(Jazz) BILLY TAYLOR (ca. 1960-70s) Set of 5 portraits

Five vintage original 8 x 10″ (20 x 25 cm) black-and-white photos, near fine.

Jazz artist Billy Taylor appeared on hundreds of albums and composed more than 300 songs during his career, which spanned over six decades. His 1963 song “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” dealt with civil rights issues and became the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. It was selected as “one of the greatest songs of the sixties” by the New York Times.

Engaging and educating more audiences and young people was a central part of Taylor’s career. He was the Wilbur D. Barrett Chair of Music at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale. Besides publishing instructional books on jazz, he taught jazz courses at Howard University, Long Island University, the Manhattan School of Music, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. (Wikipedia)

Cook and Morton, Penguin Guide to Jazz, 2002, p. 1421: “While Taylor has become best known as one of the most experienced and respected forces in jazz education in America, his talents as a performer should be recognized more than they are. He played with everyone from Stuff Smith to Charlie Parker… and having worked with Machito stood him in good enough standing to make his Latin-flavoured outtings plausible. Taylor’s affinities are essentially with bop, [but with] …a cultivated, gentlemanly sound.”

Of the five photos, one is of him as a disc jockey surrounded by albums, with photographer stamp and 1961 date stamp on verso. The one of him at the piano has mimeographed text on verso referring to his television appearance on Black Journal in 1972. There are three other portraits of Taylor, all ca. 1970s, one of them with photographer stamp on verso.