Researching Billy Taylor

A jazz activist, Taylor sat on the Honorary Founders Board of The Jazz Foundation of America, an organisation he founded in 1989, with Ann Ruckert, Herb Storfer and Phoebe Jacobs, to save the homes and the lives of America's elderly jazz and blues musicians, later including musicians who survived Hurricane Katrina.

Taylor was a jazz educator, who lectured in colleges, served on panels and travelled worldwide as a jazz ambassador. Critic Leonard Feather once said, "It is almost indisputable that Dr. Billy Taylor is the world's foremost spokesman for jazz."

He started playing for Hampshire during the 2004 season, before which he played for Sussex. While at Sussex, he had won the Frizzell County Championship in 2003, their first season victory in the trophy's history. He received a county cap for Hampshire in 2006.

Taylor, who also played for Wiltshire, has three hat-tricks to his name and was listed in the 2005 C&G Trophy-winning Hampshire squad. He achieved one of his hat tricks during a Hampshire v Middlesex game and a career best of 6 for 32, this was the first hat trick at the Rose Bowl.

Hampshire chairman Rod Bransgrove announced on 27 August 2009 that the club had released Taylor, ending his five-year tenure at the club. In 2011, he was added to the England and Wales Cricket Board list of reserve umpires, alongside Russell Evans and Alex Wharf. In 2016 Billy was appointed to the ECB's Full Umpires List.

His brother, James, has also played List A and Minor Counties cricket for Wiltshire.

Taylor was an honor roll student and commencement speaker at West Aurora High School in Aurora, Illinois. He was recruited by Digger Phelps to play at the University of Notre Dame, though he played under John MacLeod. After spending three years working for Arthur Andersen and earning his CPA, he took an assistant coaching position under MacLeod at Notre Dame in 1998. One year later he followed former Lehigh head coach Fran McCaffery to UNC-Greensboro.

In 2002, he was offered the head coaching position at Lehigh. In his inaugural campaign, Taylor become the all-time winningest first-year coach in Lehigh history. Coach Taylor and the Mountain Hawks surprised many by winning 16 games, including eight in the Patriot League. Their eleven-game improvement over the year before was the second best in all of Division I. For his outstanding efforts, Taylor earned the 2002–03 Patriot League Coach of the Year honors in voting by the league coaches. In 2003-04, Taylor led Lehigh to its first-ever Patriot League regular season and tournament championships, as well as a trip to the NCAA tournament. For his efforts, Taylor earned the league's Coach of the Year honor for the second time in as many seasons, becoming the first coach since Gonzaga's Mark Few to win conference coach of the year honors in each of his first two seasons as a head coach.

In 2005-06, Lehigh posted the third-most wins in school history with its 19-12 overall mark and a school-record 11 Patriot League wins.

In August 2007 he was offered and took the head coaching position at Ball State University. During his six seasons at Ball State (2007–13), the Cardinals finished either first or second in the Mid-American Conference (MAC) West Division three times and advanced to the MAC Tournament semifinals twice. Taylor coached nine all-conference selections and also mentored a MAC All-Freshman Team member five straight seasons. He was fired in March 2013.

Taylor rejoined McCaffery prior to the 2013–14 season at the University of Iowa. Taylor was Hawkeyes staff for back-to-back NCAA Tournament teams (2013–14 and 2014–15). In 2014-15, Iowa advanced to the Round of 32 after posting its largest margin of victory ever in an NCAA Tournament game, a 31-point win over Davidson. The Hawkeyes produced back-to-back first-team All-Big Ten honorees and NBA Draft selections (Roy Devyn Marble in 2014 and Aaron White in 2015) with Taylor on staff.

In June 2016, Taylor was hired as the head men's basketball coach at Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, North Carolina. In May 2019, he rejoined McCaffery at Iowa.

Taylor began playing tuba but later picked up bass alongside it. After moving to New York City in 1924, he played with Elmer Snowden (1925), Willie Gant and Arthur Gibbs (1926), Charlie Johnson (1927–29, 1932–33), Duke Ellington (1928), McKinney's Cotton Pickers (1929–31), Fats Waller (1934), and Fletcher Henderson. He recorded with Jelly Roll Morton on three sessions in 1930. From 1935 to 1940, he again played with Ellington, and it is for this association that he is best remembered; he often played with a second bassist in the orchestra, at times Hayes Alvis or Jimmie Blanton. During that time, he also recorded with Cootie Williams and Johnny Hodges. In the 1940s, he played with Coleman Hawkins (1940), Red Allen (1940–41), Joe Sullivan (1942), Raymond Scott (1942–43), Cootie Williams (1944), Barney Bigard (1944–45), Benny Morton (1945), and Cozy Cole (1945). Later in the decade he played freelance in New York before moving back to Washington, D.C. in 1949. He led his own ensemble for Keynote Records in 1944.