US jazz pianist and composer Billy Taylor has died in Manhattan, The New York Times reported Wednesday. He was 89.
Taylor, who also built a radio and television career, died of heart failure on Tuesday, the Times said, citing his daughter Kim Taylor-Thompson.
The pianist, who earned a doctorate in music education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1975, preferred to be called Doctor Taylor.
He arrived in New York in 1943, playing with the tenor saxophonist Ben Webster and becoming a fixture at the celebrated Three Deuces night club before forming his own trio in 1951.
Among his more than 300 compositions, the simple gospel theme "I wish I knew how it would feel to be free" became an unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
A longtime fixture of US television, he was musical director of the NBC television show "The Subject Is Jazz" and a cultural correspondent on the CBS News program "Sunday Morning." He then contributed for over two decades as a show host to National Public Radio (NPR).
Taylor also taught jazz courses at Long Island University, the Manhattan School of Music and other institutions.
In 1965, he founded Jazzmobile to bring free outdoor concerts by nationally known musicians to predominantly black neighborhoods at street corners and housing projects throughout New York City.
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