Pianist Billy Taylor died yesterday at age 89, leaving a lasting legacy as America’s consummate jazz advocate.

Soon after getting his degree in Music Education, the Washington D.C.-raised Taylor became the house pianist at New York’s legendary Birdland, where he stayed throughout the ‘40s and ‘50s, playing with Bird, Dizzy and Miles and solidifying his role as a fixture and statesman in the city’s jazz scene.

But Taylor is perhaps best known as this country’s premier jazz educator, among the first to declare jazz “America’s classical music.” His long-running Jazzmobile project has produced concerts and educational programs throughout the American Eastern seaboard for 45 years.

Taylor was also the first to bring jazz thought and theory to mainstream American radio and TV. He was the jazz correspondent on CBS News Sunday Morning and on NPR.

But before all that, as the McCarthy era faded and Jim Crow was on its last gasp, Taylor was music director on an NBC show called The Subject is Jazz, which ran in 1958.
 

 
Here’s Nina Simone singing the Taylor-penned Civil Rights movement anthem “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free”…
 

Youtube has two episodes of “the subject is jazz”

the cool jazz episode

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7gNvkFDj9g

and the swing episode

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFGJOaXQpIg

There are also excerpts of Cannonball Adderley playing Monk’s ‘round about midnight’ from the bop episode

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d50kGmSY2Gw

I pray to god that they will release this series on DVD if they haven’t already. These are probably some of the best jazz performances you’ll find on youtube, enjoy!