Sleeping Bee Billy Taylor Trio

• 1 La petite mambo 04:46
• 2 Theodora 05:43
• 3 Paraphrase 04:20
• 4 Bye Y'all 05:12
• 5 Don't Go Down South 03:27
• 6 Brother, Where Are You? 05:32
• 7 There Will Never Be Another You 08:23
• 8 A Sleepin' Bee 05:26
• Total Runtime 42:49

Info for Sleeping Bee

I know of no major jazz musician who does not possess an enormous respect and feeling for the blues, regardless of whether or not plays the blues.” So said pianist Billy Taylor during a discussion about the importance of the blues in jazz.

Born in 1921 in North Carolina, Taylor worked with most of the jazz greats, including Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Gerry Mulligan. He was a master of every jazz style, and was deeply influenced by the blues. On his album “Sleeping Bee”, two of the eight pieces, “Petite Mambo and “Bye Y'all” take on the 12 bar blues form.

Taylor was born into an upper-middleclass Afro-American family, and began piano lessons at an early age. He graduated in 1942 with a B.S. in music, and subsequently sparked his playing career by promoting jazz in his roles as teacher, author, and radio and TV moderator.For Taylor, jazz is “America's classical music”. Successful and highly educated, Dr.

Taylor was seen as a repudiation of the cliché of the inarticulate, drug addicted jazz musician. Taylor saw himself as an “Urban Griot”. Like those West African musical bards, Taylor wanted to pass on the cultural heritage of his people to younger generations. To accomplish this, he founded the Jazzmobile in 1964. To this day, the organization presents jazz concerts for free in urban settings under the open sky. Highly esteemed as a major contributor to jazz as player, educator, and proselytizer, Taylor died in 2010.

"Billy Taylor and his 1969 trio (which includes bassist Ben Tucker and drummer Grady Tate) perform four of Taylor's originals, Errol Garner's "La Petite Mambo," Oscar Brown, Jr.'s "Brother Where Are You" and two standards on this MPS set which was last available as a Pausa LP. The enjoyable music swings and fits perfectly into the jazz mainstream of the era." (Scott Yanow, AMG)

Billy Taylor, piano
Ben Tucker, bass
Grady Tate, drums

Recorded April 1969, RCA-Studio, New York
Recorded by Bob Simpson
Produced by Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer

Digitally remastered

Billy Taylor
Pianist, composer, and recording artist Billy Taylor was born in Greenville, North Carolina, on July 24, 1921, to a dentist father and schoolteacher mother. As a youth, Taylor and his family moved to Washington, D.C.; it was there that he began to study music. During his teenaged years, Taylor was heavily influenced by the sounds of the Big Bands that were popular. Young Taylor experimenting with many instruments, including drums, guitar and the saxophone, before he found his niche with the study of classical piano. Aside from actively pursing his musical education through independent means, Taylor also remained active in academia, graduating from Virginia State College in 1942 with his B.A. degree in Music.

Taylor moved to New York City in 1944, where he began his professional music career playing piano with Ben Webster's Quartet on 52nd Street. Taylor eventually became the house pianist at the legendary Birdland jazz club, where played alongside musical greats such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis. Taylor continued on in the New York circuits, until the 1950s, when he began to lead and record with his own trio.

Taylor entered the realm of television in the 1970s, when he took on the role of musical director for The David Frost Show, which broadcast on the U.S. Westinghouse Corporation television stations. In addition to his activities with The David Frost Show, Taylor also acted as the musical director for Tony Brown’s Black Journal Tonight, a weekly show on PBS. Later in his television career, Taylor hosted his own jazz piano show on the Bravo network called Jazz Counterpoint. Despite his forays into visual media, Taylor remained closely tied to the world of audio by hosting a variety of radio both locally in New York, and syndicated nationally by National Public Radio. Perhaps his widest radio audience was reached when Taylor became the arts correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning in the early 1980s.

In addition to becoming a well respected musician of international fame, Taylor also went on to become a successful music educator. Taylor received his Masters and Doctorate degrees in Music Education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and went on to serve as the Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale University. Subsequent to these academic achievements, Taylor received several honorary doctoral degrees over the course of his career.

Recipient of numerous awards and appointments throughout his career, Taylor became one of only three jazz musicians at the time to be appointed to the National Council of the Arts. In addition to serving on the National Council of the Arts, Taylor was also appointed the artistic advisor on jazz for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where he developed a run of widely acclaimed series, including the Louis Armstrong Legacy series, and the annual Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival.

For his performances and professional activities, Taylor received two Peabody Awards; an Emmy; a Grammy; and a place in the Hall of Fame for the International Association of Jazz Educators. At the time of his interview in 2005, Taylor was still professionally active; touring and recording with his Trio, playing concert dates, appearing in television and radio engagements, writing music, and lecturing.

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