blues on the menjay

I remember having the great fortune of meeting him in April of last year, at the same event where I had the other great fortune of playing with Wynton Marsalis. I didn’t know who he was when I met him, but I now know how much he has contributed to jazz. He will truly be missed.

R.I.P. Billy Taylor

npr:

Billy Taylor, a pianist who became one of the country’s foremost ambassadors for jazz music — including many years as an NPR host — died Tuesday night. The cause was a heart attack, according to his daughter, Kim Taylor Thompson. He was 89.

Born in 1921, Taylor had been a professional musician for more than six decades. After graduating from Virginia State College, he moved to New York in 1944; there, his first big gig was in the band of saxophonist Ben Webster. He would end up playing with essentially all the greats of that era, and many of them since. As a recording artist, he’s best known as the leader of a trio, a format he maintained since the 1950s, and also as the composer of the song “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.”

-From A Blog Supreme