Billy Taylor at the London House ABC-Paramount. (1956)  With Earl May on Bass and Percy Brice on Drums.  This was one of those albums that was in my house growing up and that turned me on to jazz as a teenager.  I met Billy Taylor once I moved to New York.  He started a New York City non-profit organization called Jazzmobile that for 40+ years has brought jazz musicians to neighborhoods around the city for free concerts on the back of a flatbed truck.  I spent many a Wednesday night in the late 80’s at Grant’s Tomb on 125th and Riverside Drive listening to Billy, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Horace Silver and other legends swinging hard and easy under summer skies.

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