop was emerging on the Street rapidly. When I worked at the Three Deuces, I used to run over to the  Onyx Club to hear Dizzy Gillespie, who had started his first bebop group. I wanted to learn what he was doing. Dizzy's group started there without a piano player. Bud Powell was supposed to play but for some reason didn't show. So Dizzy just had Don Byas, Oscar Pettiford and Max Roach. I sat in with that group early on. There’s a picture someplace of me playing with them.



JW: How was it?

BT: It was one of the best learning experiences. Dizzy was a great teacher. It was so good I almost got fired from the Three Deuces.
JW: What happened?




BT: We were playing so hard at the Onyx that we ran over the set’s time. I was supposed to be at the Three Deuces backing up Ben Webster. When I got back to the Deuces, the guy who ran the place fired me. But Ben overheard what was going on and stepped in. He said, “No, no, no. Keep him on. He won’t do that again. I know he was late but he won’t do that again.” So I stayed, and I didn't to it again [laughs].



JW: After several months you left Ben to play with violinist and bandleader Eddie South.
BT: Eddie worked my tail off  [laughs]. Even though my confidence was up from working with Ben, this guy was classically trained. I had to go back to my classical books and get my act together. He pulled some stuff, musically.

JW: Was Eddie a good musician?




BT: Better than good. Eddie was fascinating. He could   play all kinds of music, from gypsy to jazz. He was deeply dedicated to the music and played so many things so well. He was inspirational. The time I spent with Eddie was like going to school. He taught me how to accompany.
JW: How so?
BT: With Eddie on violin, it was like playing behind a soloist or a singer. He's mostly playing individual notes, so I'd have to put together an interesting sound on the piano so he'd have something to build on. Also, with Eddie on violin, my sound was out front, which meant I needed to play in a way that engaged the audience.

JW: What made South exceptional?




BT: He was the first leader I played for who could make people cry. I remember we were at a club in Chicago when the King of the Gypsies came in with an entourage. They requested some gypsy tunes, and boy the handkerchiefs came out when Eddie was done. It was yet another talent Eddie had. We’d play parties where people would request songs in his repertoire, and they’d cry when they'd hear them. When Eddie played a song, it could sound so sad and moving.

JW: You also played with violinist Stuff Smith a short time, yes?




BT: Yes. Eddie introduced me to Stuff. Eddie, me and the drummer had been playing our regular repertoire night  after night, which was a mix of a lot of different kinds of music. Then one night Eddie just called for jazz and blues numbers, which was strange. I looked up and said, “Wow, an all-jazz program tonight. That’s good.” At the break, we came off the stage and Eddie asked me to meet a friend of his, Stuff Smith. “Oh, that’s what that all-jazz lineup was all about,” I said to myself. [laughs]

JW: You played with Smith at the famed Town Hall concert of June 9, 1945. That was a big turning point for you.




BT: Yes, it was just Stuff Smith, bassist Ted  Sturgis and me that afternoon. We played two or three songs. Just us. It was the first time I had played Town Hall. We were up against so many different jazz stars, including Red Norvo, Gene Krupa, Charlie Ventura, Teddy Wilson and others.
JW: You had a nice opportunity to stand out.
BT: That's true. Stuff was playing one note at a time on that violin but, man, he knew what to do with it. So there was plenty of room for me. At the end of our performance, the audience broke it up. After the concert, I was in another league in the eyes of musicians and audiences.

JW: After the concert, you joined saxophonist Walter Thomas' band.




BT: Thomas had played with Cab Calloway and was an  arranger. The drummer was Cozy Cole [pictured], who soon asked me to join a quintet he was putting together to replace the Benny Goodman Sextet in a Broadway show staged by Billy Rose called The Seven Lively Arts. In the show, Benny played with bassist Slam Stewart. Benny and his group had to leave for some reason, and Cozy Cole had already worked on Broadway and was cast for the show. Beatrice Lillie and Bert Lahr were the stars. That was a big deal for me. I had never played on stage in a Broadway program before.
JW: In the fall of 1945 you played with legendary drummer Big Sid Catlett. What was he like?





BT: One of the most affable guys. I not only played behind him and with him, but when I went on the road with Eddie  South we played opposite him. Sid [pictured] and Jo Jones—no disrespect for anyone else—they were great leaders. It was impossible not to sound great behind them. You’d have to be arbitrarily not doing well. Sid was physically big but one of the softest players with a pair of brushes. He was absolutely in control of what he did. Jo Jones was similar in that respect.
JW: Was Catlett encouraging?
BT: Yes, but it wasn't what Sid said. It was mostly what he did. I remember playing in a jam session, and the tempo was fast. I was getting tired comping [just playing song chords]. Sid didn’t say anything. He sensed my edge was fading and gave me a push with the drums by picking up the tempo just slightly. That made me find the extra energy to dig in. I grinned because I knew what he was doing. It was very gentle but it did the job. I used that technique much later when I was a leader.

JW: You played extensively with Don Byas in the mid- and late 1940s. What was he like?





BT: What people don’t realize about Don [pictured] is that he learned those  bebop tunes with Dizzy and played the hell out of them. Don was really underappreciated. He was one of the pioneers of bebop. He could play that music without ever losing the thing that made him Don Byas.
JW: Did you run into Byas on 52nd Street?
BT: All the time. When I was playing at the Three Deuces, Coleman Hawkins and Billie Holiday were headlining next door. Don played with Hawk on that date and they'd trade choruses. This is the group that had Thelonious Monk on piano.

JW: Could Hawkins handle Byas?




BT: Hawk [pictured] had the same facility to do the bop things that  Don could. The reason Hawk hired Byas was because he really loved what the younger guys—like Dizzy, Monk and Don—were doing. Hawk was the first to put bop into shape. When Hawk played it, bebop was no longer just something the crazy younger guys were doing. He demonstrated it, and people began to realize there's more to the new music than they thought.
JW: In 1946 you joined bandleader Don Redman and toured Europe, one of the earliest tours after the war.




BT: What happened was that I had just gotten married. So I wasn’t hanging out as much as I had been before I got   married. But then I heard that Don Redman [pictured] was planning this European tour that Timme Rosenkrantz was producing. Don asked if I’d play piano. I told him I had just gotten married. Guys were still coming home from the service in 1946 so bands were still having difficulty finding and holding onto players. Don needed me, so he told me I could bring my wife Theodora. Don took his wife, and Timme took his. Timme's wife, Inez Cavanaugh, became the band's singer.
JW: How was the tour?
BT: My wife and I still remember that trip fondly. I have many pictures of me with French writers, painters and people in the arts. It was a very exciting, optimistic time.
JW: How was Don Byas on the tour?
BT: He was very special. He did something that was unbelievable in terms of really playing and showing the Europeans that the music was moving forward. What the Europeans heard him play was the beginning of what John Coltrane and others like him eventually did.

JW: How so?




BT: Don [pictured] paved the way over there. He was way ahead of  Coltrane on those sheets of sound. He was trying to make the tenor saxophone sound like Art Tatum. He and Coltrane had the same idea for the same reason. They both had heard Art's seamless runs on the piano. Don was trying to do that on the tenor back then.

JW: How did Don compare to the other musicians back then?
BT: He was head and shoulders above everyone else. Don was playing bebop and pre-bop. What I mean by pre-bop is he was playing things that led up to bebop. They were long phrases and new ways of using harmonies so that they sounded like the dominant melody. This stuff hadn't been done yet until Don started playing them.

JW: Explain a little further.
BT: There was swing, and it had certain harmonic and melodic qualifications and rhythmic patterns. Those characteristics were changed in every way by bebop. Melodies became longer, and the tempo was twice as fast. You also had many different types of harmonies being used. Bebop was much more intricate than most people realized at the time.  
JW: Was Don a tough guy?
BT: No. He drank too much, but almost everyone did back then. He was a nice guy. When we were touring, we had access to a Ping Pong table in this castle the allies had liberated. My wife was a very good player. Don thought he could beat her. It turned out she beat him several times, and he had to scuffle to keep up. He never lost his cool.
JW: But Byas was high energy, wasn't he?
BT: Oh yes. Don grew up in an era when players blew each other away at jam sessions with choruses and creativity. But Don stayed long enough in that style that guys caught on to what he was doing. Eventually, there came a time when he could no longer wipe out everyone in the room.

JW: How was he at his peak?





BT: He could take five or six choruses on a song without ever repeating an idea. Hawk [pictured] was the same way. Hawk's  recording of Body and Soul became so popular that people wanted to hear it played the way it was on his record. I was working with him at Cafe Society and someone asked for it. Hawk said, "Sure." So he played the song, but it didn’t sound anything like the record. The guy came back and complained that what he had played didn't sound like Body and Soul. Hawk said, "That's right. If you want to hear that version, you have to buy the record. Didn't you hear what I just played?" [laughs]

JW: Don decided to remain in Europe?




BT: Don told me on the tour that he didn't get enough credit at home. In New York, Hawk was the man. Don loved Hawk but said, "I played in his band. I know what he’s doing and I know what I’m doing. Why can’t everyone hear what I'm doing?" It was sad in some ways.
JW: Why don't you think Byas got enough credit?
BT: I don't think Don was ever in the right place at the right time. When we went to Europe, he came close to receiving the kind of celebrity he was looking for—over there. At one point he came up to me and said, "I’m not going back. People don’t treat me right at home, and these people treat me just fine. I’m going to stay here.” And he did. In Europe, he made a big impact on European musicians. Over there he was a big fish in a small pond.
JW: How long were you in Europe with Redman?
BT: The tour was only supposed to last six to eight weeks.  We wound up staying eight months. By January  1947, the small combo we formed caught on, and toward the end we ended up in Holland with Tyree Glenn and Don Byas. We changed guitarists and used another bassist and drummer. We mixed the groups up a bit. We were all there at the same time so guys on the recordings were together working separately. [Photo of Tyree Glenn in 1947 by William P. Gottlieb]
JW: What did the European tour teach you?
BT: I learned that there were a lot of people who were interested in the music happening in America. They looked on it as an exciting thing to be a part of. They saw jazz as a form of freedom of speech. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, but the equation came up a lot.

JW: Were you shocked by the lack of prejudice?




BT: It was quite different, and I was delighted. People  treated all of us wonderfully. There was no pressure. You were just a human being. I had never felt like that before. We were treated like intellectuals, not just entertainers. Finally I could exchange thoughts with amazing people freely, without ever thinking about race. It was an amazing feeling. [Photo of Paris in 1946 by David E. Scherman for Life]

   

JazzWax tracks: Many of Billy Taylor's recordings with  different groups during the mid-to-late 1940s can be found on Billy Taylor: 1945-1949 here. For some strange reason, the 1945 Town Hall  concert doesn't appear to be on CD. I own it on a double-LP set, The Commodore Years: Town Hall Concert 1945, released by Atlantic in the 1970s. Several copies of this double LP set are currently available on eBay.



Billy with Don Redman in Europe can be found on Don  Redman Orchestra: Swiss Radio Days Vol. 11 here. To hear Don Byas during his European days, download the first eight tracks from Don  Byas: Jazz in Paris here. If you're ambitious, dig Don Byas: Those Barcelona Days: 1947-1948 here, recorded after he decided to remain abroad.

      
JazzWax clip: To see how masterful and comfortable Billy was with any jazz piano style, dig this clip from the 1951 CBS-TV show See It Now, in which Billy assumes the role of Jelly Roll Morton...

[ 本帖最后由 声音地带 于 2010-5-14 18:50 编辑 ]

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Interview: Billy Taylor (Part 3)



By the time Billy Taylor was 29 years old, he had already had  a lifetime of jazz experience. By the close of the 1940s, the pianist had played with Ben Webster, Dizzy Gillespie, Don Byas, Big Sid Catlett, Cozy Cole, Stuff Smith and many other jazz giants. He also had been mentored by Jo Jones and Art Tatum. Though his piano style would evolve in the early 1950s and beyond, Billy's technical prowess was already in place by 1947—and his attack on the keyboard was formidable, fluid and downright frightening.




In Part 3 of my conversation with Billy, the legendary pianist  talks about becoming Art Tatum's protege, returning from Europe in 1947, playing with Lucky Thompson, forming trios and quartets, having sidemen stolen away by jazz giants, playing with Charlie Parker and strings and becoming Birdland's house pianist:
JazzWax: Did you ever have the urge to stay in Europe, with Don Byas?
Billy Taylor: The thrill of being away was wearing off a bit. By 1947, Don Redman's band had been over there for eight months. Toward the end, my wife wasn’t feeling well so we decided to come home and relax a bit.

JW: What did you do when you arrived back in New York?




BT: I focused more on what Art Tatum and Nat Cole were doing on the piano. Nat was one of the biggest influences on jazz pianists, even in the late 1940s. Most people don’t realize that. They think he was primarily a trio singer and a pop singer. But back then he was a marvelous jazz pianist, and he thought of himself as one. I met Nat briefly around this time. He was playing radio shows in New York. [Photo of Nat King Cole by Eliot Elisofon for Life]
JW: Did Nat hear you play?
BT: No. For me, to hear him play was enough [laughs].
JW: When did you meet Art Tatum?
BT: Back in 1944. Ben Webster introduced me to him. Ben had also introduced me to Duke Ellington. Ben, of course, had been in Duke's band and Duke had great respect for him. When I met Art, he was very friendly and became my mentor. It was a wonderful part of my life.

JW: Drummer Jo Jones also took a liking to you.




BT: Maybe because I looked so young, Jo Jones [pictured] took me  under his wing and sort of looked out for me. He had introduced me to everyone on 52nd Street in 1944 and 1945. But he put the word out that I should not be drinking. I think he was afraid that if I'd taken to drink, my playing would suffer. Even though I was older than 21 years old, none of the guys on the Street would ever let me drink anything other than a Coke.

JW: Did you ever just buy a drink yourself?
BT: Yes. But the night I did, Jo spotted me at the bar. I didn't see him, though. He told me this later. Anyway, the next night I had a drink or two and then began my set. While I was playing, I looked up and saw Jo sitting there glaring at me. He had Art Tatum on one side and Teddy Wilson on the other. I knew right away what his point was. I never took another drink after that night.

JW: What did being mentored by Art Tatum mean exactly?



BT: I would go see Art play all the time, and he would  show me what he was doing, and we'd spend a lot of time together, especially after his gigs. We were close friends. Art liked what I was doing on the piano. He liked that I had gone to college.
JW: Did you befriend him or did he hear you play and befriend you.
BT: [Laughs] Oh, no. I ran after him. On occasion he'd show me things on the piano. For the most part it was just being together. He was like a father to me. We used to go uptown to Tom Tillman's bar in Harlem. Tom was a friend of Art's. I learned as much from being with Art at Tillman's than in any classroom in the world.
JW: Why?
BT: A bunch of pianists would hang out there, and we knew sooner or later someone would come in, sit down at the piano and try to take on Art or show off. Usually he'd sic me or one of the others on the guy. One time this wonderful player from New Jersey came in and played incredible stride piano. Art realized he had to take him on and knew that it was going to be about stride. That was one of the few times I heard Art play pure stride. Art ordinarily played Art Tatum, which was a product of all that he had heard. But this time, he played just stride and gave that guy some lesson [laughs].

JW: What did you learn from Tatum?



BT: Certain harmonic things that he liked to do. Several of  these pianists from the 1930s were into harmonic improvisation. Normally you'd sit down and play a song's melody straight through and then improvise on it. Art had an odd way of doing things. He’d improvise before completing the melody. For instance, he’d take a song like Body and Soul and play the first eight bars. Then he'd play the second eight using a harmony line rather than the rest of the song's melody. It's difficult to do, and he did it for fun. Many stride pianists did that. They did it to put each other on.
JW: Given that Art was blind, how did he get to know you?  
BT: Touch was important with Art. But remember, Art wasn’t completely blind. He had some sight in one eye. He could play cards. He’d put the cars right up in front of his eyes. And he’d win [laughs].

JW: What do you remember about Art, the person?




BT: Art was an interesting guy. He loved jazz and classical music. He listened to a lot of different things. There was a  radio program on at 10 in the morning that featured great classical pianists. I’d bring him home to the hotel in midtown where he stayed after he played all night. Nightclubs closed at 4 am then. By the time we went somewhere to catch a bite or hit an after hours club, it was 8 am. I’d bring him up to his room, and he always wanted to listen to this radio program of solo classical pianists like [Vladimir] Horowitz.
JW: In 1947, you recorded as the leader of a quartet featuring guitarist John Collins, bassist John Levy and drummer Denzil Best. And you sang on two sides.
BT: [Laughs] I wanted to do that. I did the one record as a singer and realized immediately that I wasn't my father. My father had a beautiful voice but I didn’t inherit it, nor did my brother for that matter. I chose the guys for that group because they were my favorite musicians at the time.

JW: The quartet didn't stay together long.




BT: I lost John Collins to Art Tatum. Then he went with Nat  Cole. I don’t know why Denzil [pictured] and John Levy left to go with George Shearing. But they did, and they made big names for themselves. In truth, they were both suited for what Shearing needed. They both had a fast, delicate touch. George had a good ear for what he needed.
JW: In 1949 you recorded on a date led by tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson. Why wasn't he better known?
BT: Like Don Byas, Lucky was terribly underrated. He probably was one of the most unlucky guys I’ve met in my career, considering what he was capable of. You go back and listen and realize how well he played. He took the same kind of thing Don Byas was doing and incorporated bebop and other things.

JW: Why wasn't he better known?



BT: People just didn’t respond to him. It made no sense. He made records. He did personal appearances. Finally he just gave up. Nothing worked. He was just unlucky. Things came to me. I don't know why. They just didn’t come to Lucky. All things considered, as well as he played, as many people who knew him, I don’t know why things didn't work out. He was a nice guy, though. It wasn’t as if he was bitter. [Photo of Lucky Thompson by Herman Leonard]

JW: By 1950, by my ear, your sound starts to change.



BT: I had absorbed Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum, and I had learned how to use many devices from Art, many of which had to do with harmonies. But as a leader, I wanted to add my personality, my touch.
JW: In 1950 you formed a new trio with Aaron Bell and Kelly Martin.
BT: That was a short-lasting trio. Those were two guys I liked very much. Kelly had done a lot of things with Erroll  Garner, and Aaron [pictured] had worked with Eddie Wilcox. We were playing at the Hickory House. Duke Ellington used to come in a lot to hear me play. He was friendly with the owner, and the owner liked him to come in, since they shared the same publicist. Duke didn’t eat much steak, which was odd since he was at a steak house. He would just order milk or something. He liked Aaron Bell so much that he took him from me. Aaron made some good records with Duke.
JW: Did you ever get frustrated that sidemen you found were getting snatched away?
BT: [Laughs] Oh, no. I held on to most of them. In those days, the reason I couldn’t hold onto them is I wasn’t traveling. By that time I had a couple of kids and didn’t want to travel. If you were a sideman, that's how you made a living, by going out on the road with a headliner.

JW: In August 1950, you played at a famous Apollo Theater concert with Stan Getz and Charlie Parker.



BT: I remember that concert very well. That summer I got a  call from Al Haig [pictured], Bird's pianist. He said, "Can you cover for me? I have a job with Parker but I can't make it. He opens at Birdland." What I didn’t know at the time was that Al was going to leave Bird.
JW: So what happened?
BT: I went in to play behind Bird on what I thought would be the only gig. The next day, when I was at home, I got a call from Birdland asking me to come down. Al didn’t show, and they wanted me to finish the week. Which is how I wound up playing with Bird and strings at the Apollo.
JW: What was that like?
BT: It was the first time Bird played a live concert with strings. He had done two studio dates with them but at the Apollo, it was the first live performance.

JW: Did he enjoy playing with strings?



BT: It wasn’t that Bird liked strings, per se. He wanted to show  everyone that audiences would respond favorably to him with that kind of commercial background. But he didn’t play commercially with the strings. He just played Bird. He wanted people to hear that.
JW: How many times did you play with him?
BT: The Apollo performance was so well attended and received that we did two weeks there. Then we went back to Birdland. After hearing me with strings, Monte Kay, Birdland's manager, made me the house pianist.

JW: Was that a good thing?



BT: Absolutely. I got to play with everybody as the house pianist. I also got to stay in one place where people could see me all the time and hear that I could play with everyone, from players to singers. I also was the guy who played for the Birdland All-Stars, a group of four or five guys that the club put together every other week. [Menu cover courtesy of Bird Lives]
JW: What was that Apollo concert like?
BT: It was a funny gig. It was a mistake for Stan to take that band up to Harlem. Many of the guys in that band were on narcotics and were slacking off. But to Stan's credit, he picked a lot of guys who sounded great together. And when that band hit, they were right on the money. I remember Stan and Zoot were strung out, but they played like crazy. The truth is that Tommy Potter and Roy [Haynes] held the band together that afternoon.

JW: How were your interactions with Bird?



BT: Good and friendly. One day he came into Birdland to  get some money from the boss. By then I was the house pianist and was practicing my music lesson. I was studying with a wonderful teacher who was helping me with my classical playing. I would take a lesson and wouldn’t go home because I’d be late for the gig if it did. So I went there and practiced my lesson before the club opened. Bird came in and heard me.
JW: What did he say?
BT: He said, "That’s nice, I like that." I said, "It’s Debussy." He said, "I know that." I said, "What do you mean you know that," and laughed, turning back to play. I figured he was just putting me on.
JW: What happened?
BT: Well, Bird went to the back to get his money. When he came out, I was playing Debussy's Arabesque #1 again. Bird took an alto horn off the bandstand and played the line I hadn't played yet. I was blown away.

JW: Did you ever have a full conversation with him?


BT: When I was working on 52nd Street years earlier, I had come into a club to hear Art Tatum. I was waiting for Art to show up, and Bird was there. We struck up a  conversation. We talked about music, and it was such an interesting talk. Of course, I had met him with Dizzy many years earlier when they were with Earl Hines. So I knew who he was and had heard him play on the Street. That was the only time we had that kind of a conversation. There weren’t a lot of people there. We were talking about music and whatever came into our minds. I never had another conversation like that with him again. I never knew why I couldn’t stimulate that in him again. [Film still courtesy of Bird Lives]

       

JazzWax tracks: Don't listen to Billy. He actually had quite a  nice singing voice. You can hear it on Billy Taylor: 1945-1949. If you go here, you can sample I Don't Ask Questions, I Just Have Fun and So  You Think You're Cute. That's Billy singing. You can hear Billy with Aaron Bell and Kelly Martin on Billy Taylor: 1950-1952 here. The portion of the 1950 Apollo Theater concert with Stan Getz and His Orchestra featuring Billy on piano are the last two tracks on a CD called Stan Getz: The Vancouver Concert 1965 here. CDs featuring Charlie Parker's portion of the concert with strings are out of print.
JazzWax clip: Wish you could go back and hear Billy together with his first employer, Ben Webster? Here's the next best thing: Billy and Ben in April 1958 on NBC's The Subject Is Jazz: Swing. Dig the musical love these two shared. Listen carefully. They're swinging on the exact same page...

[ 本帖最后由 声音地带 于 2010-5-14 21:16 编辑 ]

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谢谢更新！等考完试静下心来慢慢看。>0<

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一共七個呢 重点要听懂内容 呵呵 接下來的有Part4:)

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Interview: Billy Taylor (Part 4)

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At the start of 1950, Billy Taylor was established as one of the most promising and intimidating young pianists on the New York jazz scene. Deceptively affable, the pianist with the big smile and bookish charm could play flawlessly in any style and made the impossible look easy. Rock-solid dependable,

Billy was rapidly becoming a first-call player at clubs, concerts and recording sessions. The more Billy played, the greater his visibility. The greater his visibility, the harder he worked to further develop a new sound on the piano that would stand out.

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Billy's sound was his own. To be sure, the influences of his mentors were unmistakable. There were shades   of Art Tatum's lightning runs, Teddy Wilson's clarity and grace, and Duke Ellington's confident chord phrasing. But there was a new, cooler swing sound emerging. Whether leading a small group or playing behind stars at Birdland, Billy could always be counted on to push hard and motivate everyone on the bandstand.


In Part 4 of my interview series with Billy, the legendary pianist talks about Artie Shaw, John Coltrane, Milt Jackson, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Zoot Sims and why Jo Jones never became a leader the way Art Blakey did:

JazzWax: In the fall of 1950 you recorded briefly with Artie Shaw.

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Billy Taylor: Artie was one of the most interesting people I had ever met. He was a very intellectual guy. At this point in his career, he had experienced a great deal of disappointment. He had brought an excellent group to Iceland, a club located across from Birdland. The band was huge and played a cross between classical and jazz. He thought that club would be the perfect place. [Photo of Artie Shaw in 1949 with orchestra at Bop City by Martha Holmes for Life]
JW: How did it turn out?
BT: Artie wound up disappointed again, because the band wasn’t well received, and it didn’t do that well for the club. He was very frustrated. By the time he called on me to play with him, he was thinking about another Gramercy Five.
JW: Why did he call you?
BT: Because I had a strong quintet at the time—John Collins on guitar, Joe Benjamin on bass and Charlie Smith on drums. Artie was very nice to me. I was in between bebop and a new style I was developing. I was trying to find who I was. A lot of the stuff that I was trying to do was a work in progress. From a jazz perspective, it sounded classic but different.
JW: Artie could hear that?
BT: I think so. The four of us brought something to him that he didn’t have before. But I went back to Birdland to work after Artie decided not to form that group.

JW: Was Artie too old fashioned musically at this point?

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BT: Artie was never old fashioned. Even when Artie  re-recorded his hits over the years, they never sounded old fashioned or the same. He always gave them a whole new push. He had tried to put together a couple of groups that got some of the bebop things but they weren't long-lasting.
JW: In 1951 you played in a group at Birdland that included Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane.
BT: Dizzy put together groups like that all the time. He'd use people who played with him in the past or up-and-coming talent he liked. Coltrane was quiet. One of the things he talked to me about was Art Tatum. He wanted to know everything about him. He was very excited about Art's technique. "How does he do that," Trane said. "It sounds like a glissando."
JW: What did you tell him?
BT: I told him it was fingering and a glissando together, as one motion, and that Art was fingering that fast. Trane was pretty amazed.

JW: Milt Jackson was in that group, too.

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BT: Milt loved to come to Birdland with Dizzy. I was the house pianist, so that meant he  could get up from the piano and play the whole night on vibes. Dizzy had a piano-less group, so he'd have Milt [pictured] play piano and vibes. When Milt played vibes, Dizzy would play piano. But at Birdland, I played piano and Milt got to play vibes. Dizzy had a great sense of humor. Milt, too. Milt had funny sayings. Everything was a lark. You enjoyed the gig with Milt. Dizzy and Milt played lines that were fun. The music had a sense of humor.
JW: Bebop at its highest level has a rich sense of humor, doesn't it?
BT: That’s correct. That’s what’s often lacking when most pianists play bebop. They forget the humor and the musical jokes. That's why it was so much fun playing piano at Birdland in the early 1950s. Everyone who came in to play understood the humor aspect. Back in those days, you needed a sense of humor. Even take-charge players like Big Nick Nicholas and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis didn't take life all that seriously. They were both very funny.

JW: In September 1951, you were at Birdland as the pianist with Miles Davis and His All-Stars. What was Miles like back then?

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BT: Miles was strange. I had met him on 52nd St. when he was  playing with Bird. He was scuffling with those charts, replacing Diz and stuff like that. It must have been driving him crazy. He really didn’t have the chops for that. He was a nice young man but he was really turned around because he was frustrated. He couldn’t keep up. [Photo: Miles Davis in 1951]
JW: Who could?
BT: There were a lot of guys who could keep up with Bird better than Miles, like Fat Girl [Fats Navarro] and Clifford Brown. Fats drove Miles up the wall. It was years before Miles got to a place where he could stop trying to be Dizzy and focus on his own thing—playing in the middle register. At Birdland he started focusing on it.
JW: Did the frustration affect him?
BT: Miles came on like he had a sour personality, but it was really a cover up for an inferiority complex, I guess. It took a while for him to earn the respect of those he wanted to respect him. There were a lot of records and gigs and hanging out before Miles felt he was accepted. He developed a defense where he’d do things that were outrageous or not acceptable by everybody. That was his way of saying, “I don’t give a damn.”

JW: Was Charles Mingus similar?

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BT: Mingus was different. He and I hit it off right away. He played in that Miles Davis All-Stars group at Birdland. I really enjoyed playing  with him. Jo Jones was responsible for putting us together in a trio setting. At the time, I was the house pianist at Birdland. Jo came up to me one day and said he had arranged a gig for me the following out of town. He said, "I just came back from Boston. George Wein who owns a nightclub [Storyville] wants you to bring a trio into his club."
JW: What did you say?
BT: I said great, but I can't get away from my job here as the house pianist. Jo said, "Don't worry about it, it's cool. I spoke to Monte [Kay, Birdland's manager], and he said you can have off to play the Boston gig." Jo and Monte were tight, and Jo was a mentor of mine. I told Jo that I needed two guys. Jo said, "Don't worry I have them." The bass player Jo had was Mingus who had just left Red Norvo's trio.
JW: Who was the drummer?
BT: A Boston guy named Marquis Foster. I liked Charles very much. I respected him. But like Miles and many other guys, he had his idiosyncrasies. He was so serious about his music and wanted to be creative like Duke Ellington.

JW: Did you meet in Boston?

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BT: No, Charles and I took a train up from New York. We got  on the train and argued the entire time. We agreed about many things but there were certain things that we didn’t see eye to eye on. I told him, "Look, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on this and that." By this point I had written a book on bebop. He'd come back just as strong. We were always talking about what could be done on our instruments and what we should be doing in terms of moving the music forward.
JW: What was it about Mingus' playing that was so appealing to you?
BT: He was quite different from anyone I had worked with. He had been listening to the bassists who preceded him. Oscar Pettiford in particular. He wanted to do something along those lines. He wanted to use technique in a different way and become a dominant player, not a sideman. He had developed in his playing a more melodic sound, and played higher up on the bass.

JW: How did this sound against the piano?
BT: I’d play a line with my right hand and he’d play in the same register, not down in the bass clef. Mingus was fast, his mind was always working, and he had the technique to play many things other bassists couldn’t. Eventually, though, his playing was so dominant and off in a new direction that we had to part.

JW: In 1951 you record with Zoot Sims on perhaps his oddest session. Zoot played maraccas?
BT: [Laughs] Zoot was a good friend. I first met him when he played with Sid Catlett out in California. I was with Eddie South. We used to hang out. He just showed up that day and asked if he could play the maraccas. I said, "Hey, why not?"

JW: Jo Jones was your mentor and guardian angel, but you also played quite often with him.

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BT: I probably played more with Jo Jones [pictured] and Art Blakey than any other drummers. Jo had a great sense of humor. Jo was  one of the elders at that time. He really was taking a lot of young people under his wing and helping all of us play. The same way he convinced me I shouldn’t drink, he helped other musicians with much more serious problems. Jo wasn’t a leader of groups often enough. He would have liked to have been, the way Art Blakey was the leader of the Jazz Messengers.
JW: What prevented him from doing so?
BT: Jo was just more comfortable as an accompanist. I don’t think he wanted the responsibility of leading small groups. He liked to play and he liked to help bands be special. But he backed away from opportunities to be a leader.
JW: Yet Jo had the respect of other musicians.
BT: Absolutely, but he didn’t choose to lead. In many of the groups I played in at Birdland that featured Jo, he was the real leader, even if he wasn't the headliner. He also brought a lot of guys into Birdland. But because he chose to play the role of an accompanist rather than a leader, he was misread.
JW: How so?
BT: I remember a date we did with Neal Hefti. One of the tunes was in an odd meter. Hefti was trying to explain to Jo what he had in mind. Jo said to him, "What do you have in mind other than 1, 2, 3, 4, 5?” [laughs].  Neal took him seriously and started telling him how to accent certain notes. Jo said, “Oh really?” Jo was putting him on. I was just a few feet from Jo. After Neal walked away, I asked Jo teasingly, "Why’d you do that?" Jo said, “He knows better than that.” Neal often wanted Jo on sessions because he loved Jo’s time.




JazzWax tracks: The four sides that Billy recorded with Artie  Shaw in 1950—Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Autumn Leaves and Where or When—can be found on Artie Shaw: 1950 here. The Birdland appearance by Billy, Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane is on Trane's First Ride: 1951. You can  search Google and eBay for this rare CD.

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Special treat: Through a bit of research, I found a free way to hear Night in Tunisia from the date, featuring amazing solos by Coltrane, Dizzy and Billy. Listen to Symphony Sid and the band at Birdland here.
Billy with the Miles Davis All-Stars at Birdland can be found on the last three tracks from Miles Davis: Birdland 1951 (Move, The Squirrel and Lady Bird) here. Billy  Taylor with Charles Mingus' massive thumping bass and Marquis Foster on drums can be found on the first five tracks from Billy Taylor: 1952-1953 here. Billy with Zoot Sims on maraccas? The tracks (Cuban Caper, Cu-Blue, Squeeze Me, Feeling Free and Cuban Nightingale) are on Billy Taylor: 1950-1952 here.
JazzWax clip: Here's a fascinating video clip with Billy, Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh, Don Elliot, Mundell Lowe, Eddie Safranski, and Ed Thigpen playing Godchild on NBC's The Subject Is Jazz, from May 1958. Listen as Billy sifts bop and cool jazz styles in one piano solo...

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rattie

原帖由 声音地带 于 2010-5-14 21:34 发表
一共七個呢 重点要听懂内容 呵呵 接下來的有Part4:)

请问有youtube的链接吗？我这里load起来可能会快些。谢谢！

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詳細請點:Website www.BillyTaylorJazz.net :)

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Interview: Billy Taylor (Part 5)



Starting in 1952, Billy Taylor emerged as the progenitor of a new, more elegant style of jazz piano. After forming a critically acclaimed trio, Billy quickly became known for his musical grace and good taste. In some respects, Billy never forgot his fortuitous encounter with Ben Webster at Minton's in 1944. He also was forever indebted to the piano masters of the 1930s and 1940s who took him under their wings.

Billy's technique was so remarkable by the mid-1950s that he could effortlessly channel the piano styles of Jelly Roll Morton, Willie "the Lion" Smith, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Duke Ellington, Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum. Or he could shuffle them all together with his own phrasing and emerge with a sound all his own. In this regard, Billy became the trustee of a generational flame, a vital link to past traditions that were flickering by the 1960s.

In Part 5 of my interview series with Billy, the legendary pianist talks about Jackie Paris, Harry Belafonte, Candido, Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Gerry Mulligan, Creed Taylor and the inspiration for his best-known composition, I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free:

JazzWax: You played on the famed Jackie Paris Skylark session in 1953 for Brunswick Records.




Billy Taylor: Jackie was one of those singers who faded out of site after we were on 52nd Street together in the 1940s. I never could understand why he didn't make it. He sang so well on the Street. I guess he couldn’t get off 52nd St. in terms of his vocal style and mindset. There were a lot of musicians around then on the Street who sang well. Everyone expected more of Jackie.

JW: What made Jackie Paris exceptional?




BT: He had a hip, cool sound that was fresh. He was a good  ballad singer, and he could play guitar while he sang. Most of all, he had great time, and you felt that immediately. Maybe his problem was his personality. I don’t know. I didn't catch a personality problem. We played often together. I played with a lot of singers during the early 1950s.

JW: Did you play with Harry Belafonte?




BT: Yes, I played for him at Birdland. Harry originally  wanted to sing jazz until they shifted him into pop and the West Indian tunes that made him a star. He wanted to go in that direction. He was really an actor who wanted to combine all of that stuff. He was a good singer.
JW: Increasingly, you became in-demand as an accompanist for vocalists.
BT: I enjoyed accompanying singers in those days, trying to make the vocalist sound good. I took a lot of pride in that. My job was to make whoever was out front sound so good that they'd get an encore.

JW: In 1952 you formed your great trio with Earl May on bass and Charlie Smith on drums.




BT: That was one of the best trios I ever led. It was my  first real trio. Earl May stayed with me for 12 years. I wish Charlie Smith could have stayed, too. But he couldn't hold his whiskey and soon went on to do other things. By 1954 I replaced hm with Percy Brice.  
JW: It was a new sound for you, too. There was more of a mood in your playing.
BT: I had listened to all of the great pianists. I learned from Art Tatum and assimilated many different things from different players. I was able to use all of it at will.

JW: How good were the guys in your trio?




BT: Before we played our Town Hall concert in  December 1954. I had added a new song, Theodora, to the program. The song was named after my wife. We were going to play it at Town Hall. The problem was that by the day we were scheduled to appear, I still hadn't written it [laughs].
JW: What did you do?
BT: I ran everyone out and wrote it. I played it once for Earl May before the concert, but he didn't have time to truly learn it. On stage, he was nine feet away, yet he heard what I was playing and responded to it. He and Percy sounded great. That's how intuitive each of us was.
JW: The sound was sensitive and assertive.
BT: At this point, all of the things I had been working on had come to a head. I was in command, and we had come together as a group. That was the beginning of my experience as a leader. I knew what I wanted to do and how to pull the other guys into my frame of mind. That's what a leader does.
JW: But there was a new level of grace and smoothness in your playing.
BT: When I sit down at the piano, in my mind I'm out to play elegantly and to swing. All of my mentors did this—playing the way they were thinking. The way you look and feel is the way you sound. I tried to live up to that.
JW: How did you develop that new sound?
BT: Friends used to come into Birdland and in between sets they'd tell me they were bringing their girlfriends in the next night and asked if I could play some romantic ballads to help get things going [laughs].

JW: In 1954 you recorded with Candido Camero and kicked off a new jazz-Latin combo sound.




BT: I had been playing quite a bit with Latin players for a  couple of years. I had played with Machito and Mario Bauza and recorded with guys like Jose Mangual, Frank Colon and Manny Oquendo in my groups. But the sound hadn't caught on yet. Maybe because the Latin artists who played with me had always been used as background percussionists. With Candido, we were musical partners, which is what listeners responded to.
JW: How did you meet Candido?
BT: Dizzy brought him into Le Down Beat one day and asked me to listen to him. Dizzy wanted to hear how he was playing at the time. I think Dizzy wanted to see how he'd work in his band.

JW: What did you say?




BT: I said, "But Dizzy, I already have a drummer.” Dizzy said, “No,  no, he plays the conga drum.” So this guy comes up on stage with not one but two conga drums. From the moment Candido started playing, Monte Kay [Birdland's manager] shouted out, “You’re hired.” Dizzy wanted me to audition him for his band but lost him to my group [laughs]. Dizzy brought him to the wrong place for an audition [laughs].
JW: Soon afterward, you recorded Billy Taylor Trio with Candido for Prestige Records. It still sounds great.
BT: After he was hired, Candido worked with me for the next six months. I was delighted to have someone of his stature playing with me. The thing that he brought to jazz was the excitement. The Latin beat is a very different thing. It wasn’t until I had played with Machito that I realized it’s like clapping your hands on the wrong beat.

JW: Did you ever feel you and Oscar Peterson were in competition?




BT: I had heard about Oscar in the mid-1940s but never   met him early on. He was an interesting player. When I first heard him in Canada, he was playing boogie-woogie. In the late 1940s, when I heard what he was doing as a member of Jazz at the Philharmonic, I realized he really got it together listening to Art Tatum.
JW: Was there a rivalry or envy?
BT: Among us? No. For me, I had no reason to be envious of other piano players. I had already been Art Tatum's protégé. So it didn’t bother me what other guys were doing or thought after that. Of course, I listened to guys who were coming along behind me, like Oscar Peterson, and watched them grow. Oscar literally took the Art Tatum thing to another level.
JW: Having been as close as you were to Art Tatum, that experience must have been quite a confidence builder.
BT: It was. It’s an amazing thing to have in your heart. You don’t know how many times that came to me. Art liked what I did, so to hell with you! [laughs] After Art, it didn’t matter what anyone thought.

JW: In January 1957, you recorded My Fair Lady Loves Jazz. Despite its seemingly commercial theme, it's one of the best interpretations of this musical.




BT: That was Creed Taylor's [pictured] idea. He was at ABC  Paramount at the time. He came to me and said he wanted to do a Broadway-themed album. He said there was a show called My Fair Lady that was very popular. It had been running on Broadway for a year, since 1956. The jazz album that Creed had in mind would celebrate the show's first anniversary.

JW: What did you say?



BT: I said, "But Creed, jazz musicians have already  recorded this music.” Creed said he knew but wanted to come at it from a different direction. Then he asked if I had a dream arranger in mind for the date. So I shot for the moon. I said, "I’d like Quincy Jones." I had recorded with Quincy several times and knew how special he was. The next thing I know, Creed had Quincy on board. Creed was something [laughs].

JW: Looking back, what do you think of the album?




BT: It's one of the best albums I ever recorded. Quincy did all the arranging and I was featured on piano. Quincy brought in Jimmy Cleveland, Jimmy Buffington, Tony Ortega, Don Elliott, Ernie Royal and all of the other great guys on the date.

JW: Why was baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan on some tracks and Charlie Fowlkes on others?




BT: Gerry and I had been hanging out during that period.  We were good friends. Gerry had come out to Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey with me to watch me record. At one point, Charlie Fowlkes, who was on the date, had to leave to catch a bus back to Manhattan.
JW: What did you do?
BT: I said, "OK, we’ll have to close it off for the day.” Gerry was sitting there and said, “Wait, you guys are just hitting your groove. I’ll play.” So Gerry sat in and played on Show Me, The Rain in Spain, I Could Have Danced All Night and Get Me to the Church on Time. And he was fantastic.

JW: What was Gerry like as a person?




BT: It’s a funny thing. I knew Gerry for a long time, since he was with Elliot Lawrence's band in the early 1950s. As was the case with Charlie Mingus, Gerry and I argued for fun all the time. His wife and my wife were faced with the same problem. Whenever Gerry and I would talk on the phone, we'd wind up arguing. Each of  our wives would come over to us on separate ends and say, "Who in heavens' name are you talking to?" Gerry would tell his wife, and I'd tell mine. Then they'd each say, "Oh, OK," and turn and go about their business [laughs]. They were so used to it that they knew well enough to leave us alone [laughs].

JW: In November 1957 you recorded Taylor Made Jazz, one of your finest albums with all original material.  



BT: I was in Chicago at the time with my trio at the time—bassist Earl  May and Ed Thigpen on drums. It just so happened that the Ellington band was in town at the same time. So I was asked by Argo Records to make that record with some of the Duke's musicians. But I was under contract to ABC Paramount at the time. I told Argo I couldn't do the date under my own name. But I suggested they call it Earl May and Ed Thigpen Play the Music of Billy Taylor to give them credit.
JW: Did the label go for it?
BT: They said they understood the problem. We went ahead and recorded, but instead of releasing it under my suggested title, the label held up the album's release for a couple of years until my contract with ABC expired. Then they released it under my name. That was a drag.
JW: Songs like Mood for Mendes are incredible.
BT: Thank you. I wrote that for Jim Mendes, the disc jockey. He wound up using it as his theme song. In fact, many of those songs were written for radio disk jockeys. Biddy's Beat was for a deejay in Baltimore named Biddy. Daddy-O was for Daddy O Daly a deejay in Chicago. Tune for Tex was for Tex Gathing in Washington, D.C.

JW: How did the date come together?



BT: I had to do it in a hurry because I wasn’t sure I could  get Johnny Hodges. To have Johnny play solo on four of my tunes was an incredible treat, especially Theodora. He played them all so beautifully.

JW: What else was special about the date?



BT: It was the first time Clark Terry played flugelhorn on a record date. I know this because the guy who was living with him arrived in between tracks. He had a box and insisted he be allowed to see Clark. When he came into the studio, Clark took the   box and opened it. Inside was a flugelhorn that had just arrived at his home that day. Clark took out the horn and played it on Cu-Blu on my record.
JW: How easy was the session?
BT: Very. I’ve always been a big Ellington fan. To be able to use a good chunk of that band was fantastic. Hodges read through one song after the next. After each song I asked him if he wanted a re-take. He said, "No, that's OK." What most people don't realize is that Johnny covered those all in one take. And Harry Carney had such a big sound on there. Of all of the baritone players that were around then, Harry was unique.

JW: How long did it take to write I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free in the mid-1960s?



BT: That song took about 15 minutes to write and a year and a co-writer to finish. Nina Simone's recording was the first and the best one ever done. She really got it.
JW: How did you come up with the melody so quickly?
BT: My daughter Kim came home from school one day singing a spiritual. But she didn’t really know what it was and didn't have the proper feel behind it.
JW: What did you say?
BT: I said, "Kim, this is a part of your heritage. You can’t be singing a spiritual like that. You have to have more feeling." I sat down at the piano and said, "The spiritual is so much a part of our tradition that I can sit here and make one up on the spot. This is the feeling you need to have.”
JW: What did you play?
BT:  I made up a little ditty. Then I asked if she understood. She said, "Yes, Daddy," and went back to playing with her dolls. After she went back to her room, I got to thinking, "Hey, this isn’t a bad little tune." So I wrote it down. Spirituals suggest things about who we are and what we’re about and what we long for.
JW: Where did the title come from?
BT: From the melody. I think lyrically when I compose. I came up with the title after I wrote it down. I thought, this is what this song is all about.

JW: What about the year and a half part?



BT: I struggled with the lyrics. I called Dick Dallas, a young man I had been writing  music with in those days. My words weren't saying what I wanted the song to say. Dick helped me finish the lyrics. I was so delighted by the song's reception. I’m awed by that.
JW: You almost defy what people think about jazz musicians.
BT: What do you mean?
JW: Jazz musicians by nature are  introspective. Many carry a great deal of friction and intensity. It's part of their creative DNA. You’re open, friendly and rather easy-going.
BT: I was brought up like that, I guess. It’s nothing that I learned. It seemed a natural thing to do. I was always focused on giving things my best shot. Back in the early days when I was learning to play, musicians were very kind and generous with me. I feel I have to pass that on.

   

JazzWax tracks: Billy's 1952-1955 trio recordings can be  found on two superb Prestige CDs: Billy Taylor Trio here and Billy Taylor Trio with Earl  May and Percy Brice here, which includes the trio's Town Hall concert.


Billy's 1954 recording with Candido, The Billy Taylor Trio with Candido, can be found here.
Taylor Made Jazz,


Billy's 1957 album of original compositions arranged by Johnny Pate with members of the  Duke Ellington Orchestra, is notoriously difficult to find. And pricy when you do locate it. The CD seems to be available here, but you should verify first.


My Fair Lady Loves Jazz was released on CD in 1994 and has since gone out of print. You can find copies here. I found all of the tracks hidden away on this Billy Taylor CD here (tracks 13-19).
I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free is also out of print. But you can see what it looks like here to begin your online search.
JazzWax clip: Here's Billy and Candido reviving their 1954 classic recording of Mambo Inn in 1998 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C....

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顶啦绝对棒！。。
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感谢