Born William Taylor on the 24th July 1921 in Greenville, North Carolina USA, Billy was a musician, jazz pianist and composer, and also lectured on jazz at several colleges across the USA. He passed away in 2010.
Have you ever wondered how rich Billy Taylor was, at the time of his death? According to authoritative sources, it was estimated that Taylor’s net worth was as high as $5 million, an amount earned largely through his successful career as a jazz musician, active from the mid- 1940s. During his career, Billy released over 40 albums as a bandleader, while he also contributed to the work of other musicians, including Johnny Hartman, Coleman Hawkins, Sal Salvador and Lucky Thompson among many others.
Billy Taylor Net Worth $5 Million
Billy’s family moved to Washington, D.C. when he was five, where he spent the rest of his childhood. Inspired by his parents who were both musicians, young Billy took-up several musical instruments but was best on piano, and so started taking piano lessons with Henry Grant, who was also a piano teacher to Duke Ellington. Billy was good enough to make his professional debut when he was 13 years old, earning a dollar. He went to Dunbar High School, which at the time was the first school in the USA for African-Americans. Billy then enrolled at Virginia State College and majored in sociology, but graduated with a degree in music in 1942, as pianist Dr. Undine Smith Moore took Billy under his wing once he noticed his musical talents.
Billy then moved to New York City to pursue his professional career, finding his first job in 1944 when he joined Ben Webster’s Quartet, and then until the ‘50s, played with a number of musicians, including Don Redman, Bob Wyatt, Sylvia Syms and Billie Holiday, before he became the house pianist at the jazz club Birdland. There, he played with J. J. Johnson, Stan Getz, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, eventually becoming the longest-tenured pianist in the aforementioned club.
After earning a name for himself as a club player, Billy wanted to prove himself as a composer; in 1952 he made a breakthrough with the song “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free”, and throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s, enjoyed more success as composer with such albums as “The Billy Taylor Trio with Candido” (1954), which was a collaboration with Cuban percussionist Candido Camero, “My Fair Lady Loves Jazz” (1957), “Impromptu” (1962), and “Sleeping Bee” (1969), the sales of which increased his wealth to a large degree. Billy continued making new material until 2002 when he suffered a stroke, although not many albums struck a chord with the public.
Aside from playing and recording jazz music, Billy started an educational program about jazz, entitled Jazzmobile, and was also the Musical Director of NBC’s The Subject Is Jazz”, and a DJ and program director on New York’s radio station WLIB during the ‘60s. With his Jazzmobile, Billy produced the jazz special aired on National Public Radio, which received the Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcasting Programs. In the early ‘80s, Billy was appointed as an on-air correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning, and interviewed over 250 musicians during his stint on the show, winning an Emmy Award for his interview with famed bandleader Quincy Jones. He was also a well-respected educator, serving as the Wilbur D. Barrett Chair of Music at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, and a Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale, while also holding jazz courses at several universities, including Long Island University, Manhattan School of Music, Howard University as well as the University of Massachusetts Amherst, from which he obtained a Master’s degree, and a PhD in 1975.
In recognition of his success, Billy received numerous awards, including a Grammy Award and a National Medal of Arts, and was also the artistic director for jazz at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, where during his reign, Billy organized a number of successful concert series, including the Louis Armstrong Legacy series. He also served on the National Council of the Arts, becoming one of only three jazz musicians to achieve such a position. He also showcased his musical talents at the White House seven times during his career. In 2010 he was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame.
Regarding his personal life, Billy was married to Theodora from 1964 until his death; the couple had two children together. He passed away on the 28th December 2010 after a heart attack.
