JOHN BIRKS "DIZZY" GILLESPIE (1917-1993): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, music theorist, and teacher

 

SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR:  KOFI  NATAMBU

FALL, 2015

VOLUME TWO            NUMBER ONE
 

JIMI HENDRIX
  

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

LAURA MVULA
October 10-16

DIZZY GILLESPIE
October 17-23

LESTER YOUNG
October 24-30

TIA FULLER
October 31-November 6

ROSCOE MITCHELL
November 7-13

MAX ROACH
November 14-20

DINAH WASHINGTON
November 21-27

BUDDY GUY
November 28-December 4

JOE HENDERSON
December 5-11

HENRY THREADGILL
December 12-18

MUDDY WATERS
December 19-25

B.B. KING
December 26-January 1

"The music of Charlie Parker and me laid a foundation for all the music that is being played now. Our music is going to be the classical music of the future."

                         – Dizzy Gillespie, 1917-1993

http://www.biography.com/people/dizzy-gillespie-9311417

Dizzy Gillespie
(b. October 21, 1917-d. January 6, 1993) 

Biography

Composer, Trumpet Player, Singer 

(1917–1993)

Name

 

Dizzy Gillespie

Occupation

Songwriter, Trumpet Player, Singer

Birth Date

October 21, 1917

Death Date

January 6, 1993

Education

Laurinburg Institute

Place of Birth

Cheraw, South Carolina

Place of Death

Englewood, New Jersey

AKA

John Gillespie

Full Name

John Birks Gillespie

• Synopsis
• Early Life
• Commercial Success
• Final Years
• Related Videos

• Cite This Page

A jazz trumpeter and composer, Dizzy Gillespie played with Charlie Parker and developed the music known as "bebop." His best-known compositions include "Oop Bob Sh' Bam," "Groovin' High," "Salt Peanuts" and "A Night in Tunisia."
 
Synopsis

Born on October 21, 1917, in Cheraw, South Carolina, Dizzy Gillespie, known for his "swollen" cheeks and signature (uniquely angled) trumpet's bell, got his start in the mid-1930s by working in prominent swing bands, including those of Benny Carter and Charlie Barnet. He later created his own band and developed his own signature style, known as "bebop," and worked with musical greats like Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Earl Hines, Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington. Gillespie's best-known compositions include "Oop Bob Sh' Bam," "Groovin' High," "Salt Peanuts," "A Night in Tunisia" and "Johnny Come Lately." Gillespie died in New Jersey in 1993. Today, he is considered one of the most influential figures of jazz and bebop.

Early Life

Famed jazz trumpeter and composer Dizzie Gillespie was born John Birks Gillespie on October 21, 1917, in Cheraw, South Carolina. He would go on to become one of the most recognizable faces of jazz music, with his "swollen" cheeks and signature (uniquely angled) trumpet's bell, as well as one of the most influential figures of jazz and bebop.
When he was 18 years old, Gillespie moved with his family to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He joined the Frankie Fairfax Orchestra not long after, and then relocated to New York City, where he performed with Teddy Hill and Edgar Hayes in the late 1930s. Gillespie went on to join Cab Calloway's band in 1939, with whom he recorded "Pickin' the Cabbage"—one of Gillespie's first compositions, and regarded by some in the jazz world as his first attempt to bring a Latin influence into his work.

Commercial Success

From 1937 to '44, Gillespie performed with prominent swing bands, including those of Benny Carter and Charlie Barnet. He also began working with musical greats such as Ella Fitzgerald, Earl Hines, Jimmy Dorsey and Charlie Parker around this time. Working as a bandleader, often with Parker on saxophone, Gillespie developed the musical genre known as "bebop"—a reaction to swing, distinct for dissonant harmonies and polyrhythms. "The music of Charlie Parker and me laid a foundation for all the music that is being played now," Gillespie said years later. "Our music is going to be the classical music of the future."

In addition to creating bebop, Gillespie is considered one of the first musicians to infuse Afro-Cuban, Caribbean and Brazilian rhythms with jazz. His work in the Latin-jazz genre includes "Manteca," "A Night in Tunisia" and "Guachi Guaro," among other recordings.

Gillespie's own big band, which performed from 1946 to '50, was his masterpiece, affording him scope as both soloist and showman. He became immediately recognizable from the unusual shape of his trumpet, with the bell tilted upward at a 45-degree angle—the result of someone accidentally sitting on it in 1953, but to good effect, for when he played it afterward, he discovered that its new shape improved the instrument's sound quality, and he had it incorporated into all his trumpets thereafter. Gillespie's best-known works from this period include the songs "Oop Bob Sh' Bam," "Groovin' High," "Leap Frog," "Salt Peanuts" and "My Melancholy Baby."

In the late 1950s, Gillespie performed with Duke Ellington, Paul Gonsalves and Johnny Hodges on Ellington's Jazz Party (1959). The following year, Gillespie released A Portrait of Duke Ellington (1960), an album dedicated to Ellington also featuring the work of Juan Tizol, Billy Strayhorn and Mercer Ellington, son of the legendary musician. Gillespie composed most of the album's recordings, including "Serenade to Sweden," "Sophisticated Lady" and "Johnny Come Lately."

Final Years

Gillespie's memoirs, entitled To BE or Not to BOP: Memoirs of Dizzy Gillespie (with Al Fraser), were published in 1979. More than a decade later, in 1990, he received the Kennedy Center Honors Award.

Dizzy Gillespie died on January 6, 1993, at age 75, in Englewood, New Jersey.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1021.html

January 7, 1993

OBITUARY

Dizzy Gillespie, Who Sounded Some of Modern Jazz's Earliest Notes, Dies at 75
by PETER WATROUS
New York Times 

 

Dizzy Gillespie, the trumpet player whose role as a founding father of modern jazz made him a major figure in 20th-century American music and whose signature moon cheeks and bent trumpet made him one of the world's most instantly recognizable figures, died yesterday at Englewood Hospital in Englewood, N.J.

Mr. Gillespie, who was 75, had been suffering for some time from pancreatic cancer, his press agent, Virginia Wicks, said.

In a nearly 60-year career as a composer, band leader and innovative player, Mr. Gillespie cut a huge swath through the jazz world. In the early 40's, along with the alto saxophonist Charlie (Yardbird) Parker, he initiated be-bop, the sleek, intense, high-speed revolution that has become jazz's most enduring style. In subsequent years he incorporated Afro-Cuban music into jazz, creating a new genre from the combination.

In the naturally effervescent Mr. Gillespie, opposites existed. His playing -- and he performed constantly until nearly the end of his life -- was meteoric, full of virtuosic invention and deadly serious. But with his endlessly funny asides, his huge variety of facial expressions and his natural comic gifts, he was as much a pure entertainer as an accomplished artist. In some ways, he seemed to sum up all the possibilities of American popular art.

From Carolina To the Big Bands
 

John Birks Gillespie was born in Cheraw, S.C., on Oct. 21, 1917. His father, a bricklayer, led a local band, and by the age of 14 the young Gillespie was practicing the trumpet. He and his family moved to Philadelphia two years later, and Mr. Gillespie, though he thought about entering Temple University, quickly began a succession of professional jobs.

He worked with Bill Doggett, the pianist and organist, who fired him for not being able to read music well enough, and then Frank Fairfax, a big-band leader whose orchestra included the trumpeter Charlie Shavers  and the clarinetist Jimmy Hamilton. Mr. Gillespie was listening to the trumpeter Roy Eldridge, copying his solos and emulating his style, and was soon performing with Teddy Hill's band at the Savoy Ballroom on the basis of his ability to reproduce Mr. Eldridge's style.

According to legend, it was Mr. Hill who gave Mr. Gillespie his nickname because of his odd clothing style and his fondness for practical jokes. Mr. Gillespie began cultivating his personality, putting his feet up on music stands during shows and regularly cracking jokes. But by May 1937 he was also recording improvisations with the Hill band and helping the performances by setting riffs behind soloists.

Two years later, Mr. Gillepsie was considered accomplished enough to take part in a series of all-star recordings with Lionel Hampton, Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Chu Berry. He soloed on "Hot Mallets."

That year, 1939, he joined Cab Calloway's band, one of the leading black orchestras of the era. Though a dance band, its musicians, who included the bassist Milt Hinton and the guitarist Danny Barker, liked to experiment. Mr. Gillespie would work on the harmonic substitutions that eventually became be-bop. Mr. Gillespie was a regular soloist with the band, and by then his harmonic sensibility was beginning to take shape.

 

Joining With Parker To Mold New Style
 

It was while touring with the Calloway band in 1940 that Mr. Gillespie met Charlie Parker in Kansas City. And it was with him that Mr. Gillespie began formulating the style that was eventually called be-bop. Along with a handful of other musicians, including Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke, Mr. Gillespie and Mr. Parker would regularly experiment.

On live recordings of the period, especially the two solos on the tune "Kerouac," recorded in 1941 at Minton's Uptown Playhouse, a club in Harlem, can be heard his increasing interest in harmony, sleeker rhythms and a divergence from the style of Mr. Eldridge. Mr. Gillespie was blunt about his relationship with Mr. Parker, calling him "the other side of my heartbeat," and freely giving him credit for some of the rhythmic innovations of be-bop.

At the same time that Mr. Gillespie was experimenting with the new style, he was regularly arranging and recording for Mr. Calloway, including one of his better improvisations on "Pickin' the Cabbage," a piece he composed and arranged. In September 1941, at the State Theater in Hartford, Mr. Gillespie was involved in an incident that shaped his reputation and his career. Mr. Calloway saw a spitball thrown on stage and thought Mr. Gillespie had done it; the two men fought, and Mr. Gillespie pulled a knife and put a cut in Mr. Calloway's posterior that required 10 stitches to close.

Mr. Gillespie was fired from that job, but spent the next several years working with some of the biggest names in jazz, including Coleman Hawkins (who recorded the first version of Mr. Gillespie's classic "Woody 'N' You"), Benny Carter, Les Hite (for whom he recorded "Jersey Bounce," considered the first be-bop solo), Lucky Millinder, Earl Hines, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington. For Mr. Millinder he made "Little John Special," which includes a riff of Mr. Gillespie's that was later fleshed out into the composition "Salt Peanuts," one of his best-known pieces.

The early 40's were a turbulent time for jazz. Be-bop was slowly making itself felt, but at the same time a series of disputes between recording companies and the musicians' union resulted in a recording ban, so Mr. Gillespie and Mr. Parker were rarely recorded. In 1943 Mr. Gillespie led a band with the be-bop bassist Oscar Pettiford at the Onyx Club on 52d Street in Manhattan. And in 1944, the singer Billy Eckstine took over part of the Earl Hines band and created the first be-bop orchestra, of which few recorded performaces exist. Mr. Gillespie was the music director, and the band featured his "Night in  Tunisia."

It was in 1945 that Mr. Gillespie began to break out. He undertook an ambitious recording schedule, recording with the pianist Clyde Hart and with Mr. Parker, Cootie Williams, Red Norvo, Sarah Vaughan and Slim Gaillard. And he began series of his own recordings that have since become some of jazz's most important pieces.

Recording under his own name for the first time, he made "I Can't Get Started," "Good Bait," "Salt Peanuts" and "Be-bop," during one session in January 1945. He followed it up with a recording date featuring Mr. Parker that included "Groovin' High," "Dizzy Atmosphere" and "All the Things You Are."

These recordings, with their tight ensemble passages, precisely articulated rhythms and dissonance as part of the palate of jazz, were to influence jazz forever. Though Mr. Gillespie enjoyed playing for dancers, this was music that was meant first and foremost to be listened to. It was virtuosic in a way not heard before, and it was music that sent music students scurrying to their turntables to learn the improvisations by heart.

They were also the recordings that captured Mr. Gillespie at his most impressive. His lines, jagged and angular, always seemed off balance. He used chromatic figures, and was not afraid to resolve a line on a vinegary, bitter note. And his improvising was eruptive; suddenly, a line would bolt into the high register, only to come tumbling down.

Mr. Gillespie did more than just record in 1945. He put together the first of his big bands, and then formed a quintet with Mr. Parker that Mr. Gillespie called "The height of perfection in our music." It included Bud Powell on piano, Ray Brown on bass and Max Roach on drums. Later that year, Mr. Gillespie reformed the big band, called the Hepsations of 1945. Despitea tour of the South that was almost catastrophically unsuccessful, the band stayed together for the next four years. Another Revolution: Afro-Cuban Jazz

It was with this big band, whose name became the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, that Mr. Gillespie created his second revolution in the late 1940's. An old friend, the Cuban trumpeter Mario Bauza, who had made it possible for him to join the Calloway orchestra, introduced Mr. Gillespie to the Cuban conga player Luciano (Chano Pozo) Gonzales.

"Dizzy used to ask me about Cuban rhythms all the time," said Mr. Bauza. "I introduced him to Chano Pozo, and they wrote 'Manteca.' It was a good marriage of two cultures. That was the beginning of Afro-Cuban jazz. That blew up the whole world."

Mr. Gillespie quickly produced the sketches for "Cubana Be" and "Cubana  Bop," which were finished by the composer and arranger George Russell and included some of the first modal harmonies in jazz. And in "Manteca," Mr. Gillespie's collaboration with Mr. Pozo, he created a work that is still performed and quoted regularly, by both Latin orchestras and by jazz musicians. Without the sophisticated arrangements and the conjunction of Latin rhythms and jazz harmonies that Mr. Gillespie provided, both jazz and Latin music would be radically different today.

The band's highest moments, however, were when Mr. Gillespie -- in a move that characterized his career -- hired some of the young be-boppers on the scene. Among them were the pianist John Lewis, vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Kenny Clarke, who went on to form the Modern Jazz Quartet. "It was an incredible experience because so much was going on," Mr. Lewis recalled. "Not only was he using these great be-bop arrangements but he was so encouraging. It was my first job, a formative experience."

Mr. Gillespie's was the last great evolutionary big band, and during its tenure he hired the best soloists, from Jimmy Heath, James Moody and Sonny Stitt to John Coltrane and Paul Gonzalves. Arrangements like "Things to Come," with their exhilarating precision, were be-bop and orchestral landmarks, with dense harmonies and flashy rhythms.

And it was with his big band that Mr. Gillespie fully developed the other side of his musical personality. With songs like "He Beeped When He Should Have Bopped," "Ool Ya Koo", "Oo Pop A Da" and others, he began popularizing the Bohemian, Dadaesque aspects of be-bop.

Mr. Gillespie was a keen popularizer, and with his sense of comedy managed to make his shows into an extraordinary mixture of entertainment and esthetics. In so doing, he was following in the path of his ex-bandleader, Mr. Calloway, as well as Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller.

From then on, he cultivated an audience that went beyond the average jazz fan, and it was this reputation that helped in his later career. And at the same time, be-bop fashion made an appearance, with Mr. Gillespie, in thick glasses and a beret, leading the way.

The big-band business slowed down considerably in the late 1940's and early 50's, and Mr. Gillespie teamed with Stan Kenton's orchestra as a featured soloist. Then he began using a small group again.

He formed his own record company in 1951, Dee Gee, which folded soon after. Mr. Gillespie and Mr. Parker recorded for Verve, with Mr. Monk, and he and Mr. Parker performed at Birdland in Manhattan the next year. He toured Europe and in 1953 joined Mr. Parker, Mr. Powell, Mr. Roach and the bassist Charles Mingus for a concert at Massey Hall in Toronto that became legendary for its disorganization and for acrimony among performers.

It was also in 1953 that someone fell on Mr. Gillespie's trumpet, and bent it. When he played the misshapen instrument, Mr. Gillespie found he could hear the sound more clearly, and so decided to keep it. Along with those cheeks, it became his trademark.

During the 1950's Mr. Gillespie recorded with with Stan Getz, Stuff Smith, Sonny Stitt, Mr. Eldridge and others. In 1956, he formed another big band and, at the behest of the United States State Department, toured the Middle East and South America. In 1957, Mr. Gillespie presided over "The Eternal Triangle," a recording that includes Mr.  Stitt and Sonny Rollins and some of the hardest trumpet blowing ever recorded.

Through the 1960's and 70's, Mr. Gillespie toured frequently, playing up to 300 shows a year, sometimes with an electric bassist and a guitarist, sometimes with a more traditional group. And in 1974 he signed with Pablo Records and began recording prolifically again. He won Grammies in 1975 and 1980, and he published his autobiography, "To Be or Not to Bop," in 1979.

In the last decade, Mr. Gillespie's career seemed recharged, and he became ubiquitous on the concert circuit as a special guest. He formed a Latin big band that performed with Paquito De Rivera, among others, and he constantly shuffled the personnel of his small groups.

Last year, in honor of his 75th birthday, Mr. Gillepsie played for four weeks at the Blue Note club in Manhattan, a stint that featured perhaps the greatest selection of jazz musicians ever brought together for a tribute. The month covered his career, from small groups, to Afro-Cuban jazz to a big band. As usual, he was his witty amiable self, in command of both the audience and his trumpet.

Mr. Gillespie is survived by his wife of 52 years, Lorraine.

Seeking the Best Of a Huge Output

Dizzy Gillespie's recorded output was immense, spanning nearly 60 years and comprising hundreds of albums. Not all of his important recordings have been issued on CD, but the vinyl versions are worth hunting for.

 
Afro Cuban Jazz Verve
The Be-Bop Revolution RCA
Bird and Diz Verve
The Development of an American Artist Smithsonian
Diz and Getz Verve
Dizzy and the Double Six of Paris Phillips
Dizzy at Newport Verve
Dizzy on the French Riviera Phillips
Dizzy's Diamonds Verve
Duets Verve
The Gifted Ones (with Roy Eldridge) Pablo
Live at the Royal Festival Hall Enja
Oscar Peterson and Dizzy Gillespie Pablo
Portrait of Duke Ellington Verve
Shaw Nuff Musicraft
Sonny Side Up (with Sonny Stitt) Verve 

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/dizzy-gillespie-mn0000162677/biography

Dizzy Gillespie
Active:  1930s - 1990s
Born:  October 21, 1917 in Cheraw, SC
Died:  January 6, 1993 in Englewood, NJ
Genre:  Jazz
Styles: Afro-Cuban Jazz Bop Vocal Jazz World Fusion Big Band Jazz Instrument Trumpet Jazz

Also Known As:

John "Dizzy" Gillespie
John Birks 'Dizzy' Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie
John Birks Gillespie
John Gillespie

 

Artist Biography by Scott Yanow

 

Trumpet virtuoso and bop revolutionary whose desire to innovate helped invent and define the musical vocabulary for an entire genre.                               

Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time (some would say the best), Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up copying Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis' emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy's style was successfully recreated. Somehow, Gillespie could make any "wrong" note fit, and harmonically he was ahead of everyone in the 1940s, including Charlie Parker. Unlike Bird, Dizzy was an enthusiastic teacher who wrote down his musical innovations and was eager to explain them to the next generation, thereby insuring that bebop would eventually become the foundation of jazz.

Dizzy Gillespie was also one of the key founders of Afro-Cuban (or Latin) jazz, adding Chano Pozo's conga to his orchestra in 1947, and utilizing complex poly-rhythms early on. The leader of two of the finest big bands in jazz history, Gillespie differed from many in the bop generation by being a masterful showman who could make his music seem both accessible and fun to the audience. With his puffed-out cheeks, bent trumpet (which occurred by accident in the early '50s when a dancer tripped over his horn), and quick wit, Dizzy was a colorful figure to watch. A natural comedian, Gillespie was also a superb scat singer and occasionally played Latin percussion for the fun of it, but it was his trumpet playing and leadership abilities that made him into a jazz giant.

The youngest of nine children, John Birks Gillespie taught himself trombone and then switched to trumpet when he was 12. He grew up in poverty, won a scholarship to an agricultural school (Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina), and then in 1935 dropped out of school to look for work as a musician. Inspired and initially greatly influenced by Roy Eldridge, Gillespie (who soon gained the nickname of "Dizzy") joined Frankie Fairfax's band in Philadelphia. In 1937, he became a member of Teddy Hill's orchestra in a spot formerly filled by Eldridge. Dizzy made his recording debut on Hill's rendition of "King Porter Stomp" and during his short period with the band toured Europe. After freelancing for a year, Gillespie joined Cab Calloway's orchestra (1939-1941), recording frequently with the popular bandleader and taking many short solos that trace his development; "Pickin' the Cabbage" finds Dizzy starting to emerge from Eldridge's shadow. However, Calloway did not care for Gillespie's constant chance-taking, calling his solos "Chinese music." After an incident in 1941 when a spitball was mischievously thrown at Calloway (he accused Gillespie but the culprit was actually Jonah Jones), Dizzy was fired.

By then, Gillespie had already met Charlie Parker, who confirmed the validity of his musical search. During 1941-1943, Dizzy passed through many bands including those led by Ella Fitzgerald, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Charlie Barnet, Fess Williams, Les Hite, Claude Hopkins, Lucky Millinder (with whom he recorded in 1942), and even Duke Ellington (for four weeks). Gillespie also contributed several advanced arrangements to such bands as Benny Carter, Jimmy Dorsey, and Woody Herman; the latter advised him to give up his trumpet playing and stick to full-time arranging.

Dizzy ignored the advice, jammed at Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House where he tried out his new ideas, and in late 1942 joined Earl Hines' big band. Charlie Parker was hired on tenor and the sadly unrecorded orchestra was the first orchestra to explore early bebop. By then, Gillespie had his style together and he wrote his most famous composition "A Night in Tunisia." When Hines' singer Billy Eckstine went on his own and formed a new bop big band, Diz and Bird (along with Sarah Vaughan) were among the members. Gillespie stayed long enough to record a few numbers with Eckstine in 1944 (most noticeably "Opus X" and "Blowing the Blues Away"). That year he also participated in a pair of Coleman Hawkins-led sessions that are often thought of as the first full-fledged bebop dates, highlighted by Dizzy's composition "Woody'n You."

1945 was the breakthrough year. Dizzy Gillespie, who had led earlier bands on 52nd Street, finally teamed up with Charlie Parker on records. Their recordings of such numbers as "Salt Peanuts," "'Shaw Nuff," "Groovin' High," and "Hot House" confused swing fans who had never heard the advanced music as it was evolving; and Dizzy's rendition of "I Can't Get Started" completely reworked the former Bunny Berigan hit. It would take two years for the often frantic but ultimately logical new style to start catching on as the mainstream of jazz. Gillespie led an unsuccessful big band in 1945 (a Southern tour finished it), and late in the year he traveled with Parker to the West Coast to play a lengthy gig at Billy Berg's club in L.A. Unfortunately, the audiences were not enthusiastic (other than local musicians) and Dizzy (without Parker) soon returned to New York.

The following year, Dizzy Gillespie put together a successful and influential orchestra which survived for nearly four memorable years. "Manteca" became a standard, the exciting "Things to Come" was futuristic, and "Cubana Be/Cubana Bop" featured Chano Pozo. With such sidemen as the future original members of the Modern Jazz Quartet (Milt Jackson, John Lewis, Ray Brown, and Kenny Clarke), James Moody, J.J. Johnson, Yusef Lateef, and even a young John Coltrane, Gillespie's big band was a breeding ground for the new music. Dizzy's beret, goatee, and "bop glasses" helped make him a symbol of the music and its most popular figure. During 1948-1949, nearly every former swing band was trying to play bop, and for a brief period the major record companies tried very hard to turn the music into a fad.

By 1950, the fad had ended and Gillespie was forced, due to economic pressures, to break up his groundbreaking orchestra. He had occasional (and always exciting) reunions with Charlie Parker (including a fabled Massey Hall concert in 1953) up until Bird's death in 1955, toured with Jazz at the Philharmonic (where he had opportunities to "battle" the combative Roy Eldridge), headed all-star recording sessions (using Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, and Sonny Stitt on some dates), and led combos that for a time in 1951 also featured Coltrane and Milt Jackson. In 1956, Gillespie was authorized to form a big band and play a tour overseas sponsored by the State Department. It was so successful that more traveling followed, including extensive tours to the Near East, Europe, and South America, and the band survived up to 1958. Among the young sidemen were Lee Morgan, Joe Gordon, Melba Liston, Al Grey, Billy Mitchell, Benny Golson, Ernie Henry, and Wynton Kelly; Quincy Jones (along with Golson and Liston) contributed some of the arrangements. After the orchestra broke up, Gillespie went back to leading small groups, featuring such sidemen in the 1960s as Junior Mance, Leo Wright, Lalo Schifrin, James Moody, and Kenny Barron. He retained his popularity, occasionally headed specially assembled big bands, and was a fixture at jazz festivals. In the early '70s, Gillespie toured with the Giants of Jazz and around that time his trumpet playing began to fade, a gradual decline that would make most of his '80s work quite erratic. However, Dizzy remained a world traveler, an inspiration and teacher to younger players, and during his last couple of years he was the leader of the United Nation Orchestra (featuring Paquito D'Rivera and Arturo Sandoval). He was active up until early 1992.

Dizzy Gillespie's career was very well documented from 1945 on, particularly on Musicraft, Dial, and RCA in the 1940s; Verve in the 1950s; Philips and Limelight in the 1960s; and Pablo in later years.

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  Dizzy Gillespie / Charl …

  Jazz at Massey Hall
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  Dizzy Gillespie / Charl …

  Bird and Diz
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  Dizzy Gillespie / Sonny …

  Sonny Side Up
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  Dizzy Gillespie's Big 4 …

  Dizzy's Big 4
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  Dizzy Gillespie

  The Champ
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  Dizzy Gillespie

  At Newport

 Launch Dizzy Gillespie Radio:

http://allmusic.wahwahnetworks.com/index.html#/wahwah/artist/c6f2b3ff-bc3b-eaaf-c6b2-4f7394bfa9ad!! 

http://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/dizzygillespie

Primary Instrument: Trumpet

Born: October 21, 1917 | Died: January 6, 1993

John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie was one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of the 20th century and one of the prime architects of the bebop movement in jazz. Nicknamed “Dizzy” because of his zany on-stage antics, Gillespie, a brass virtuoso, set new standards for trumpet players with his innovative, “jolting rhythmic shifts and ceaseless harmonic explorations” on the instrument during the 1940's, which ushered in a definitive change in American jazz music from swing to bebop.

Gillespie, the last of nine children, was born in Cheraw, South Carolina, in 1917 to James and Lottie Gillespie. His father was a bricklayer, pianist and band leader. James Gillespie kept all the instruments from his band in the family home, so the future trumpet great was surrounded by musical instruments from childhood, including his father's large upright piano - James tore down one of the walls of the house to get the piano inside. James demanded that all his children practice instruments. However, none of them except John cared much for music. James died when John Birks was ten, so he never heard his youngest son play trumpet; he did hear him practice piano, since John began playing the intrument at a very early age.
 

In 1930, Gillespie tried to learn trombone, but his arms were too short to play it well. The same year, however, he started playing a friend's trumpet. When he heard a radio broadcast of the trumpet player Roy Eldridge with the Teddy Hill Orchestra, Gillespie, then 13, fell in love with Eldridge's playing. From that day on, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician.

In 1933, after graduating from Robert Smalls' secondary school, Gillespie received a music scholarship to attend the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina. He stayed there for two years, studying harmony and theory, until his family moved to Philadelphia in 1935. Once in Philadelphia, Gillespie began playing trumpet with local bands. He learned all of his idol Eldridge's solos from records and radio broadcasts; it was also in Philadelphia that he picked up the nickname “Dizzy.” In 1937, Gillespie moved to New York, replacing Roy Eldridge in Teddy Hill's Orchestra. In 1939, Gillespie was hired to play in Cab Calloway's orchestra; he was fired by Calloway in 1941 after an altercation between the two in which Calloway mistakenly accused Gillespie of firing spitballs at him and Gillespie pulled a knife on Calloway in, he said, self-defense.

In 1937, Gillespie met his future wife, Lorraine, a chorus dancer at the famed Apollo Theater. They were married in 1940 and remained together until his death. Gillespie worked with many bands during the early 1940's - Chick Webb, Fletcher Henderson, Benny Carter, “Fatha” Hines and Billy Eckstine's seminal band - before teaming up with Charlie Parker in 1945. Their revolutionary band ushered in the bebop era and was one of the greatest small bands of the 20th century. An arranger and composer, Gillespie wrote some of the greatest jazz tunes of his era, including Groovin' High, A Night in Tunisia and Manteca, all songs which became jazz classics.

With his trumpet's upturned golden bell - the result, Gillespie stated in his autobiography, of the dancers Stump and Stumpy accidentally falling onto it during a birthday party for his wife - and his goatee, horn rim glasses and beret, Gillespie became a symbol of both jazz and a rebellious, independent spirit during the 1940's and 50's. (One of Gillespie's trumpets sold for $63,000 in 1995.) His interest in Cuban and African music helped to introduce those styles to a mainstream American audience.
In both 1964 and 1972, Gillespie ran for President of the United States. He told Jet Magazine in 1971 that, if elected, he would name the boxer Muhammad Ali Secretary of State and would name Duke Ellington as ambassador “to any country he wants to go to.” Gillespie did not win the presidency in either year.

In 1970, Gillespie became a follower of the Bahá'í Faith. His belief helped find peace and meaning in his life, and he spoke often about his faith in his later years. The Bahá'í Center in New York honors Gillespie with a yearly memorial service and holds jazz concerts in its John Birks Gillespie Auditorium.

Dizzy Gillespie died of pancreatic cancer in 1993. He was world-famous and much beloved among musicians and listeners. Gillespie influenced generations of musicians who admired and emulated not just his musicianship, his positive, upbeat, optimistic attitude, and the spiritual path he had discovered. As musicians such as Randy Weston and Wynton Marsalis attest, Gillespie continues to influence jazz musicians and listeners to this day. 

Awards

 

New Star Award, Esquire Magazine (1944); Handel Medallion, City of New York (1972); Paul Robeson Award, Rutgers University Institute of Jazz Studies (1972); Performs "Salt Peanuts" with President Carter at White House Jazz Concert (1978); Inducted into Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame (1982); Lifetime Achievement Award, National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) (1989); National Medal of Arts, President Bush (1989); Duke Ellington Award, Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (1989); Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1989); Kennedy Center Honors Award (1990); Fourteen honorary degrees, including Ph.D., Rutgers University (1972); Ph.D., Chicago Conservatory of Music (1978); Awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

http://www.jazzandbluesmasters.com/dizzy.htm

dizzy gillespie . american jazz musician  b. 1917  d. 1993

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, one of the greatest Jazz trumpeters of 20th century and one of the prime architects of the bebop movement in jazz, was born in Cheraw, South Carolina and died in Englewood, New Jersey.

Nicknamed "Dizzy" because of his zany on-stage antics, Gillespie, a brass virtuoso, set new standards for trumpet players with his innovative, "jolting rhythmic shifts and ceaseless harmonic explorations" on the instrument during the 1940's period, which ushered in a definitive change in American Jazz music from swing to bebop. The last of nine children, Gillespie was born into a family whose father, James, was a bricklayer, pianist and band leader: Dizzy's mother was named Lottie. Dizzy's father kept all the instruments from his band in the family home and so the future trumpet great was around trumpets, saxophones, guitars and his father's large upright piano (his father tore down one of the walls of the house to get the piano in ) most of his young life. James use to make all of his older children practice instruments but none of them cared for music. Dizzy's father died when he was ten and never heard his youngest son play trumpet, although he did get the chance to hear him banging around on the piano, because Dizzy started trying to play this intrument at a very early age.

In 1930, Gillespie tried learning how to play the trombone but his arms were too short to play it well. That same year he started playing a friend's trumpet and heard one night over the radio a broadcast of Roy Eldridge playing trumpet in Teddy Hill's Orchestra, that was playing at the Savoy Ballroom in New York City. Young Gillespie, then 13, loved Eldridge's playing and the entire band. From that day on, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician.

In 1933, after graduating from Robert Smalls secondary school, Gillespie received a music scholarship to attend Laurinburg Institute, in North Carolina. He stayed there for two years, studying harmony and theory until his family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1935. In Philadelphia, Gillespie began playing trumpet with local bands, learning all of his idol Eldridge's solos from records and radio broadcasts: it was in Philadelphia that he picked up his nickname of "Dizzy.". In 1937, "Dizzy" moved to New York and replaced Eldridge in Teddy Hill's Orchestra. After a couple of years Gillespie moved on to Cab Calloway's band in 1939.

In 1937, Gillespie met his future wife, Lorraine, a chorus dancer at the famed Apollo Theater: they were married in 1940 and remained together until his death. Gillespie worked with many bands during the early 1940's (Chick Webb, Fletcher Henderson, Benny Carter, "Fatha" Hines and Billy Eckstine's seminal band ) before teaming up with Charlie Parker in 1945. Their revolutionary band ushered in the bebop era and was one of the greatest small bands of the 20th century. An arranger and composer, Gillespie wrote some of the greatest jazz tunes of his era: songs such as "Groovin' High", "A Night in Tunisia" and "Manteca" are considered jazz classics today..

With his trumpet and its upturned, golden bell, goatee, black horn rim glasses and beret, Gillespie became a symbol of both jazz and a rebellious, independent spirit during the 1940's and 50's. His interest in Cuban and African music helped to introduce those music's to a mainstream American audience. When he died he was famous and beloved everywhere and had influenced entire generations of trumpet players all over the world who loved and emulated his playing and his always positive, upbeat, optimistic attitude.
                                                                                                      Quincy Troupe

Biography copyright Mason Editions 2000 and Quincy Troupe.

http://www.discogs.com/artist/64694-Dizzy-GillespieDizzy Gillespie

Real Name:
John Birks Gillespie
Profile:  American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise". (born October 21, 1917, Cheraw, South Carolina; died January 6, 1993, Englewood, New Jersey)

Together, with Charlie Parker, he was the predominant figure in the development of bebop (bop), which laid the foundation for modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Jon Faddis and Chuck Mangione.

He was also one of the key founders of Afro-Cuban (or Latin) jazz, adding Chano Pozo's conga to his orchestra in 1947, and utilizing complex poly-rhythms early on.

Career Highlights:  

Awarded New Star Award from Esquire Magazine (1944)
 
Performs at first integrated concert in public school, Cheraw, SC (1959)
 
First jazz musician appointed by US department of State to undertake cultural mission (1972)
 
Awarded Handel Medallion from the City of New York (1972)
 
Received Paul Robeson Award from Rutgers University Institute of Jazz Studies (1972)
 
Performs at White House for President Carter and the Shah of Iran (1977)
 
Performs "Salt Peanuts" with President Carter at White House Jazz Concert (1978)
 
Inducted into Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame (1982)
 
Received Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (1989)
 
Received National Medal of Arts from President Bush (1989)
 
Received Duke Ellington Award from the society og Composers, Authors, and Publishers (1989)
 
Awarded Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1989)
 
Received Kennedy Center Honors Award (1990)
 
Received fourteen honorary degrees, including Ph.D. Rutgers University (1972), Ph.D. Chicago Conservatory of Music (1978)
 
Awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for recording

Sites:

dizzygillespie.org, Wikipedia, allmusic.com, pbs.org, dizzygillespie.com

In Groups:

Billy Eckstine And His Orchestra, Cab Calloway And His Cotton Club Orchestra, Charlie Parker's Re-Boppers, Coleman Hawkins And His Orchestra, Dizzy Gillespie - Stan Getz Sextet, Dizzy Gillespie And His All Star Quintet, Dizzy Gillespie and His All Stars, Dizzy Gillespie And His Orchestra, Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, Dizzy Gillespie Jazzmen, Dizzy Gillespie Quartet, Dizzy Gillespie Quintet, Dizzy Gillespie Septet, Dizzy Gillespie Sextet, Dizzy Gillespie Tempo Jazzmen, Dizzy Gillespie's Big 4, Dizzy Gillespie's Rebop Six, Lionel Hampton And His Orchestra, Metronome All Stars, Red Norvo All-Stars, Red Norvo And His Selected Sextet, Rhythmstick, Slim Gaillard And His Orchestra, Tempo Jazzmen, The Dizzy Gillespie 6, The Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All Star Big Band, The Dizzy Gillespie Big 7, The Dizzy Gillespie Octet, The Dizzy Gillespie Reunion Big Band, The Gillespie-Getz-Stitt Septet, The Modern Jazz Sextet, The Quintet, The Trumpet Kings

http://www.openculture.com/2012/10/dizzy_gillespie_runs_for_us_president_1964_.html

Dizzy Gillespie Runs for US President, 1964.  

Promises to Make Miles Davis Head of the CIA
October 1st, 2012
OPEN CULTURE

There comes a point in every national election year when I reach total saturation and have to tune it all out to stay sane—the nonstop streams of vitriol, the spectacles of electoral dysfunction, the ads, the ads, the ads. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. But imagine how differently we could feel about presidential elections if people like, I don’t know, Dizzy Gillespie could get on a major ticket? That’s what might have happened in 1964 if “a little-known presidential campaign… had been able to vault the millionaires-only hurdle.” What began as one of Dizzy’s famous practical jokes, and a way to raise money for CORE (Congress for Racial Equality) and other civil rights organizations became something more, a way for Dizzy’s fans to imagine an alternative to the “millionaire’s-only” club represented by Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater.

Gillespie’s campaign had “Dizzy Gillespie for President” buttons, now collector’s items, and “Dizzy for President” became the title of an album recorded live at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1963, from which the recording comes (see right below).

A take on his trademark tune “Salt Peanuts,” “Vote Dizzy” was Gillespie’s official campaign song and includes lyrics like:

Your politics ought to be a groovier thing
Vote Dizzy! Vote Dizzy!
So get a good president who’s willing to swing
Vote Dizzy! Vote Dizzy!

It’s definitely groovier than either one of our current campaigns. Dizzy “believed in civil rights, withdrawing from Vietnam and recognizing communist China,” and he wanted to make Miles Davis head of the CIA, a role I think would have suited Miles perfectly. Although Dizzy’s campaign was something of a publicity stunt for his politics and his persona, it’s not unheard of for popular musicians to run for president in earnest. In 1979, revolutionary Nigerian Afrobeat star Fela Kuti put himself forward as a candidate in his country, but was rejected. More recently, Haitian musician and former Fugee Wyclef Jean attempted a sincere run at the Haitian presidency, but was disqualified for reasons of residency. It’s a little hard to imagine a popular musician mounting a serious presidential campaign in the U.S., but then again, the 80s were dominated by the strange reality of a former actor in the White House, so why not? In any case, revisiting Dizzy Gillespie’s mid-century political theater may provide a needed respite from the onslaught of the current U.S. campaign season.

Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.

http://www.popmatters.com/review/gillespiedizzy-career1937/

Dizzy Gillespie
Career: 1937-1992
by Will Layman
26 May 2005

PopMatters

Dizzy Gillespie is the greatest post-war musician never to make a truly great album.

Before bebop, of course, musicians did not make “albums”, but merely 78 RPM singles. They recorded these “sides” in batches certainly, but they were not conceived of as groups of songs, and so the great recordings of Armstrong, Ellington, and Hawkins were released piecemeal and today are collected in anthologies that we think of as “great albums.” But Dizzy Gillespie’s contemporaries in the bop movement each birthed a collection of songs that has become representative of their genius—Parker, Monk, Bud Powell, and Miles Davis all made untouchable albums. In the next generation such a feat was essentially required for the greats such as Sonny Rollins (Saxophone Colossus) and John Coltrane (Giant Steps).

Dizzy was as great a musician as any of these figures. Only Pops, Duke, and Trane rival him in importance, and no one—even Armstrong—can touch him as a pure trumpet player. It seems almost a paradox then that a musician who recorded throughout a career that lasted until the early 1990s never made a brilliant album. A handful of Gillespie platters were memorable—Sonny Side Up, Swing Low Sweet Cadillac, Dizzy’s Big Four—and of course he made a few classics with Charlie Parker. But Dizzy’s is a career of innovation, consistency, humor, intelligence, and integrity—but it’s also a career without a single shining moment.

All of this makes Shout Factory’s Career compilation a grand slam—an essential career retrospective from one of the 20th century giants of American music. The lack of a single must-have album from The Diz makes this two-disc set more than just good and better than great. This is theGillespie collection on the market today.

Career is so good because it collects highlights from nearly every phase of Dizzy’s storied career. For those who don’t know the  Gillespie legacy, this collection lays it out, tune by tune. Dizzy started as a bright, crazy young trumpet star in the better big bands of the late 1930s. Here, we catch him with Teddy Hill on “King Porter Stomp” (1937), Cab Calloway on his own composition “Pickin’ the Cabbage” (1940), and then with the great Billy Eckstine band from 1944. Diz is clearly a disciple of Roy Eldridge in these early recordings, but the seeds of his own style are in evidence—an ease in the upper register and a penchant for chromaticism as he easily glides from chord to chord.

Dizzy’s career as an innovator, however, really takes off in the small group sides from the mid-‘40s. Career gives us seven sextet recordings from 1945 and ‘46 that show how Dizzy conceived of a bebop sound that came out of swing as much as reacted against it. The version of “I Can’t Get Started” included here is hardly boppish, with a very bland accompaniment, but you can hear Dizzy finding the most interesting notes from the harmony in building his solo. Only two months later, on “Groovin’ High”, Dizzy is teamed up with Charlie “Yardbird” Parker and the sparks are genuinely flying—with the two horns playing the unison head in perfect synch and Dizzy’s muted solo suggesting the puckish humor that would always be part of his style. The three tracks with this line-up (also featuring Slam Stewart on bass and Cozy Cole’s drums) are stone gems, none better than “Dizzy Atmosphere”, where the flow from Bird’s solo to Dizzy demonstrates why Dizzy said of Parker, “He is the other half of my heartbeat.”

While Dizzy’s small group work is justifiably famous, he did not abandon the big band sound as he was helping to invent bebop. Here, we get a heaping dose of Dizzy’s late-‘40s big band—particularly the sides that introduced the concept of Afro-Cuban jazz, featuring Chano Pozo on congas. “Cubano Be/Cubano Bop” and “Manteca” are diamonds that haven’t stopped shimmering in 60 years—brilliant essays in rhythm and arrangement (credited to George Russell and Gil Fuller) that still scream out of your speakers at full throttle. Dizzy’s lead on “Manteca” is one of the great sounds in American music.

When Dizzy returned to small group recordings in the 1950s, the bebop sound was no longer a scandal. “Bloomdido” is essentially from an all-star session with Diz, Bird, Thelonious Monk on piano, Curly Russell on bass and Buddy Rich on drums. There’s nothing to say about music this good other than: listen to it. Dizzy’s solos here, on “Birk’s Works” with Milt Jackson, and on the two tracks from the all-star concert with Bird, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Max Roach (“Salt Peanuts” and “Perdido”) are the pinnacle of jazz trumpet playing—virtuosic, subtle, sliding, blue, declamatory and fiendishly clever. It is standing ovation stuff, and don’t be surprised if you find yourself getting to your feet in your living room.

Disc Two of Career moves us into the more workmanlike stage of Dizzy’s career. Like a great physicist, Dizzy did his groundbreaking work early, but the career that followed was special if not consistently revolutionary. During this period, Dizzy recorded a great deal for Norman Grantz’s Verve label, appearing often with “special guests.” The “It Don’t Mean a Thing” included here, with Stan Getz, Roach, and the Oscar Peterson Trio, is a fine example of this kind of one-off meeting working wonderfully well for Dizzy. His solo is like scrambled eggs and salsa—whirling and hot as steam. The “Mean to Me” (1956)with Sonny Stitt and John Lewis shows a more conversational side of Diz, as he cools it, despite a double-time break at the start of this solo that reminds you how much fuel he has in the tank even on a medium swinger.

The later big band recordings are remarkable for their young star line-ups (Lee Morgan, Melba Liston, Al Grey, Benny Golson, Wynton Kelly, among others) and punch. Another from 1975 with Machito’s big band shows that, even late in his career, Dizzy was essentially a lead trumpeter with a bebop soul, riding over an electric bass and team of percussion. Disc Two also features an early ‘60s working group with Lalo Schiffrin on piano that was typical of some of the more faceless bands that Dizzy lead in the latter part of his career, but darn if they aren’t extremely hot recordings, demonstrating that Dizzy was a brilliant bandleader even when his talent was less than top-shelf.

Dizzy performed consistently for more than a half-century and, while this set properly focuses on the ‘40s and ‘50s, it includes two tracks from the great trumpeter’s twilight. “Wheatleigh Hall” pairs him with Cuban disciple Arturo Sandoval. Dizzy’s adoption of Cuban music made him a hero on the island, and Sandoval was one of many Cubans who owe their jazz careers to the Diz. But, as a trumpeter, Sandoval will always be Dizzy’s inferior, even on this 1982 track. The best of Dizzy’s imitators realized that, like Miles Davis, you could apprentice in Dizzy’s high-flying style but it was better to stake out your own ground artistically. Sandoval is a brassy imitation without nearly the humor and sly wit that Dizzy brings to even this late date.

The final track on Career is a tribute date recorded shortly before Dizzy left us to join Bird, Monk, Duke and Pops up above. Dizzy lived one of the longest and most productive lives in jazz. He was and is the role model for young guys in the music—no drug use, married for a half century to one woman, a good businessman, and incomparable combination of showman and artist. In this last recording, he’s frail, and the musician accompanying him surely knew it. But it hardly matters. The group plays the iconic tune “Bebop”—of course, Dizzy wrote it—and when it’s time for the master to take his turn everyone sets a smooth, swinging table for him.

He fumbles some, and the tone is hardly what it once was, but Dizzy still skitters over the changes with grace, a brilliant musical mind picking out the hip notes as it constructs one of his final solos. There’s nothing sad about it—because Dizzy’s life was one of the greatest solos of all.


Will Layman is a writer, teacher and musician living in the Washington, DC area. He is a contributor to National Public Radio and frequently appears as a guest on WNYC's "Soundcheck" as a jazz critic. He plays both funk and jazz in the bars and clubs in and near the nation's capital. His fiction and humor appear in print and online.

https://www.arts.gov/honors/jazz/john-birks-dizzy-gillespie

Home » NEA Jazz Masters » 1982

NEA JAZZ MASTERS 

Photo by Michael Wilderman jazzvisionsphotos.com

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie

Trumpeter, Composer, Bandleader

1982 NEA Jazz Master

Born on October 21, 1917 in Cheraw, SC
Died on January 6, 1993

 

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John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie's effect on jazz cannot be overstated: his trumpet playing influenced every player who came after him, his compositions have become part of the jazz canon, and his bands have included some of the most significant names in the business. He was also, along with Charlie Parker, one of the major leaders of the bebop movement.

Gillespie's father was an amateur bandleader who, although dead by the time Gillespie was ten, had given his son some of his earliest grounding in music. Gillespie began playing trumpet at 14 after briefly trying the trombone, and his first formal musical training came at the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina.

Gillespie's earliest professional jobs were with the Frankie Fairfax band, where he reportedly picked up the nickname Dizzy because of his outlandish antics. His earliest influence was Roy Eldridge, whom he later replaced in Teddy Hill's band. From 1939-41, Gillespie was one of the principal soloists in Cab Calloway's band, until he was dismissed for a notorious bandstand prank. While with Calloway he met the Cuban trumpeter Mario Bauza, from whom he gained a great interest in Afro-Cuban rhythms. At this time he also befriended Charlie Parker, with whom he would begin to develop some of the ideas behind bebop while sitting in at Minton's Playhouse in Harlem.

From 1941-43, Gillespie freelanced with a number of big bands, including that of Earl "Fatha" Hines. Hines' band contained several musicians Gillespie would interact with in the development of bebop, such as singer Billy Eckstine, who formed his own band featuring Gillespie on trumpet in 1944.

The year 1945 was crucial for both bebop and Gillespie. He recorded with Parker many of his small ensemble hits, such as "Salt Peanuts," and formed his own bebop big band. Despite economic woes, he was able to keep this band together for four years. His trumpet playing was at a peak, with rapid-fire attacks of notes and an amazing harmonic range. A number of future greats performed with Gillespie's big band, including saxophonists Gene Ammons, Yusef Lateef, Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Heath, James Moody, and John Coltrane. The rhythm section of John Lewis, Milt Jackson, Kenny Clarke, and Ray Brown became the original Modern Jazz Quartet.

He took various bands on State Department tours around the world starting in 1956, the first time the U.S. government provided economic aid and recognition to jazz. Those excursions not only kept Gillespie working, they also stimulated his musical interests as he began incorporating different ethnic elements into his music, such as the Afro-Cuban rhythms he weaved into his big band arrangements. Never losing his thirst for collaboration, Gillespie worked with a variety of jazz stars as well as leading his own small groups on into the 1980s.


Selected Discography

The Complete RCA Victor Recordings 1937-1949, Bluebird, 1937-49 Dizzy's Diamonds, Verve, 1954-64 Birk's Works: Verve Big Band Sessions, Verve, 1956-57 Gillespiana/Carnegie Hall Concert, Verve, 1960-61 Max + Dizzy, Paris 1989, A&M, 1989

Phil Woods on being kidnapped by Dizzy

August 9, 2013

Phil Woods on being kidnapped
by Dizzy

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Yusef Lateef on joining Dizzy's big band

August 9, 2013

Yusef Lateef on joining Dizzy's big band

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http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/07/arts/dizzy-gillespie-stays-put-but-not-for-long.html

Dizzy Gillespie Stays Put, but Not for Long
by PETER WATROUS
January 7, 1992
New York Times
 
Over the next month, Dizzy Gillespie will probably wade through "A Night in Tunisia" 50 more times. Considering that he's been playing the tune twice a night, 300 nights a year for the last 50 or so years, another 50 times won't mean a thing. The idea doesn't seem to bother him.

"Even 'Night in Tunisia,' doesn't bore me; I'm never bored," Mr. Gillespie said on Sunday afternoon before rushing off to perform "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Knicks game at Madison Square Garden. "There's always a new way to play anything."

What makes these last 50 so unusual is that Mr. Gillespie, one of the fathers of be-bop and an icon of jazz, will be playing them in the same place for a month. He is booked at the Blue Note in Greenwich Village, where 30 to 40 musicians both perform with him and pay tribute to him.

It's part of a yearlong celebration of Mr. Gillespie's 75th birthday, which will be on Oct. 21. He will also appear in Latin America, Europe and South Africa (in an appearance approved by Nelson Mandela), and this month he will release "The Winter in Lisbon," in which he stars. So the Blue Note performances are a good time to see and hear the country's best-known trumpet player amid rare musical splendor. Mr. Gillespie, who flies over 300,000 miles a year, doesn't stay in one place too long. Going Way Back

The first week begins tonight and brings together an extraordinary group of musicans: Jimmy Heath on saxophone, Slide Hampton on trombone, Kenny Barron on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. They have all, with the exception of Mr. Jones, put in their time under Mr. Gillespie's leadership.

Mr. Gillespie's pleasure in the group makes him grope for words. "Owww, that group is good," he said over lunch in a midtown restaurant. "I've been playing with Kenny since he was a little kid, and he and Jimmy know how I think better than I do. Cranshaw has a beat like a gorilla. And I want Elvin to play like he usually does, hard."

For Mr. Heath, who first joined Mr. Gillespie's big band in the early 1940's, the show will be a homecoming.

"Diz is my guru, my teacher," Mr. Heath said. "When I joined his band, after being in love with his and Charlie Parker's music, it was a dream come true. My brother Percy and I had followed the band around. We were even wearing his costume, berets and thin artist ties. It was a school in arranging and composing and true improvisation because Dizzy never played the same thing in the same place."

Mr. Heath said he and John Coltrane, who was also in the band, would note the way the trumpeter introduced his solo in "I Can't Get Started."

"He'd play it differently each time and we'd look at each other in amazement," Mr. Heath recalled. "In that period he was far superior to anybody that played trumpet, anybody. Dizzy was the master." His Own Band

The second week at the Blue Note will feature Mr. Gillespie's 13-piece Afro-Cuban jazz band, the United Nation Orchestra, which includes the saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, the trumpeter Claudio Roditi, the percussionist Giovanni Hidalgo, the saxophonist Mario Rivera, the drummer Charli Persip and the pianist Danilo Perez, Latin musicians who, Mr. Gillespie says, "love our music more than the original be-boppers."

"These guys play be-bop better than be-bop guys play Latin," he said, "but it's the mixture that I like. I love playing it. I'm not an authority, but I know it pretty well. I love the rhythm."

The third week has a slew of saxophonists, including a handful of younger players: Tim Warfield, David Sanchez, Vincent Herring, Antonio Hart -- to balance out the older masters. Benny Golson will appear, as will Jackie McLean, Clifford Jordan, David (Fathead) Newman, Hank Crawford and more.

For Jackie McLean, a member of one of the first groups of young musicians to absorb the lessons of Mr. Gillespie and Charlie Parker, the show is a way of getting closer to the source. "I first heard Dizzy and Bird on a tune called 'Sorta Kinda' on a record by Trummy Young, and then two days later I heard them on 'Koko,' " recalled Mr. McLean, who has begun to play occasionally with Mr. Gillespie at festivals and concerts. "I had heard all sorts of great music as a kid, but when I heard them I locked in and I knew what I wanted to say.

"Dizzy's one of my greatest heroes and idols. I've hungered to play with him and I couldn't be more motivated by the chance. Historically he belongs to the special club of only five trumpeters -- Buddy Bolden, Freddy Kepperd, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong and Dizzy. I'm so happy he's alive and reigning. As long as he's here, he's the king." Other Trumpeters

For his final week, Mr. Gillespie will be joined by trumpeters, including one of his first disciples, Red Rodney, his protege Jon Faddis and the be-bop trumpeter Donald Byrd. Doc Cheatham, who played along side Mr. Gillespie in Cab Calloway's orchestra, will be there, too, along with some of the better young trumpeters now on the jazz scene, Wynton Marsalis, Wallace Roney, Roy Hargrove and Terence Blanchard.

Like many younger musicians, Mr. Hargove has been on the receiving end of Mr. Gillespie's advice, musical or otherwise.

"Dizzy is my musical father," said the 21-year-old Mr. Hargrove. "Every time I see him, he has some advice about playing or on life in general. I hope I can play that much trumpet when I'm his age, because he's playing more than a lot of cats my age. His harmonic sense, the way he plays over chords, especially now, is on a really sophisticated level. He's definitely kept progressing, which is inspirational."

And through it all will be the clowning. Had Mr. Gillespie quit performing in 1950, he'd be remembered as an enormously influential and productive musician, someone who affected a sea change in American music with his innovations. But even before that Mr. Gillespie had done something more difficult. By mixing an infallible sense of humor with music, he had managed to combine serious expression with entertainment. With his trademark moon cheeks and his bent trumpet, he has become one of the country's most recognizable figures.

"I never looked behind me to find out what other people were playing or doing," Mr. Gillespie said. "I always liked a little fun. Charlie Parker was pretty funny himself. One time in Pine Bluff, Ark., a guy hit me in the head with a bottle. Charlie said, 'You took advantage of my friend, you cur.' I had to laugh even through I had blood coming out of my head. That's just the way I felt about it. It didn't bother me what everybody else was doing. I got fired out of Cab Calloway's band for fooling around too much. It still didn't bother me." The Schedule At the Blue Note

Here is the schedule of Dizzy Gillespie programs at the Blue Note, 131 West Third Street in Manhattan. For reservations, call (212) 475-8592.

JAN. 7-12, "Dizzy's Be-Bop Jamboree," with Kenny Barron, Bob Cranshaw, Slide Hampton, Jimmy Heath, Elvin Jones and James Moody.

JAN. 14-19, "Dizzy's United Nation," with Paquito D'Rivera, Ed Cherry, Danilo Perez, Charli Persip, Mario Rivera and David Sanchez, among others.

JAN. 21-26, "To Bird, With Love," with different guests each night, including Hank Crawford, Benny Golson, Jackie McLean, Clifford Jordan and David (Fathead) Newman.

JAN. 28-FEB. 2, "To Diz, With Love," with guest artists including Roy Hargrove, Wynton Marsalis, Doc Cheatham, Donald Byrd, Red Rodney and Jon Faddis.

Photo: "I never looked behind me to find out what other people were playing or doing," said Dizzy Gillespie, who is shown in Manhattan on Sunday. (David Gahr for The New York Times)

http://abartists.nyc/2015/07/21/the-dizzy-gillespie-tm-afro-cuban-experience/

The Dizzy Gillespie (TM) Afro Cuban Experience

Posted July 21, 2015  

by admin

 

History has produced its share of great artists and great people—John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie was both. As a performer, he left behind an incredible record of innovation and inspiration; as a composer, a broad repository of musical masterpieces; and as a man, a legion of friends, colleagues and compatriots who remember him with the same degree of love and esteem they reserve for his work.
The Afro Cuban Experience, a 6-8 piece ensemble led by Dizzy Gillespie’s long-term bassist John Lee, showcase the unique rhythms and well-loved melodies (such as ‘Manteca’ and ‘Tin Tin Deo’) of Gillespie’s oeuvre of Cu-Bop which he developed with Chano Pozo in the 40s and 50s. Their repertoire also explores the broader world of Latin-American music- the tunes that Dizzy would have been playing today.

The musicians are drawn from the high-calibre pool of New York-based talent that frequent the Dizzy Gillespie™ Big Band and All Star groups, such as trumpeter Freddie Hendrix, saxophonist Sharel Cassity, Brazilian pianist / vocalist Abelita Mateus, drummer Tommy Campbell and percussionist Roger Squitero. They perform with energy, verve, and style, putting their own fresh stamp on a well-known genre. The group can perform as various sizes from sextet to octet.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/17/arts/pop-view-dizzy-gillespie-more-than-the-man-with-the-bent-horn.html

POP VIEW
 

Dizzy Gillespie: More Than the Man With the Bent Horn
by Peter Watrous
January 17, 1993
New York Times

The trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie was an easy person to get hold of, if he was in this country, which wasn't often. It just took a telephone call and he'd speak with you, laconic and interested if you knew what you were talking about, monosyllabic if you didn't. Searching for answers to a musical question or for an eyewitness report on some of the more important cultural history of the 20th century would incite two types of replies -- the "Umm, yeah . . ." sort, a bit gruff, mostly bored, and obviously the response of a person watching television, or an articulate expression of what he had experienced in the course of a life that moved from rural South Carolina to the streets of the major cities of the world.

Nearly 60 years of involvement in show business in America left Gillespie, who died this month at age 75, a profound judge of character, somebody who had seen just about every type of scam, malfeasance and insincerity. An unprepared interviewer would turn into prey, and many were left with nothing. He had been burned in print before -- a long profile in The New Yorker in 1948 poked fun at him and be-boppers. He spent a good portion of the late 1950's and early 1960's a lost figure in a music he helped invent; be-bop was yesterday's music.

Being innovative in America isn't easy, especially when taking the route Gillespie chose, but the difficulties clearly helped form his immensely complicated personality. Partly his problems were of his own making: in presenting himself as both an entertainer and a brilliant musician, he was bound to be treated badly by people who were looking for either simple fun or art. For decades he was asked the same questions: Why did be-bop have such a funny name? What was Charlie Parker like?

Gillespie was expected to be witty and to maintain his stage persona even in private. He felt he was constantly under suspicion because of his race, constantly treated like a jester; the experience could have left scars. Be-bop itself, his own hard-won creation, had met with divisiveness, and its practitioners were often accused of ignoring audiences, fostering an elitist sensibility.

But Gillespie spent most of his time, oddly enough, being anything but divisive. His performances were about as inclusionary and unpatronizing as any in the history of American music, and he never excluded anyone. To his friends he was forthcoming and warm, and to other musicians he was a deity, always willing to sit down at the piano and share some of his copious insights. The writer Stanley Crouch remembers an occasion when Gillespie went to a black studies center in 1970 with a white friend and, after being challenged by the participants, stated flatly, "This is my brother."

His opened-armed affability reigned on stage. Charismatic personalities can coerce a club or concert hall, change its mood, and Gillespie regularly turned a nightclub or concert into his room, a place where absurdity and humor walked easily with musical excellence. The persona he created for the audience was full of mock aristocratic accents, raised eyebrows, gentle prods toward unruly or insensitive fans. He rid the air of pretensions; this from one of the more profound musicians to grace American music. He would begin a show by asking the audience if he could introduce the band; after people shouted yes, he would introduce the band members to one another. It suckered the audience, but in an unmalicious way, and automatically sealed a contract with the audience, showing that the audience played a role in the show.

What ensued musically during a show was, until the last few years of his life, always extraordinary. Gillespie embraced urbanity and turned the vitality of the metropolis into something enriching instead of something causing fear and despair. It is fascinating to listen to Gillespie and Charlie Parker together, to hear how Parker's use of narrative is more ordered, more calm and rural; it seems to come from an earlier period. In the tune "Dizzy Atmosphere," from 1945, for example, Gillespie's improvisations are radical in their sense of juxtaposition; they reproduce the extremes and velocity of urban life. Gillespie was a master of dynamics; he would let out shouts and follow them with a run, a whisper and a sudden burst of notes.

Jazz is often called the sound of surprise; in his hands, it was the sound of shock. And while he recorded perfectly logical improvisations over his career, his most personal improvisations were the ones in which the internal contrasts, jagged and sharp, always argued in favor of a literate conception of artistic activity. With their abrupt movements and bright flashes of sounds, Gillespie's solos were the sound of modernism, the relentless and erratic motion of a city in action.

His artistic legacy covered more ground than that of any other jazz musician aside from Duke Ellington. His small group recordings were definitive; his experiments with big bands and Afro-Cuban music gave the second half of his century a good portion of its musical profile. This was a man who well into his 70's regularly changed band members, and bands, moving easily between the Latin world and the jazz world, a man who frequently showed up as a special guest and charged the mood of concert hall after concert hall, reaping standing ovations around the world.

Nearly a year ago, Gillespie said in an interview: "I never looked behind me to find out what other people were playing or doing. I just keep going, looking for new ideas, practicing. Even a 'Night in Tunisia' doesn't bore me; I'm never bored. There's always a new way to play anything." That pretty much summed up his 60 years of change.


http://wakeforestmuseum.org/2014/11/20/the-day-dizzy-came-to-town/

WAKE FOREST HISTORICAL MUSEUM

LOCATION: 414 N. Main Street Wake Forest, NC 27587 CONTACT: 919-556-2911

THE DAY DIZZY CAME TO TOWN

(Originally published in The Wake Weekly)

In one of the most spectacular, and possibly strangest, moments in Wake Forest’s holiday history, music legend Dizzy Gillespie bounded off a Greyhound bus on Owen Avenue to play an impromptu jam session at the town’s Community House just days before the 1948 Wake Forest Community Christmas Dinner. It was the last week of November, time to ring in the holiday season. Although still a new tradition, the annual Christmas Dinner was extremely popular; volunteers had started it the year before to give returning World War II veterans a warm welcome home and it was fast becoming a seasonal favorite. Now the civic clubs were once again ready to decorate the Community House with evergreen garlands, table centerpieces, and a large Christmas tree. But they couldn’t do it this particular afternoon—not after the historic entrance of Gillespie and his entire 18-piece jazz band.

In those days, Gillespie was a young trumpet virtuoso with an improvisational bebop style that made him the most controversial figure in American jazz. He was traveling on tour between West Virginia and Raleigh, and a group of Wake Forest College students who called themselves the “Friends of Jazz” had invited him to take a break near campus. Somewhat surprisingly, he accepted. It was a cold, rainy day when the bus drove into town on Highway 98, sloshed through mud to the Community House, and parked at the curb. Gillespie stepped out, dressed in a turtle-neck jacket, blue jeans, ostrich leather shoes, and a French beret. The students weren’t sure what to make of him. But he spoke in an easy, interesting way and, once inside the building, he quickly transformed that gray November afternoon into something extraordinary.

Student writer Harold Hayes (later the editor of Esquire magazine) reported on the event, vividly describing the scene inside the Community House. “Most of the students had gathered around him now and were trying to figure out what made him tick. At that time more than any other, perhaps, it was apparent that Diz was in a world of his own…. So it was with a feeling of encroachment that we asked him if three or four members of his band would play a few numbers…. From his horn ripped an incoherent stream of jumbled notes, beginning and ending where you wouldn’t expect, and touching on everything but the melody so that the suspense was unbearable.”

Gillespie and his musicians enjoyed a pleasant lunch of fried chicken, side dishes, and pie for dessert. Then they ripped into an unplanned concert. The band’s Cuban percussionist, Chano Pozo, straddled his Bongo drum and pounded out a rolling, erratic rhythm that rocked the house and could be heard from the campus Administration Building to Wooten’s Hometel on South Main Street. “We had expected them to be loud,” Hayes wrote, “but the word ‘loud’ used in reference to Dizzy Gillespie’s band is a gross understatement. Some students were left wondering if beams and timbers supporting the roof would be considered safe enough to keep the building from being condemned.”
Of course, Gillespie was a legend in the making. But that’s not the only reason his visit to Wake Forest is worth remembering. His concert for a handful of students was a special moment of shared appreciation and fellowship, the same two things that make the Wake Forest Community Christmas Dinner a cherished and longstanding tradition. The very event that was held a week after Gillespie’s visit to the Community House still happens every year, and it still remains Wake Forest’s best way of welcoming the holidays with friends and neighbors.

The 67th Annual Wake Forest Community Christmas Dinner will take place on December 1st at 6:30pm at the Forks Cafeteria, 339 S. Brooks Street. The menu will include roast beef, fried chicken, scalloped potatoes, carrots, apples, green beans, and a dessert bar. Committee Chair Carolyn Coordes will give away door prizes, and local civic groups will decorate tables with seasonal floral arrangements and centerpieces. There will be a performance and holiday sing-a-long led by 12-year-old vocalist Logan Harrison, the invocation will be offered by the Reverend Dr. Enoch Holloway of Friendship Chapel Baptist Church, and Wake Forest Mayor Vivian Jones will recognize the winners of the town’s Citizen of the Year, Organization of the Year, and Peggy Allen Lifetime Achievement awards.

Tickets are $15 and available through local civic clubs and locations including the Forks, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Wake Forest Historical Museum.

(Photo Caption: Dizzy Gillespie “limbers up his chops” at the Wake Forest Community House on November 29, 1948. Also pictured, from left to right, Evelyn Ward, Romulus Weatherman, and Ed Friedenberg.)

(Excerpts from Harold Hayes’ article are taken from the December 1948 edition of the Wake Forest College literary magazine, The Student, Vol. LXII, No. 3.)

http://www.wbur.org/npr/4672361

THE LASTING IMPACT OF DIZZY GILLESPIE

May 30, 2005

NPR 

AUDIO:  <iframe width="100%" height="124" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="http://embed.wbur.org/player/?url=

A jazz legend's influence on the genre is detailed in Donald Maggin's book Dizzy: The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie. Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz included the flavor of Afro-Cuban rhythms and be-bop.

A jazz legend's influence on the genre is detailed in Donald Maggin's book Dizzy: The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie. Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz included the flavor of Afro-Cuban rhythms and be-bop.

Related NPR Stories:

• Dizzy and Chet, a Jazz Odd Couple
• Dizzy Gillespie: 'The Complete RCA Victor Recordings'
• Dizzy Gillespie: 'Roy and Diz'

Copyright NPR. View this article on npr.org.

TRANSCRIPT:

ED GORDON, host:  In the world of jazz, Dizzy Gillespie is an icon. Beyond its borders, he's a legend. His journey through music led him to revolutionize jazz by infusing bebop and Afro-Cuban rhythms. Donald Maggin is the author of a book titled "Dizzy: The Life and times of John Birks Gillespie," which takes us inside the jazz great's life. The author says Dizzy was an original.

Mr. DONALD MAGGIN (Author, "Dizzy: The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie"): He was the maker of two important revolutions in jazz. The first one was bebop and the second one was the Afro-Cuban revolution.

(Soundbite of music)

GORDON: Ofttimes he was such a character, with the cheeks and the horn that was his trademark. I don't know if he often gets the due, as you suggest, in terms of how he revolutionized music.

Mr. MAGGIN: No, I think that's true. He could not curb his comedic bent. He just loved to have fun out there. When they were traveling in Europe with the big band in 1948, John Lewis, the pianist, who was a very scholarly sort of conservative guy--Dizzy would do crazy things like lean on the bass player's strings while he was doing a solo and stuff, and John Lewis said, `These are great spiritual moments for the audience. Why are you doing that, Dizzy? You shouldn't do that.' But Dizzy didn't listen to him at all.

And the cheeks are because he was totally self-taught, he didn't realize that this was a no-no, and by the time he got to be a mature musician, he was so used to that that he stayed with it. The tilted trumpet was part of his genius for PR, because he claimed it sounded better.

GORDON: I don't know if this is folklore or not; I read that someone sat on the trumpet initially and bent it. Is that correct?

Mr. MAGGIN: Yes. It was at a birthday party for Dizzy's wife, and these two friends of his were horsing around on the stage and one of them fell and landed on the trumpet and tilted it, and when Dizzy came back he was initially angry, but he didn't want to spoil his wife's birthday party, so he went along with it. And then he started playing it and he claimed that it sounded better. And then he had trumpets custom made with the 45-degree angle.

(Soundbite of music)

GORDON: One of the things that I find also interesting about Dizzy Gillespie is the idea that he did marry so many cultures. His signature song, for instance, "Night in Tunisia," brings all of those elements together. What was it about this man that could do that kind of thing?

Mr. MAGGIN: He was fascinated by world rhythms, by the Afro-Cuban rhythms, by Indian tabla-playing rhythms, by African rhythms; like, he toured with Miriam Makeba. He told me that he first heard Afro-Cuban music when he got gigs with salsa bands in East Harlem when he was about 18 and he was starving. And he said in America the slave owners did not allow the black people to have drums because they were afraid they would foment a revolution by communicating with each other. But in Cuba and Brazil and places like that, they did have drums, and they kept the African drumming traditions alive.

(Soundbite of unidentified song)

Unidentified Man: (Singing) Oh, an El Dorado coming after me.

Chorus: (Singing) Coming for to carry me home.

(Soundbite of music)

GORDON: Interesting, this man that we know as Dizzy was in the fore, if you will, of understanding celebrity.

Mr. MAGGIN: That was just a natural thing with him. I mean, he was on Johnny Carson all the time and his contemporaries, like Miles Davis or Thelonious Monk or Charlie Parker, they had none of that. So Dizzy became sort of the poster child of modern jazz because he had such an ebullient personality.

GORDON: Do you believe that that is, to a great degree, to the novice, why perhaps he is not taken as seriously as a Monk or a Davis?

Mr. MAGGIN: It did detract, the fact that he was a comedian as well as a great musician. But his contribution in these two revolutions is immense.

GORDON: When you think about Dizzy Gillespie, what's the one thing that you think people don't know about this man?

Mr. MAGGIN: He was a revolutionary, and that's partly because of his father. He said, `My father made me a rebel against everybody but him.' And that's the thing that got to me, that behind this facade of camaraderie and fun and comedy was a revolutionary, somebody who would not accept what he was given and had to change it.

GORDON: We should note that there is also an accompanying CD that comes along with the book, "Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie," "Dizzy." The Verve years, if you will...

Mr. MAGGIN: Yes.

GORDON: ...perhaps his most productive.

Mr. MAGGIN: And there's a terrific variety of stuff there. I mean, it's the only recording with him and Monk and Parker on the same CD. There's stuff with Sonny Rollins, stuff with Stan Getz.

GORDON: And what's remarkable about what you have here--there are some real standards. I mean, when you talk about "Caravan" and "I Remember Clifford" and "Round Midnight," these are songs that are so familiar to those who love jazz.

Mr. MAGGIN: They're part of the canon, really.

GORDON: Well, the book is called "The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie," "Dizzy," and we thank you so very much for spending time with us.

Mr. MAGGIN: My pleasure to be here.

GORDON: That does it for the program today. To listen to the show, visit npr.org. NEWS & NOTES was created by NPR News and the African-American Public Radio Consortium.

I'm Ed Gordon. This is NEWS & NOTES. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

http://alyoung.org/2012/04/03/ava-gardner-and-dizzy-gillespie-poems-for-two-carolinians/
 

AVA GARDNER and DIZZY GILLESPIE: Poems for Two Celebrated Carolinians

________________________________________________________

©  Life

Actress Ava Gardner in a Hollywood nightclub, 1948, wearing beret, horn-rimmed spectacles, and simulating a goatee, to signify her admiration for Dizzy Gillespie, Bebop King.

(That's Dizzy to Ava's right in LIFE magazine photo)


AVA, SHE WAS ONE OF YOUR WOMEN
by Al Young

An MGM property, as she later stated,
“None of us was ever very well educated.”
For one hundred bucks a week each,
the studio knew it could afford to reach
deep into future space for its heroines, its stars.
You can talk about your Hedy Lamarrs,
your Lanas, your Grables, your Ritas, your Janes,
but none of those well-screened women sustains
your interest the crazy way into Ava Garner
did and still does. Ava was your partner–
no satiny matinee idolatress, either.
She called the hot and heavy breather
in new. Sexual, intellectual, aristocratic,
she truly you woofully into the ecstatic,
where feeling and thought, like energy and mass,
squared up, imploded; imagination, class,
were everything; knowledge of way-station.
She filled in the blanks for you. Your education
old as much to The Snows of Kilimanjaro
as it did to the steamy straight-and-narrow that
contessas didn’t walk barefoot. With Artie Shaw
Ava learned how great books worked. She saw
how what you hear and see and say and feel
gross deep when you and you alone get real.
Ideas? You had to bounce them, see which way
they fell into your world. Ava moved to Spain
and then to London, where the supple pain
of being a star, a ghost impression, slowed.
What was it about Ava that pulled and glowed,
that yanks and warms the eye and heart today
in a century she never reached to shrug away?

© Al Young



© Life
Teen-age girls, taken with Dizzy and his music in 1948, wait to have his autograph.


DEPRESSION, BLUES, FLAMENCO, WINE, DESPAIR
by Al Young

Depression, blues, flamenco, wine, despair––
sunk in, they make you cross your heart and die
for hope. Dark times come at you; they don’t care.
“So deal with this,” they say. And so you buy
the pain and stress, the restlessness––the works:
low back pain, aches and limps, the twitch
of fear your face betrays.

ooooooooooooooooooooooJohn “Dizzy” Birks
Gillespie’s cheeks popped out (fat love an itch
scratched by the trumpet at his goateed lip),
they said: “Take chances, stretch, jump at the sun.
You just can’t spend your whole life acting hip.
Be corny sometimes. Have yourself some fun.
You can’t be cool forever, so relax.”

Diz knew puffed cheeks were anything but chic,
but when you closed your eyes you heard him axe
infinitives, split atoms, hairs. You speak
that tongue––curves, flatlands, all of it. You do.

You understand the hoodoo stab of hurt;
the blues, their messy messages, a few
trashed hopes, some lame goodbyes, her skirt,
your coat, the folded jeans, wet tights. Black night
is falling all around you in the rain.
Dark times, dark times can fix you in the light
of reason, recognition, lasers, pain.

© Al Young

— from Something About the Blues: An Unlikely Collection of Poetry (Sourcebooks MediaFusion, 2007)

THE MUSIC OF DIZZY GILLESPIE: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH MR. GILLESPIE:   

  

Dizzy Gillespie - "Salt Peanuts" - 1947:

 

Dizzy Gillespie Quintet - "Tin Tin Deo"

 

Dizzy Gillespie(tp)
James Moody(as.flt)
Kenny Barron(d)
Christopher Wesley White(b)
Rudy Collins(ds)

Solo duet:  Dizzy & Christopher White on bass

All,

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (b. October 21, 1917) was one of the major as well as most influential and inspiring musicians and composers of the 20th century who had a profound global impact on music and art and played a crucial role in the growth and development of Jazz in an extraordinary career that lasted six decades until his death at 75 in 1993. What follows is an extensive musical and video sampling of his brilliant and prolific artistry on trumpet and as an innovative small ensemble and orchestral leader and composer from 1940 to 1990. Dizzy was not only a great artist and teacher but a wonderful human being as well. ENJOY...

Kofi


Dizzy Gillespie performing his composition "Con Alma" (1954). 
 
Con Alma is a jazz standard written by Dizzy Gillespie. It incorporates aspects of bebop jazz and Latin rhythm, and is known for its frequent changes in key centers (occurring every two bars), while still maintaining a singable melody. Versions have been recorded by Oscar Peterson, Wes Montgomery, Ed Bickert, Stan Getz and Kenny Burrell. The song was recorded by Chaka Khan in 1982 as part of the "Be Bop Medley" from her album "Chaka Khan":


 

The Charlie Parker Quintet featuring Dizzy Gillespie perform "Hot House" at Dumont Television Studios in New York City on February 24, 1952
 
Featuring Charlie Parker - alto sax; Dizzy Gillespie - trumpet; Dick Hyman - piano; Sandy Block - bass; Charlie Smith - drums

 

Dizzy Gillespie Big Band - "Con Alma" [1968]:
Tivoli Koncertsal, Copenhagen - Denmark
 
Dizzy Gillespie - Trumpet & Vocals
James Moody - Tenor, Flute & Vocals
Jimmy Owens - Flueghelhorn
Alphonse Reece - Trumpet
Victor Paz - Trumpet
Paul Jeffery - Tenor
Sahib Shihab - Baritone
Cecil Payne - Baritone
Curtis Fuller - Trombone
Michael Longo - Piano
Paul West - Bass
Candy Finch - Drums

 
Charlie Parker and Dizzy Live at Carnegie Hall on September 29, 1947 performing "Night in Tunisia" (Composition by Dizzy Gillespie):

 

Dizzy Gillespie performing "Tin Tin Deo" (Composition by Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo)-- (1951):

Dizzy Gillespie-tp
John Coltrane-ts
Milt Jackson-vib
Kenny Burrell-g
Percy Health-b

Recorded in 1/3/1951 in Detroit

 

Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie Live at Carnegie Hall on September 29, 1947 performing "Groovin' High"
(Composition by Dizzy Gillespie):

 

Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra performing "Things to Come" (Composition by Dizzy Gillespie), 1948:

 

Dizzy Gillespie Quintet performing "Bebop" (Composition by Dizzy Gillespie), 1963:

Dizzy Gillespie's Dream Band Orchestra performing "Manteca" (Composition by Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo) Live in concert at Lincoln Center in New York in 1982
 
Recorded in 1982 at Lincoln Center, captures legendary jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie performing with his Dream Band, consisting of a wide array of jazz music's finest musicians, many of whom worked with Gillespie during the evolutionary era of the early-'40s bebop period. It includes an all-star cast highlighted by pyrotechnic drum wizard Max Roach, Gillespie's protégé trumpeter Jon Faddis, and Modern Jazz Quartet cofounders John Lewis (piano) and Milt Jackson (vibraphone). The leader's crowd-pleasing persona, trademark puffy cheeks, and no-nonsense trumpet solos steal the show. Selections include Gillespie's Afro-Cubop favorite "Manteca":

 


Dizzy Gillespie - Sextet 77 - Jazz in Montreux, Switzerland 1977:

 

 

"Con Alma" by Dizzy Gillespie: 

One of the masterpieces of genius trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie 

 

     

 

Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Giants Of Jazz Copenhagen 1971: 

 

 

Dizzy Gillespie Live In Belgium 1958 & Denmark 1970:

VIDEO: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXzVi4c3dh

Belgium 1958:

Dizzy Gillespie - trumpet
Sonny Stitt - tenor & alto sax
Lou Levy - piano
Ray Brown - bass
Gus Johnson - drums

Denmark 1970:

Dizzy Gillespie & Kenny Clarke Francy Boland Big Band

The Dizzy Gillespie™ Afro Cuban Experience feat. Machito Jr. - Jazzwoche Burghausen 2014

 

● Tracklist:

1. Toccata
2. Olé
3. Fiesta Mojo
4. Black Orpheus
5. Tin Tin Deo

 

● Personnel:

 

John Lee - bass
Freddie Hendrix - trumpet, flugelhorn
Sharel Cassity - alto sax
Tommy Campbell - drums
Roger Squitero - percussion
special guest:
Machito Jr. - percussion

● The Dizzy Gillespie™ Afro Cuban Experience feat. Machito Jr.

Live at 45. Internationale Jazzwoche Burghausen, Wackerhalle, Germany, March 29, 2014

▶ Internationale Jazzwoche Burghausen - Full Length Concerts - http://bit.ly/1BIsmTc

 

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzy_Gillespie

 

Dizzy Gillespie

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dizzy Gillespie
Gillespie in concert, Deauville, Normandy, France
Background information
Birth name	John Birks Gillespie
Born	October 21, 1917 Cheraw, South Carolina, United States
Died	January 6, 1993 (aged 75) Englewood, New Jersey United States
Genres	Jazz, bebop, Afro-Cuban jazz
Occupation(s)	Musician, composer
Instruments	Trumpet, piano, vocals
Years active	1935–93
Labels	Pablo, RCA Victor, Savoy, Verve
Associated acts	Ray Brown, Cab Calloway, Roy Eldridge, J.J. Johnson, James Moody, Chico O'Farrill, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Chano Pozo, Max Roach, Mickey Roker, Sonny Rollins, Lalo Schifrin, Sonny Stitt, William Oscar Smith, John Coltrane

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (/ɡɨˈlɛspi/; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer and occasional singer.^[1]
AllMusic's Scott Yanow wrote, "Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time (some would say the best), Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up copying Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis's emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy's style was successfully recreated [...] Arguably Gillespie is remembered, by both critics and fans alike, as one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time."^[2]

Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge^[3] but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop.^{[citation needed]}
In the 1940s Gillespie, with Charlie Parker, became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz.^[4] He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Jon Faddis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan,^[5] Chuck Mangione,^[6] and balladeer Johnny Hartman^[5]

Contents

• 1 Biography
  • 1.1 Early life and career
  • 1.2 The rise of bebop
  • 1.3 Afro-Cuban music
  • 1.4 Later years
  • 1.5 Death and legacy
• 2 Style
• 3 "Bent" trumpet
• 4 Discography
  • 4.1 As leader
  • 4.2 As sideman
• 5 Filmography
• 6 Bibliography
• 7 References
• 8 External links

Biography

Early life and career

Dizzy Gillespie, Tadd Dameron, Hank Jones, Mary Lou Williams and Milt Orent in 1947

Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina the youngest of nine children of James and Lottie Gillespie. James was a local bandleader, so instruments were made available to the children. Gillespie started to play the piano at the age of four. Gillespie's father died when he was was only ten years old. Gillespie taught himself how to play the trombone as well as the trumpet by the age of twelve. From the night he heard his idol, Roy Eldridge, play on the radio, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician.^[7] He received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in Lauringburg, North Carolina which he attended for two years before accompanying his family when they moved to Philadelphia.^[8]

Gillespie's first professional job was with the Frank Fairfax Orchestra in 1935, after which he joined the respective orchestras of Edgar Hayes and Teddy Hill, essentially replacing Roy Eldridge as first trumpet in 1937. Teddy Hill's band was where Gillespie made his first recording, "King Porter Stomp". In August 1937 while gigging with Hayes in Washington D.C., Gillespie met a young dancer named Lorraine Willis who worked a Baltimore–Philadelphia–New York City circuit which included the Apollo Theatre. Willis was not immediately friendly but Gillespie was attracted anyway. The two finally married on May 9, 1940. They remained married until his death in 1993.^[9]

Gillespie stayed with Teddy Hill's band for a year, then left and free-lanced with numerous other bands.^[5] In 1939, Gillespie joined Cab Calloway's orchestra, with which he recorded one of his earliest compositions, the instrumental "Pickin' the Cabbage", in 1940. (Originally released on Paradiddle, a 78rpm backed with a co-composition with Cozy Cole, Calloway's drummer at the time, on the Vocalion label, No. 5467).

Tadd Dameron, Mary Lou Williams and Dizzy Gillespie in 1947

After a notorious altercation between the two men, Calloway fired Gillespie in late 1941. The incident is recounted by Gillespie, along with fellow Calloway band members Milt Hinton and Jonah Jones, in Jean Bach's 1997 film, The Spitball Story. Calloway did not approve of Gillespie's mischievous humor, nor of his adventuresome approach to soloing; according to Jones, Calloway referred to it as "Chinese music". During one performance, Calloway saw a spitball land on the stage, and accused Gillespie of having thrown it. Gillespie denied it, and the ensuing argument led to Calloway striking Gillespie, who then pulled out a switchblade knife and charged Calloway. The two were separated by other band members, during which scuffle Calloway was cut on the hand.

During his time in Calloway's band, Gillespie started writing big band music for bandleaders like Woody Herman and Jimmy Dorsey.^[5] He then freelanced with a few bands – most notably Ella Fitzgerald's orchestra, composed of members of the late Chick Webb's band, in 1942.

Gilespie avoided serving in World War II. In his Selective Service interview, he told the local board, "in this stage of my life here in the United States whose foot has been in my ass?" He was thereafter classed as 4-F.^[10] In 1943, Gillespie joined the Earl Hines band. Composer Gunther Schuller said:

... In 1943 I heard the great Earl Hines band which had Bird in it and all those other great musicians. They were playing all the flatted fifth chords and all the modern harmonies and substitutions and Gillespie runs in the trumpet section work. Two years later I read that that was 'bop' and the beginning of modern jazz ... but the band never made recordings.^[11]

Gillespie said of the Hines band, "People talk about the Hines band being 'the incubator of bop' and the leading exponents of that music ended up in the Hines band. But people also have the erroneous impression that the music was new. It was not. The music evolved from what went before. It was the same basic music. The difference was in how you got from here to here to here ... naturally each age has got its own shit".^[12]

Then, Gillespie joined Billy Eckstine's (Earl Hines' long-time collaborator) big band and it was as a member of Eckstine's band that he was reunited with Charlie Parker, a fellow member of Hines's band. In 1945, Gillespie left Eckstine's band because he wanted to play with a small combo. A "small combo" typically comprised no more than five musicians, playing the trumpet, saxophone, piano, bass and drums.

The rise of bebop

Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown, Milt Jackson and Timme Rosenkrantz in September 1947, New York

Bebop was known as the first modern jazz style. However, it was unpopular in the beginning and was not viewed as positively as swing music was. Bebop was seen as an outgrowth of swing, not a revolution. Swing introduced a diversity of new musicians in the bebop era like Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Pettiford, and Gillespie. Through these musicians, a new vocabulary of musical phrases was created.^[13] With Charlie Parker, Gillespie jammed at famous jazz clubs like Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House. Charlie Parker's system also held methods of adding chords to existing chord progressions and implying additional chords within the improvised lines.^[13]

Gillespie compositions like "Groovin' High", "Woody 'n' You" and "Salt Peanuts" sounded radically different, harmonically and rhythmically, from the swing music popular at the time. "A Night in Tunisia", written in 1942, while Gillespie was playing with Earl Hines' band, is noted for having a feature that is common in today's music, a non-walking bass line.^{[citation needed]} The song also displays Afro-Cuban rhythms.^[14] One of their first small-group performances together was only issued in 2005: a concert in New York's Town Hall on June 22, 1945. Gillespie taught many of the young musicians on 52nd Street, including Miles Davis and Max Roach, about the new style of jazz. After a lengthy gig at Billy Berg's club in Los Angeles, which left most of the audience ambivalent or hostile towards the new music, the band broke up. Unlike Parker, who was content to play in small groups and be an occasional featured soloist in big bands, Gillespie aimed to lead a big band himself; his first, unsuccessful, attempt to do this was in 1945.^{[citation needed]}

Gillespie with John Lewis, Cecil Payne, Miles Davis, and Ray Brown, between 1946 and 1948

After his work with Parker, Gillespie led other small combos (including ones with Milt Jackson, John Coltrane, Lalo Schifrin, Ray Brown, Kenny Clarke, James Moody, J.J. Johnson, and Yusef Lateef) and finally put together his first successful big band. Gillespie and his band tried to popularize bop and make Gillespie a symbol of the new music.^[15] He also appeared frequently as a soloist with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic. He also headlined the 1946 independently produced musical revue film Jivin' in Be-Bop.^[16]

In 1948 Gillespie was involved in a traffic accident when the bicycle he was riding was bumped by an automobile. He was slightly injured, and found that he could no longer hit the B-flat above high C. He won the case, but the jury awarded him only $1000, in view of his high earnings up to that point.^[17]

In 1956 he organized a band to go on a State Department tour of the Middle East which was extremely well received internationally and earned him the nickname "the Ambassador of Jazz".^[18][19] During this time, he also continued to lead a big band that performed throughout the United States and featured musicians including Pee Wee Moore and others. This band recorded a live album at the 1957 Newport jazz festival that featured Mary Lou Williams as a guest artist on piano.

Afro-Cuban music

Miriam Makeba and Dizzy Gillespie in concert, Deauville (Normandy, France), July 20, 1991

In the late 1940s, Gillespie was also involved in the movement called Afro-Cuban music, bringing Afro-Latin American music and elements to greater prominence in jazz and even pop music, particularly salsa. Afro-Cuban jazz is based on traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms. Gillespie was introduced to Chano Pozo in 1947 by Mario Bauza, a Latin jazz trumpet player. Chano Pozo became Gillespie's conga drummer for his band. Gillespie also worked with Mario Bauza in New York jazz clubs on 52nd Street and several famous dance clubs such as Palladium and the Apollo Theater in Harlem. They played together in the Chick Webb band and Cab Calloway's band, where Gillespie and Bauza became lifelong friends. Gillespie helped develop and mature the Afro-Cuban jazz style.^[20]

Afro-Cuban jazz was considered bebop-oriented, and some musicians classified it as a modern style. Afro-Cuban jazz was successful because it never decreased in popularity and it always attracted people to dance to its unique rhythms.^[20] Gillespie's most famous contributions to Afro-Cuban music are the compositions "Manteca" and "Tin Tin Deo" (both co-written with Chano Pozo); he was responsible for commissioning George Russell's "Cubano Be, Cubano Bop", which featured the great but ill-fated Cuban conga player, Chano Pozo. In 1977, Gillespie discovered Arturo Sandoval while researching music during a tour of Cuba.

Later years

Gillespie performing in 1955

His biographer Alyn Shipton quotes Don Waterhouse approvingly that Gillespie in the fifties "had begun to mellow into an amalgam of his entire jazz experience to form the basis of new classicism". Another opinion is that, unlike his contemporary Miles Davis, Gillespie essentially remained true to the bebop style for the rest of his career.^{[citation needed]}

In 1960, he was inducted into the Down Beat magazine's Jazz Hall of Fame.

During the 1964 United States presidential campaign the artist, with tongue in cheek, put himself forward as an independent write-in candidate.^[21][22] He promised that if he were elected, the White House would be renamed "The Blues House," and a cabinet composed of Duke Ellington (Secretary of State), Miles Davis (Director of the CIA), Max Roach (Secretary of Defense), Charles Mingus (Secretary of Peace), Ray Charles (Librarian of Congress), Louis Armstrong (Secretary of Agriculture), Mary Lou Williams (Ambassador to the Vatican), Thelonious Monk (Travelling Ambassador) and Malcolm X (Attorney General).^[23][24] He said his running mate would be Phyllis Diller. Campaign buttons had been manufactured years ago by Gillespie's booking agency "for publicity, as a gag",^[25] but now proceeds from them went to benefit the Congress of Racial Equality, Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr.;^[26] in later years they became a collector's item.^[27] In 1971 Gillespie announced he would run again^[28][29] but withdrew before the election for reasons connected to the Bahá'í Faith.^[30]

Gillespie published his autobiography, To Be or Not to Bop, in 1979.

Gillespie was a vocal fixture in many of John Hubley and Faith Hubley's animated films, such as The Hole, The Hat, and Voyage to Next.

In the 1980s, Gillespie led the United Nation Orchestra. For three years Flora Purim toured with the Orchestra and she credits Gillespie with evolving her understanding of jazz after being in the field for over two decades.^[31] David Sánchez also toured with the group and was also greatly influenced by Gillespie. Both artists later were nominated for Grammy awards. Gillespie also had a guest appearance on The Cosby Show as well as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.

In 1982, Gillespie had a cameo appearance on Stevie Wonder's hit "Do I Do". Gillespie's tone gradually faded in the last years in life, and his performances often focused more on his proteges such as Arturo Sandoval and Jon Faddis; his good-humoured comedic routines became more and more a part of his live act.

Dizzy Gillespie with drummer Bill Stewart at 1984 Stanford Jazz Workshop

In 1988, Gillespie had worked with Canadian flautist and saxophonist Moe Koffman on their prestigious album Oo Pop a Da. He did fast scat vocals on the title track and a couple of the other tracks were played only on trumpet.

In 1989 Gillespie gave 300 performances in 27 countries, appeared in 100 U.S. cities in 31 states and the District of Columbia, headlined three television specials, performed with two symphonies, and recorded four albums.^{[citation needed]} He was also crowned a traditional chief in Nigeria, received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres; France's most prestigious cultural award. He was named Regent Professor by the University of California, and received his fourteenth honorary doctoral degree, this one from the Berklee College of Music. In addition, he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award the same year. The next year, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts ceremonies celebrating the centennial of American jazz, Gillespie received the Kennedy Center Honors Award and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers Duke Ellington Award for 50 years of achievement as a composer, performer, and bandleader.^[32][33] In 1993 he received the Polar Music Prize in Sweden.^[34]

Dizzy Gillespie with the Italian singer Sergio Caputo

November 26, 1992 at Carnegie Hall in New York, following the Second Bahá'í World Congress was Gillespie's 75th birthday concert and his offering to the celebration of the centenary of the passing of Bahá'u'lláh. Gillespie was to appear at Carnegie Hall for the 33rd time. The line-up included: Jon Faddis, Marvin "Doc" Holladay, James Moody, Paquito D'Rivera, and the Mike Longo Trio with Ben Brown on bass and Mickey Roker on drums. But Gillespie didn't make it because he was in bed suffering from cancer of the pancreas. "But the musicians played their real hearts out for him, no doubt suspecting that he would not play again. Each musician gave tribute to their friend, this great soul and innovator in the world of jazz."^[35]

Gillespie also starred in a film called The Winter in Lisbon released in 2004.^[36] He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7057 Hollywood Boulevard in the Hollywood section of the City of Los Angeles. He is honored by the December 31, 2006 – A Jazz New Year's Eve: Freddy Cole & the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.^[37]

Death and legacy

Gillespie in concert at Colonial Tavern, Toronto, 1978

A longtime resident of Englewood, New Jersey^[38] he died of pancreatic cancer January 6, 1993, aged 75, and was buried in the Flushing Cemetery, Queens, New York City. Mike Longo delivered a eulogy at his funeral. He was also with Gillespie on the night he died, along with Jon Faddis and a select few others.

At the time of his death, Gillespie was survived by his widow, Lorraine Willis Gillespie (d. 2004); a daughter, jazz singer Jeanie Bryson; and a grandson, Radji Birks Bryson-Barrett. Gillespie had two funerals. One was a Bahá'í funeral at his request, at which his closest friends and colleagues attended. The second was at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City open to the public.^[39]

Dizzy Gillespie, a Bahá'í since 1968,^[40] was one of the most famous adherents of the Bahá'í Faith which helped him make sense of his position in a succession of trumpeters as well as turning his life from knife-carrying roughneck to global citizen, and from alcohol to "soul force",^[41] in the words of author Nat Hentoff, who knew Gillespie for forty years. Gillespie's conversion was most affected by Bill Sears' book Thief in the Night.^[40] Gillespie spoke about the Bahá'í Faith frequently on his trips abroad.^[42][43][44] He is honored with weekly jazz sessions at the New York Bahá'í Center in the memorial auditorium.^[45]

As a tribute to him, DJ Qualls' character in the 2002 American teen comedy film The New Guy was named Dizzy Gillespie Harrison.

The Marvel Comics current Hawkeye comic written by Matt Fraction features Gillespie's music in a section of the editorials called the "Hawkguy Playlist".

Also, Dwight Morrow High School, the public high school of Englewood, New Jersey, renamed their auditorium the Dizzy Gillespie Auditorium, in memory of him.
In 2014, Gillespie was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.^[46]

Style

Statue of Dizzy Gillespie in his hometown Cheraw, South Carolina

Gillespie has been described as the "Sound of Surprise".^[47] The Rough Guide to Jazz describes his musical style:

"The whole essence of a Gillespie solo was cliff-hanging suspense: the phrases and the angle of the approach were perpetually varied, breakneck runs were followed by pauses, by huge interval leaps, by long, immensely high notes, by slurs and smears and bluesy phrases; he always took listeners by surprise, always shocking them with a new thought. His lightning reflexes and superb ear meant his instrumental execution matched his thoughts in its power and speed. And he was concerned at all times with swing—even taking the most daring liberties with pulse or beat, his phrases never failed to swing. Gillespies’s magnificent sense of time and emotional intensity of his playing came from childhood roots. His parents were Methodists, but as a boy he used to sneak off every Sunday to the uninhibited Sanctified Church. He said later, ‘The Sanctified Church had deep significance for me musically. I first learned the significance of rhythm there and all about how music can transport people spiritually.'"^[48]

In Gillespie's obituary, Peter Watrous describes his performance style:

"In the naturally effervescent Mr. Gillespie, opposites existed. His playing—and he performed constantly until nearly the end of his life—was meteoric, full of virtuosic invention and deadly serious. But with his endlessly funny asides, his huge variety of facial expressions and his natural comic gifts, he was as much a pure entertainer as an accomplished artist."^[49]

Wynton Marsalis summed up Gillespie as a player and teacher:

"His playing showcases the importance of intelligence. His rhythmic sophistication was unequaled. He was a master of harmony—and fascinated with studying it. He took in all the music of his youth—from Roy Eldridge to Duke Ellington—and developed a unique style built on complex rhythm and harmony balanced by wit. Gillespie was so quick-minded, he could create an endless flow of ideas at unusually fast tempo. Nobody had ever even considered playing a trumpet that way, let alone had actually tried. All the musicians respected him because, in addition to outplaying everyone, he knew so much and was so generous with that knowledge..."^[50]

"Bent" trumpet

Dizzy Gillespie with his bent trumpet, performing in 1988

Gillespie's trademark trumpet featured a bell which bent upward at a 45-degree angle rather than pointing straight ahead as in the conventional design. According to Gillespie's autobiography, this was originally the result of accidental damage caused by the dancers Stump and Stumpy falling onto it while it was on a trumpet stand on stage at Snookie's in Manhattan on January 6, 1953, during a birthday party for Gillespie's wife Lorraine.^[51] The constriction caused by the bending altered the tone of the instrument, and Gillespie liked the effect. He had the trumpet straightened out the next day, but he could not forget the tone. Gillespie sent a request to Martin to make him a "bent" trumpet from a sketch produced by Lorraine, and from that time forward played a trumpet with an upturned bell.^[52]

Gillespie's biographer Alyn Shipton writes that Gillespie probably got the idea for a bent trumpet when he saw a similar instrument in 1937 in Manchester, England, while on tour with the Teddy Hill Orchestra. According to this account (from British journalist Pat Brand) Gillespie was able to try out the horn and the experience led him, much later, to commission a similar horn for himself.

Whatever the origins of Gillespie's upswept trumpet, by June 1954, he was using a professionally manufactured horn of this design, and it was to become a visual trademark for him for the rest of his life.^[53] Such trumpets were made for him by Martin (from 1954), King Musical Instruments (from 1972) and Renold Schilke (from 1982, a gift from Jon Faddis).^[52] Gillespie favored mouthpieces made by Al Cass. In December 1986 Gillespie gave the National Museum of American History his 1972 King "Silver Flair" trumpet with a Cass mouthpiece.^[52][54][55] In April 1995, Gillespie's Martin trumpet was auctioned at Christie's in New York City, along with instruments used by other famous musicians such as Coleman Hawkins, Jimi Hendrix and Elvis Presley.^[56] An image of Gillespie's trumpet was selected for the cover of the auction program. The battered instrument sold to Manhattan builder Jeffery Brown for $63,000, the proceeds benefiting jazz musicians suffering from cancer.^[57][58][59]

Discography

As leader

• 1937–49: The Complete RCA Victor Recordings (RCA Victor)
• 1945–47: Groovin' High (Savoy)
• 1948: Gene Norman Presents Dizzy Gillespie in Concert (GNP Crescendo 23)
• 1950: Bird and Diz (Clef) – with Charlie Parker
• 1951–52: Dee Gee Days: The Savoy Sessions (Savoy) – includes all tracks on The Champ (Savoy) and School Days (Regent)
• 1952–53: The Great Blue Star Sessions 1952-1953 (EmArcy) – includes all tracks on Dizzy Gillespie and His Operatic Strings Orchestra (Fontana) and some tracks released on Dizzy at Home and Abroad (Atlantic)
• 1953: Dizzy Digs Paris (Giant Steps) – includes all tracks on Dizzy Over Paris (Roost)
• 1953: Jazz at Massey Hall (Debut) – with Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Max Roach
• 1953: Diz and Getz (Norgran) – with Stan Getz
• 1954: Afro (Norgran)
• 1954: Dizzy and Strings (Norgran)
• 1954: Roy and Diz (Clef) – with Roy Eldridge
• 1954–55: Jazz Recital (Norgran) – also released as Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra
• 1955: One Night in Washington (Elektra Musician [1983])
• 1956: Modern Jazz Sextet (Norgran)
• 1956: World Statesman (Norgran)
• 1956: Dizzy in Greece (Verve)
• 1956: For Musicians Only (Verve) – with Stan Getz and Sonny Stitt
• 1957: Birks' Works (Verve)
• 1957: Dizzy Gillespie and Stuff Smith (Verve)
• 1957: Sittin' In (Verve) – with Stan Getz and Coleman Hawkins
• 1957: Dizzy Gillespie at Newport (Verve)
• 1957: Duets (Verve) – with Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt
• 1957: The Greatest Trumpet of Them All (Verve) – with Benny Golson
• 1957: Sonny Side Up (Verve) – with Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt
• 1959: The Ebullient Mr. Gillespie (Verve)
• 1959: Have Trumpet, Will Excite! (Verve)
• 1960: A Portrait of Duke Ellington (Verve)
• 1960: Gillespiana (Verve) – composed and arranged by Lalo Schifrin
• 1961: An Electrifying Evening with the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet (Verve)
• 1961: Carnegie Hall Concert (Verve)
• 1961: Perceptions (Verve) – composed and arranged by J.J. Johnson, conducted by Gunther Schuller
• 1962: Dizzy on the French Riviera (Philips) – with Elek Bacsik
• 1962: The New Continent (Limelight) – composed and arranged by Lalo Schifrin
• 1963: New Wave (Philips) – 8 tracks
• 1963: New Wave! (Wing WL1152) – 7 tracks
• 1963: Something Old, Something New (Philips)
• 1963: Dizzy Gillespie and the Double Six of Paris (Philips)
• 1964: Dizzy Goes Hollywood (Philips)
• 1964: The Cool World (Philips)
• 1964: Jambo Caribe (Limelight)
• 1965: Gil Fuller & the Monterey Jazz Festival Orchestra featuring Dizzy Gillespie (Pacific Jazz) – with Gil Fuller
• 1966: The Melody Lingers On (Limelight)
• 1967: Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac (Impulse!)
• 1967: Live at the Village Vanguard (Solid State)
• 1968: The Dizzy Gillespie Reunion Big Band (MPS)
• 1969: It's My Way (Solid State) – also released as My Way
• 1969: Cornucopia (Solid State)
• 1970: The Real Thing (Perception) – with James Moody
• 1970: Portrait of Jenny (Perception)
• 1971: Giants (Perception) – with Bobby Hackett and Mary Lou Williams
• 1971: Dizzy Gillespie and the Mitchell Ruff Duo in Concert (Mainstream) – with Willie Ruff and Dwike Mitchell
• 1971: The Giants of Jazz (Atlantic) – with Art Blakey, Al McKibbon, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Stitt and Kai Winding
• 1973: The Giant (America)
• 1973: The Source (America)
• 1974: Dizzy Gillespie's Big 4 (Pablo)
• 1974: The Trumpet Kings Meet Joe Turner (Pablo) – with Joe Turner, Roy Eldridge, Harry "Sweets" Edison and Clark Terry
• 1974: Oscar Peterson and Dizzy Gillespie (Pablo) – with Oscar Peterson
• 1974: Oscar Peterson and The Trumpet Kings - Jousts (Pablo) – with Oscar Peterson
• 1975: The Bop Session (Sonet) – with Sonny Stitt, John Lewis, Hank Jones, Percy Heath and Max Roach
• 1975: Jazz Maturity...Where It's Coming From (Pablo) – with Oscar Peterson and Roy Eldridge
• 1975: Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods (Pablo) – with Machito
• 1975: The Dizzy Gillespie Big 7 (Pablo) – also released as Dizzy
• 1975: The Trumpet Kings at Montreux '75 (Pablo) – with Roy Eldridge, Clark Terry and Oscar Peterson
• 1975: Bahiana (Pablo)
• 1976: Carter, Gillespie Inc. (Pablo) – with Benny Carter
• 1976: Dizzy's Party (Pablo)
• 1977: Free Ride (Pablo) – composed and arranged by Lalo Schifrin
• 1977: The Gifted Ones (Pablo) – with Count Basie
• 1977: Dizzy Gillespie Jam (Pablo) – with John Faddis
• 1980: The Trumpet Summit Meets the Oscar Peterson Big 4 (Pablo) – with Freddie Hubbard, Clark Terry and Oscar Peterson
• 1980: The Alternate Blues (Pablo) – with Freddie Hubbard, Clark Terry and Oscar Peterson
• 1980: Digital at Montreux, 1980 (Pablo)
• 1981: Musician, Composer, Raconteur (Pablo)
• 1981: To a Finland Station (Pablo) – with Arturo Sandoval
• 1984: Closer to the Source (Atlantic)
• 1985: New Faces (GRP)
• 1986: Dizzy Gillespie Meets Phil Woods Quintet – with Phil Woods
• 1988: Endlessly (Impulse!)
• 1988: Oop-Pop-A-Da (Soundwings) – with Moe Koffman
• 1989: Live at the Royal Festival Hall (Enja) – with the United Nation Orchestra
• 1989: Max + Dizzy: Paris 1989 (A&M) – with Max Roach
• 1989: The Paris All Stars Homage to Charlie Parker (A&M) with Jackie McLean, Phil Woods, Stan Getz, Milt Jackson, Hank Jones, Percy Heath and Max Roach
• 1989: The Symphony Sessions (ProJazz)
• 1990: The Winter in Lisbon (Milan) – soundtrack
• 1991: Live! at Blues Alley (with Ron Holloway, Ed Cherry, John Lee, Ignacio Berroa)
• 1992: Bird Songs: The Final Recordings (Telarc)
• 1992: To Bird with Love (Telarc)
• 1992: To Diz with Love (Telarc)

As sideman

With Benny Carter

• New Jazz Sounds (Norgran, 1954)

With CTI All Stars

• Rhythmstick (CTI, 1990)

With Duke Ellington

• Jazz Party (Columbia, 1959)

With Quincy Jones

• Back on the Block (Warner Bros., 1989)

With Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich

• Krupa and Rich (Clef, 1955)

With Mike Longo

• Talk with the Spirits (Pablo, 1976)

With the Manhattan Transfer

• Vocalese (Atlantic, 1985)

With Carmen McRae

• At the Great American Music Hall (Blue Note, 1976)

With Charles Mingus

• Charles Mingus and Friends in Concert (Columbia, 1972)

With Katie Bell Nubin

• Soul, Soul Searching (Verve, 1960)

With Oscar Peterson

• Oscar Peterson Jam - Montreux '77 (Pablo)

With Mongo Santamaria

• Montreux Heat! (Pablo, 1980)
• Summertime (Pablo, 1980)

With Woody Shaw

• Woody Shaw and Friends at Monterey Jazz Festival 1979 (Concord Jazz, 1979)

With Lillian Terry

• Oo-Shoo-Be-Doo-Be...Oo, Oo...Oo, Oo (Black Saint, 1985)

With Randy Weston

• Spirits of Our Ancestors (Verve, 1993)

Filmography

• 1983 Jazz in America (Embassy)
• 1986 In Redondo Beach/Jazz in America ( Embassy)
• 1991 Dizzy Gillespie: A Night in Tunisia (VIEW)
• 1993 Live in London (Kultur Video)
• 1998 Dizzy Gillespie & Charles Mingus (Vidjazz)
• 1998 Dizzy Gillespie: Ages (Vidjazz)
• 1999 Jazz Casual: Dizzy Gillespie (Rhino)
• 2001 Jivin'in Be-Bop (Jazz Classic Video)
• 2001 Dizzy Gillespie: A Night in Chicago (VIEW)^[60]
• 2001 Live at the Royal Festival Hall 1987 (Pioneer)
• 2002 Live in Montreal (Image)
• 2003 20th Century Jazz Masters
• 2003 Swing Era (with Mel Tormé) (Idem)
• 2005 Norman Granz Jazz in Montreux: Presents Dizzy Gillespie Sextet '77 (Eagle Vision USA)
• 2005 Summer Jazz Live at New Jersey 1987 (FS World Jazz / Alpha Centauri Entertainment)
• 2005 A Night in Havana: Dizzy Gillespie in Cuba (New Video Group) (Filmed in 1985 with Arturo Sandoval and Sayyd Abdul Al Khabyyr)
• 2006 Jazz Icons: Live in '58 & '70 (Universal)
• 2008 London Concerts 1965 & 1966 (Impro-Jazz Spain)

Bibliography

• To Be or Not to Bop. New York: Doubleday, 1979.
• To Be or Not to Bop. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.

60. References

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175. "Object of Desire: Bell Epoque". New York Magazine 28 (17): 111. April 24, 1995. ISSN 0028-7369.
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Artist: Gillespie, Dizzy. "VIEW DVD Listing". View.com. Retrieved October 20, 2010.

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