Fred Taylor

If you’re a jazz musician who’s played in Boston anytime over the past half century, it’s a good bet you got the gig because of Fred Taylor. The Newton native and 1951 Boston University grad started as a performer, taking piano lessons from Madame Margaret Chaloff when he was in elementary school and eventually playing drums in The Don Creighton Orchestra. But he was destined for a very different area of the music business.

Born in Boston on June 28, 1929, Taylor was a lifelong jazz fan; the first 78 he ever bought was Dizzy Gillespie’s 1941 hit “Salt Peanuts.” In his teens and early 20s, he hung out in Smiling Jack’s record shop, frequented the famed jazz club Storyville and listened to the old jazz-formatted WILD. Doing some freelance recording work on the side, he hooked up with organist Joe Bucci, became his manager, got him a recording contract with Capitol Records and was on the way to becoming Boston’s busiest jazz promoter.

In the mid-’50s, Taylor established H.T. Productions with Ed Halian, an apartment mate. After Halian left the business in 1960, he teamed with John Sdoucos, booking jazz bands at clubs all over Boston and in New Bedford. He was also responsible for booking Bob Dylan at Symphony Hall in ‘64 and Bruce Springsteen in his Boston debut in ‘73 (at Paul’s Mall).

JAZZ WORKSHOP, PAUL’S MALL, SCULLERS JAZZ CLUB, TANGLEWOOD

Fate put Taylor in touch with Harold Buchalter, who owned clubs all over the city, including the original Jazz Workshop on Huntington Avenue. When Buchalter moved the Workshop to Boylston Street in 1963, he asked Taylor to help with advertising and promotion. When he opened Paul’s Mall right next door a year later, he hired Taylor as the club’s booking agent, telling him to bring in acts that were very different from those appearing at the Workshop. Taylor eventually took over both clubs.

“My whole idea,” said Taylor, “was to have two sides where you could have the real thing in the Jazz Workshop, and more popular and contemporary stuff in Paul’s Mall.” While the Workshop would feature Miles and Mingus, the Mall would bring in Hoyt Axton and Dan Hicks, as well as lots of comedy, ranging from Henny Youngman to Cheech and Chong. The clubs lasted until 1978, but Taylor was also booking one-off shows at the Hynes Auditorium, Music Hall and other venues. In 1987, he was invited to take over a small room that would eventually become Scullers Jazz Club, where he remained the entertainment director until early 2017, booking the acts, handling the advertising and organizing the comings and goings of artists. Between 2001 and 2007, he was the artistic director for the Tanglewood Jazz Festival.

LATER YEARS, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, DEATH

Before his death on October 26, 2019 at age 90, Taylor continued to book one-night shows in and around Boston and Worcester, was involved with live jazz broadcasts on WGBH and cowrote (with jazz historian Richard Vacca) the autobiography, What, and Give Up Show Biz?: Six Decades in the Music Business (Backbeat Books, 2020).

Taylor was a regular at jazz events into his late 80s and consistently championed the value of live performances over recorded ones. “When you’re listening to a record, you’re using one of your senses – your ears,” he once said. “When you go to see a group perform, you use your eyes, your ears and there is an emotional reaction as well. Also, a studio is rehearsed, planned, tight. When you go to see a group live, anything goes. And usually what you hear on a record doesn’t give you a clue as to what the group can do.”

(by Ed Symkus)