Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

Billy Taylor has, as Leonard Feather tells it in the Encyclopedia of Jazz, “won great respect among fellow musicians as a consistent and adaptable artist.” The answer is experience – there’s no substitute for it.

It you regard the list of the bands and combos Billy has played with you will readily see why he is consistent and adaptable. He has worked with violinists Eddie South and Stuff Smith, with Artie Shaw as part of a duo with organist Bob Wyatt and at Birdland, for over a year running, with everyone from Slim Gaillard to Lee Konitz and including Dizzy Gillespie, Terry Gibbs and Gerry Mulligan. In 1946 he spent two months with one of the top Latin bands in the business – Machito. In those two months, he learned much about the Latin beat and its connection to jazz, and became extremely interested in this area of rhythmic exploration. That he had retained his interest was evident in 1952 when he formed his own trio. Latin numbers became a basic part of his repertoire.

When the mambo replaced the rhumba as the new beat in dancing, he was able to incorporate it quickly into the trio’s book.

When Billy decided it was time to record some of his original mambos, he sought to augment the trio and it was none other than his old leader Machito whose rhythm section he reached into in order to get the beat he wanted. His regular drummer Charlie Smith moved over to the conga drum to join Machito’s men, Uba Nieto (this Uba doesn’t play the tuba) a swinger on the timbales and the little firebrand Joe Mangual (the g is silent but Joe isn’t) on the bongos. To add a further fillip, Frank Grillo (known to his fans as Machito) stood in with a set of bright green, cylindrical maracas.

To give you an idea of how good these four tunes are, Machito said that any dance studio could use them for instruction purposes because the tempos were so perfect. One of the tunes is named for Candido, the conga player, who when first in America sat in with Billy at the Down Beat Club (now defunct but then on West 54th St.), he broke it up and went on to make quite a reputation for himself in this country.

The remainder, and majority, of this Cross Section of the Taylor talent is left to the trio. Recorded several years after the mambo date, it has Percy Brice replacing Charlie Smith at the drums and Earl May, the old left-hander, at the bass. As this was written in 1957, Earl is still southpawing it up, having lasted through three drummers.

When these eight tunes were originally issued, Billy dedicated them to eight different disc jockeys. some of whom are no longer on the air. One is Bob Garrity, and this brings to mind that we haven’t got one decent jazz disc jockey in New York, where most of the jazz records are made and thousands of jazz fans reside. It’s a ridiculous situation.

Although some of the jockeys are no longer there to play them, the tunes are as good as they were then, from the swinging Tune For Tex and Biddy’s Beat to the lovely performances of Moonlight In Vermont, I’ll Be Around and Goodbye. B.T. has got a way with a balled I say soft lights, a bottle of sparkling burgundy, a Billy Taylor ballad and she’ll say yes… yes to the fact that Billy Taylor has a way with a ballad.