William Simon

William Simon "Bill" grew up in St. Genevieve, Missouri, hearing Fate Marable's group and other piano players from New Orleans coming up the Mississippi River on steamboats. Around 1934, he met Jess Stacy, Benny Goodman's piano player who became his friend and teacher of the 'barrel-house' style of stride piano playing. During World War II, Bill trained as a pilot in the USAF and played piano for the Officer's Core. After World War II, he played live on radio station KVOO, Tulsa, Oklahoma, which at the time was an NBC affiliate. There he met his future wife, big band singer Taudie Dalton. Together they entertained on a show called "Eggs at Eight". Using the G.I. Bill, Bill completed his music education at the University of Colorado in Boulder where he earned and Masters of Music in the early 1950s. During this time Bill studied music harmony under Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Later he wrote and published a choral arrangement of an old negro folk song called "Dun Caught a Rabbit". It became an immediate success through the music publisher Carl Fisher. As a result, he and Taudie moved to New York where he began working for Carl Fisher full time as an editor and an arranger, a job he continued to do for the next forty or so years. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, he and Taudie moved to Montclair, N.J. where they raised two sons, Todd and Reed. There he began a job as a church organist and choir director at the Bloomfield Church on the Green in Bloomfield, N.J. He also took a position as a full time professor at the Bloomfield College where he was eventually tenured. He is survived by both sons, Todd and wife Susan, Reed and wife Sandra, and grandchildren Rebecca, Lydia, Julia and Peter. The family prefers that those who wish may make contributions in his name to The Bloomfield Presbyterian Church on the Green, 147 Broad St., Bloomfield, NJ, 07003, where a memorial service will be held at a date to be announced.


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