Dizzy Gillespie 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. Biography may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the permission of Mason Editions.

Discography (Under Construction) What Instruments Did Dizzy Gillespie Play what instruments did dizzy gillespie play Main Menu what instruments did dizzy gillespie play Music-Atlas - Artist. Dizzy Gillespie ... who knows jazz music that did not hear the name Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy Gillespie was a composer, singer, jazz trumpet player and. way it changed the tone of the instrument. Dizzy. Jazz. Dizzy Gillespie What instrument did Dizzy Gillespie play? ChaCha Answer: Dizzy Gillespie was an amazing jazz musician, who was most famous for playin... Dizzy Gillespie - Wikipedia, the free. Can you answer this question? Answer it or... follow discuss research share Facebook Twitter Search Related answers: How many instruments did dizzy gillespie play ? i65577. Dizzy Gillespie ... who knows jazz music that did not hear the name Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy Gillespie was a composer, singer, jazz trumpet player. way it changed the tone of the instrument. Dizzy. Dizzy Gillespie MP3 Downloads. Dizzy. Dizzy Gillespie played what instrument?. Dizzy Gillespie played what. Where did Dizzy Gillespie go to school?.

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Dizzy's father died when he was ten and never heard his youngest son play trumpet, although he did get. Dizzy Gillespie - Biography, Movies,. ... who knows jazz music that did not hear the name Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy Gillespie was a composer, singer, jazz trumpet player and. way it changed the tone of the instrument. Dizzy. Dizzy Gillespie - Bellazon What instruments did dizzy gillespie play? he played the trumpet. How many instruments did dizzy gillespie play? i65577: Which instrument is Elton john known for playing? What instrument did Dizzy Gillespie play?. What kind of trumpet did Louis Armstrong play? What happened to Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet? Which instrument did the jazz musician Miles Davis play? Dizzy Gillespie | Quazen ... Birks “ Dizzy” Gillespie. 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. Dizzy Gillespie An essay or paper on Dizzy Gillespie. On October 21, 1917, John Birks Gillespie was born. The world did.

bandleader/piano player on the weekends. He kept his bands instruments at. Copyright © 2009-2010. Dizzy Gillespie’s Biography — Free listening, videos, concerts, stats and photos at Last.fm Listeners Biography John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer and occasional singer. Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown 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. In the 1940s Gillespie, together with Charlie Parker , became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis , Clifford Brown , Lee Morgan and Arturo Sandoval a.o.. Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina, USA the youngest of nine children of James and Lottie Gillespie.

James was a local bandleader, so instruments were made available to Dizzy. He started to play the piano at the age of four (1921). Gillespie's father died when the boy 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. He received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in Laurinburg, North Carolina, which he attended for two years before accompanying his family when they moved to Philadelphia. 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., Dizzy met a young dancer named Lorraine Willis who worked a Baltimore–Philadelphia–New York 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. Dizzy stayed with Teddy Hill’s band for a year, then left and free-lanced with numerous other bands. 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). Dizzy was fired by Calloway in late 1941, after a notorious altercation between the two. 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. Dizzy 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. 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. 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. 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". Next, 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 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. 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. 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. The song also displays Afro-Cuban rhythms.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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". 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 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. 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.

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 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. 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.

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). 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", but now proceeds from them went to benefit the Congress of Racial Equality, Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr.; in later years they became a collector's item. In 1971 Gillespie announced he would run again but withdrew before the election for reasons connected to the Bahá'í Faith. 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. 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. 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. 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. In 1993 he received the Polar Music Prize in Sweden.

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." Gillespie also starred in a film called The Winter in Lisbon released in 2004. 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. A longtime resident of Englewood, New Jersey, he died of pancreatic cancer January 6, 1993, aged 75, and was buried in the Flushing Cemetery, Queens, New York. 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; 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 St. John the Divine in New York open to the public.

Gillespie, a Bahá'í since 1970, 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, in the words of author Nat Hentoff, who knew Gillespie for forty years. He spoke about the Baha'i Faith frequently on his trips abroad. He is often called the Bahá'í Jazz Ambassador. He is honored with weekly jazz sessions at the New York Bahá'í Center in the memorial auditorium. 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. Gillespie has been described as the "Sound of Surprise".

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.'" 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." 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…" 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." "Bent" trumpet 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. 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 Committee to make him a "bent" trumpet from a sketch produced by Lorraine, and from that time forward Gillespie played a trumpet with an upturned bell. 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. 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). 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. 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. 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. Jazz trumpet virtuoso Dizzy Gillespie started bebop Dizzy Gillespie took trumpet playing to a new level and co-founded Be-Bop - the next jazz language after Swing Dizzy Gillespie is a major player in jazz history. He helped found Be-Bop. His big band produced the first successful fusion of Afro-Cuban rhythms and jazz. He was perhaps the greatest virtuoso on jazz trumpet. Dizzy Gillespie was born John Birks Gillespie on October 21, 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina.

He was the youngest child of nine children and his father was a bricklayer, musician and band leader. The elder Birks encouraged all of his children to learn to play music and the instruments for his bands were kept in the home. However, his first eight children did not show any great talent for music. His youngest child eventually made up for the older eight in musical talent. When young Dizzy tried to learn to play trombone, his arms were too short to reach all of the slide positions. So, he taught himself trumpet instead. In 1930, when he was learning to play trumpet, Gillespie heard The Teddy Hill Orchestra broadcasting live from the Savoy Ballroom in New York. He fell in love with the band and especially with the playing of trumpeter, Roy Eldridge. Young Dizzy Gillespie decided he wanted to be a jazz trumpet player like his idol, Roy Eldridge. After graduating from his local school in 1933, Gillespie was awarded a scholarship to a tiny black prep school - Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina. He attended Laurinburg and played music there for two years until his family moved to Philadelphia in 1935.

Dizzy left school and moved to Philadelphia getting his first fulltime musician's job with Frankie Fairfax's band in Philadelphia. While gigging in Philadelphia he learned all of his idol Roy Eldridge's solos from records and broadcasts. In 1937 Dizzy Gillespie moved to New York and took Roy Eldridge's place in the Teddy Hill Orchestra. His first recording was made that year with Hill : "King Porter Stomp". He also met a chorus girl from the Apollo Theatre named Lorraine whom he married in 1940 and with whom he stayed married until his death in 1993. Gillespie left Teddy Hill's band after about a year and free-lanced for a year. Cuban trumpet player, Mario Bauza, then helped Dizzy join Cab Calloway's big band in 1939. He stayed in this popular band until 1941 and one can hear the development of his playing in the short solos he took in his recordings with Calloway. Cab Calloway did not like his style of playing nor his love of humor and practical jokes.

In a famous incident in 1941, Calloway was hit in the back of the head by a spitball thrown by another musician and blamed Gillespie for throwing it. They argued strongly about it and that argument ended with with Cab receiving a knife cut that require stitches and with Dizzy being fired. During his tenure with Calloway, he began writing big-band arrangements for Woody Herman, Jimmy Dorsey and others. He became friends with alto saxophonist, Charlie "Bird" Parker . He began sitting in at Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's in Harlem with emerging bebop stars Bird, pianist Thelonius Monk, drummer Kenney Clarke, Guitarist Charlie Christian , and with swing stars Roy Eldridge , Coleman Hawkins , Lester Young , Benny Goodman, Ben Webster and others. Dizzy Gillespie was not highly regarded by most established trumpet stars at this time. The established swing trumpet players focused on good tone and intonation. He was focusing on harmonic evolution and had a rather thin tone. His tone got better later on. From 1941 to 1943 Gillespie played in several big bands, including Benny Carter, Lucky Millander, Charlie Barnet and Earl Hines.

Gillespie and Bird Parker were together in the Earl Hines big band and also in the Billy Eckstine big band of 1944. In 1945 Dizzy left the collapsing Billy Eckstine big band to return to small combo playing. From the early jam sessions at Minton's Playhouse as the 1930s were closing until 1944 a new form of jazz was being developed by Gillespie, Parker, Monk and others. A small combo would consist of typically five musicians - trumpet, sax, piano, bass and drums. New melodies were superimposed over the chord structures of classic jazz songs. The trumpet and sax would begin a number by playing in unison at breakneck speed. Melodies and improvisations were often harmonically based on the upper intervals of the chord changes. Dizzy and Bird were playing 9ths, 11ths, 13ths and creating a new kind of jazz harmony and rhythm. It was called be-bop. In 1944 the first acknowledged be-bop recording featured Coleman Hawkins and Gillespie.

In May, 1945 Gillespie led a combo with Chalie Parker (alto sax), Al Haig (piano), Curly Russell (bass) and Sid Catlett (drums). This All Star Combo recorded highly influential bebop tracks including "Shaw 'Nuff", "Salt Peanuts" and "HotHouse". The history and development of jazz is organic and evolutionary. However a ban on recording in the early 1940s, instigated by the Musician's Union, prevented most other musicians and the public from hearing the development of bebop from swing. The 1945 recordings seemed revolutionary and bebop was decried by many leading musicians and critics and it received a mixed reaction from audiences. No longer dance music, jazz became a more intellectual music for listeners. Mario Bauza got Gillespie into Cab Calloway's big band and showed Gillespie how to really blow his horn. He also sparked a growing interest in Afro-Cuban rhythms by Dizzy. In 1946 he re-formed a big band and added Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo. Gillespie created the first successful synthesis of jazz and Afro-Cuban music.

"Manteca" and "Cuban Be - Cubana Bop" are two of the best known recordings of this start of Latin jazz. In the 1940s Dizzy Gillespie created a new standard in trumpet virtuosity with his range and dramatic command of the instrument and his suppleness of rhythm, unevenly spaced phrases and complex, chromatically augmented runs played at breathtaking speed. Many consider him the greatest trumpeter of them all. He and others also established bebop as a style of jazz for both small combos and big bands. He taught and influenced many other musicians including trumpeters Miles Davis, Fats Navarro , Clifford Brown , Lee Morgan and John Faddis. After his tremendous creative output of the 1940s, Dizzy Gillespie continued to play and lead at an extremely high level. He played mostly in small combos but sometimes resurrected a big band and performed until shortly before his death in 1992. Like Louis Armstrong before him, Dizzy Gillespie influenced players on all instruments. Like Armstrong he created a new trumpet style. Armstrong largely created swing which became the musical language of small groups and big bands.

Gillespie and others created bebop which became the next language of small groups and big bands. All of jazz is richer because of John Birks Gillespie. Recommended Listening: Bird and Diz (1950) - Early Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie quintet with relatively good sound production The Complete RCA Victor Recordings: 1947-1949 - Includes Dizzy's big band with Chano Pozo - both a bop big band and the start of Latin jazz Dizzy Gillespie | Biography & History | AllMusic google+ Artist Biography by Scott Yanow 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.

Dizzy Gillespie - Telegraph Obituaries Dizzy Gillespie Dizzy Gillespie, the high priest of bebop, who has died in New Jersey aged 75, was a true innovator, responsible, with a handful of fellow spirits, for bringing a radical new dimension to jazz music. Photo: AP 12:01AM GMT 08 Jan 1993 The social and racial origins of jazz are debatable, but the harmonic, rhythmic and tonal characteristics of bebop were indisputably Gillespie's creation. By the early 1940s black musicians had become frustrated by the fact that their white colleagues earned more money than they did. Spurred by the belief that their jazz had been shamelessly exploited by 'Whitey', Gillespie and his followers, notably the alto-saxophonist Charlie Parker, set out to play music so bewildering and complex that the white man would not be able to copy it. As it happened, white musicians rose to the challenge, and, in the changing racial climate of the time, blacks and whites joined forces in clubs, on the concert platform and in the recording studio to spread what became a universal musical message.

'As this book is being written,' wrote Stewart Allen in his Stars of Swing (1946), 'a revolution is taking place in the Kingdom of Swing. It is a revolution that is gathering force to such an extent that it will soon establish a stranglehold. One by one, musicians are being won over by the new style set by a young man in New York called John Birks Gillespie.' That bebop had so immediate an effect was in some ways surprising, for it marked a violent break with the stylistic conventions of the past. Non-melodic, dissonant, often frantic, the new music was savagely attacked by the critical establishment. In a review of a Charlie Parker record in 1946 the American magazine Downbeat observed: 'This record is an excellent example of the other side of the Gillespie craze - the bad taste and ill-advised fanaticism . . . this is the sort of stuff that has thrown innumerable young musicians out of their stride, and harmed them irreparably.' Dizzy and his disciples did not merely have to contend with the critics.

While they were pursuing their intransigently experimental course, the other end of the jazz world was experiencing a renaissance of the 'old' Dixieland style. Before long an all-out war erupted between the two sides, and in the thick of this Gillespie blew high, rapid notes in defiance of the 'mouldy fyges' (as the traditionalists were called), and set the world dancing to the tune of a new musical order. The last of nine children, John Birks Gillespie was born at Cheraw, South Carolina, on Oct 21 1917; his father, a bricklayer and weekend bandleader who played bass, mandolin, drums and piano, died when the boy was 10. Two years later young Gillespie began to teach himself trumpet and trombone. He gained a place at Laurinberg University, North Carolina, an industrial school for blacks, and practised his instruments assiduously in his spare time. Gillespie retained strong memories of racial oppression in the Deep South: 'There was this fine trombonist, Bill NcNeil.

Had he lived and gone to New York, he would have been a big name, but the white people said he was a Peeping Tom, killed him and put his body on the railroad track.' Laurinberg University was about 28 miles from Cheraw, and on one occasion, while hitch-hiking home, Gillespie stopped at a grocery store to buy some bread and cheese. A throng of white youths were slouched around a stove, spitting out tobacco. 'Hey, I'm talkin' to you, nigger]' they shouted. 'You know how to dance?' 'Nossir]' 'No? C'mon, all niggers know how to dance.' One of the whites then drew his pistol and shot at the dust by Gillespie's feet. 'Talk about dance]' Gillespie recalled, 'I buck-danced in and out of there] They were having fun, but they would kill you, too.' Gillespie was in fact an exceptional dancer.

In 1937, after a spell with Frank Fairfax's band in Philadelphia, he moved to New York, where, on exhibition dance nights at the 400 Club, he gave elegant and energetic performances of the Lindy Hop with a variety of willing partners. He was also quite capable of standing up for himself. 'Gillespie did everything in unorthodox fashion,' remembered Teddy Hill, whose band he joined that same year. 'When we played a new arrangement he was likely as not to interject his own ideas and not follow the score. He would speak up at the wrong time, jumping about and playing an extra bar or two at the end of a number, going through miming acts during other people's solos and putting up his horn and pretending he was playing.' Indeed, Gillespie soon gained a reputation for being 'a pain in the butt'. During Hill's band's stint at the Apollo Theatre, New York, he was apt to put on his derby, turn his chair back to front, and perform an impromptu dance. But even Hill had to concede that he could have been worse. Despite his wild antics, Gillespie was not a drinker or a womaniser, and he was careful with his money.

Meanwhile Gillespie's technique was steadily improving. He had come to idolise Roy Eldridge, the trumpeter and an earlier member of the band. Howard Johnson, a saxophonist in the Hill Orchestra, had transcribed Eldridge's solos for Gillespie to study and memorise. Gillespie's first recording with Hill in 1937 revealed his indebtedness to 'Little Jazz' Eldridge. When a European tour was offered to Hill many of the band threatened to leave if Gillespie was booked, but Hill held out and the dissident stayed on. They played in the Cotton Club Show at the London Palladium. That the gig took place at all was thanks to the British Musicians' Union, which had leaned heavily on the Ministry of Labour to have the embargo on American bands playing in Britain lifted. None the less Hill's band were allowed to perform only on the condition that they played a purely accompanying role and did not 'move' - beyond what was strictly necessary in playing their instruments. Gillespie then left Hill to join and annoy ('Stop playing that Chinese music]') Cab Calloway. The association was shortlived.

One night Calloway was cavorting around the stage during a gig when he was hit by a spit ball. Calloway accused Gillespie, an argument ensued, Gillespie pulled a knife, Calloway needed several stitches in his rear, and Gillespie was fired. The 'wild man' went on to play with Ella Fitzgerald's band (she had taken over the nominal leadership of Chick Webb's band after his death in 1939). From there he joined Les Hite's band, in which he quickly fell out with the drummer, Oscar Bradley. 'He used to do ratamacues and paradiddles during my solos,' Gillespie complained, 'and I'd tell this nigger where he could put 'em. After nickin' Cab's ass I had this bad reputation and I left.' But there were advantages in having a 'reputation'. Gillespie reckoned it was this that saved him from the military draft in the Second World War. Like many blacks, he had no enthusiasm for 'Whitey's war'.

During his stint with Calloway and Les Hite (with whom he also recorded), Gillespie had been 'sitting-in' with a secret society of young black musicians, keen to try out the revolutionary ideas which their bandleaders discouraged or forbade. The sessions took place at Minton's, a dilapidated dining-room in the Hotel Cecil on West 118th Street. Other members of this cabal included Charlie Parker, the drummer Kenny Clarke, the pianist Thelonious Monk and the guitarist Charlie Christian. It was not long before the word was out, and Gillespie gained his big break. The musical papers - and even the national press - began publishing photographs of a pouting, posturing, preening Gillespie, sporting a lavish goatee beard, and invariably garbed in beret, dark glasses and an extravagant zoot suit. He was the grimacing Grimaldi of jazz, and his exhibitionism and sartorial eccentricities earned him rancorous criticism from the 'mouldy fyges'. Gillespie basked in the attention.

But he was quick to refute accusations that he had sold out - by producing a series of highly charged recordings, and setting up a brash, exciting big band, founded on his own idiosyncratic ideas. 'Gillespie's style reached its maturity by the mid-1940s,' recalled Ian Carr, the British trumpeter and critic. 'Never before had the trumpet been played with such speed, flexibility, dynamism and drama. The whole essence of Gillespie was his cliff-hanging suspense; the phrases and angle of approach were perpetually varied, break-neck runs were followed by pauses, by huge interval leaps, by long, immensely high notes, by slurs and smears and bluesy phrases; he was always taking listeners by surprise, always shocking them with new thought.' The diehard traditionalists never came to accept this rowdy upstart, however, and the internecine jazz war raged well into the 1950s.

As late as 1956, in a review of a record featuring Coleman Hawkins, Eldridge and Gillespie, the British record producer Stanley Dance wrote: 'To me the lack of continuity is one important reason why Gillespie's solos are as invigorating as a pistol shot in the head. 'His solo opens quietly enough with an original idea, but disintegrates into incredibly ugly vulgar triple-tonguing and hunting horn effects. We see from the publicity pictures that Dizzy now doubles in snake-charming. Knowing this, and with the above solo in mind, I long for his entry into the circus world.' It was in something like this spirit that Louis Armstrong, on the side of the old guard, produced a mocking version of the 'Wiffenpoof Song', in which he sent up the boppers, and specifically mentioned Gillespie. 'Up at Birdland where Dizzy dwells, with their beards and funny hats they love so well, they constitute a weird personnel . . .They are poor little cats that have lost their way . . .like little lost sheep they have gone astray . . .Lord have mercy on them . . .BYE BYE]' But Gillespie was indomitable.

In spite of challenges from younger players, he remained the king of the modern jazz trumpet, playing with a variety of bands, appearing regularly at jazz festivals around the world, and recording incessantly. Always on the look-out for controversy, at one stage Gillespie even contemplated running for the US Presidency, on a disarmament and global government ticket. His first act, he asserted, would be to change the name of the White House to the 'Blue House'. He quipped that Miles Davis had offered his services as Treasury Secretary, but added that running the CIA would probably be more in Davis's line. That Gillespie truly believed in bridging racial and cultural barriers was manifested, in the late 1980s, in the formation of his United Nation All-Star band, which toured England and much of Europe in 1989. The band offered a heady mixture of bebop jazz and Latin American rhythms - not least because the old veteran, sparing himself, had engaged Arturo Sandoval, the dynamic Cuban trumpeter, to take the main burden of the trumpet solos. 'We're having an awful lot of fun with this band,' Dizzy declared, quite explosive with excitement.

'Talk about music being an international language -man, this is it]' In 1979 he published an autobiography, To Be or Not to Bop. He is survived by his wife, Lorraine. Published January 8 1993 Dizzy Gillespie Biography - life, family, childhood, children, name, school, book, information, born, house Dizzy Gillespie Biography Englewood, New Jersey African American musician and bandleader Fifty years after helping found a new style of revolutionary jazz that came to be known as bebop, Dizzy Gillespie's music is still a major contributing factor in the development of modern jazz. Difficult childhood John Birks Gillespie was born October 21, 1917, in Cheraw, South Carolina, to John and Lottie Gillespie. The last of nine children, Gillespie's father was abusive and unusually strict and the youngest Gillespie grew up hard and strong. When Gillespie was ten, his father died and left the family in terrible financial trouble. Around this time Gillespie's English teacher introduced him to music, and he soon joined the school band.

At first he played the trombone, but switched to the trumpet after borrowing a neighbor's and immediately falling in love with the instrument. Over the next several years Gillespie played with local bands—to both black and white audiences—until his family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In Philly and New York Gillespie played with bands in Philadelphia from 1935 to 1937 before moving to New York City. In Philadelphia Gillespie earned his nickname for his unpredictable and funny behavior. When Gillespie was in the Frankie Fairfax band in Philadelphia he carried his new trumpet in a paper bag, an act that inspired fellow musicians like Bill Doggett to call him "Dizzy." In New York City the Teddy Hill Orchestra hired Gillespie for a European tour. By 1937—when he was only nineteen—Gillespie had already made a name for himself among New York musicians, who could not help but notice his radically fresh take on solo (single) trumpet playing.

Gillespie made his first recordings with the Teddy Hill Orchestra just prior to leaving for Europe with "The Cotton Club Show." Gillespie joined the Cab Calloway (1907–1994) Orchestra in 1939 and stayed until 1941. Calloway played the Cotton Club and toured extensively. During this period Gillespie continued to play all-night jam sessions at Minton's and Monroe's Uptown House to develop his musical knowledge and style. Gillespie joined the Earl "Fatha" Hines band in 1942, about the same time Charlie Parker (1920–1955) did. Although Parker became famous as an alto saxophonist, he was playing tenor sax at that time. Gillespie first met Parker in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1940 when he was on tour with Cab Calloway. The two of them jammed together at the Booker T. Washington Hotel for several hours. Bebop born on 52nd Street A large part of the Earl Hines band departed in 1943 to form a new group headed by Billy Eckstine.

Former Hines members who joined Eckstine included Sarah Vaughan (1924–1990), Gillespie, Parker, and others. Gillespie became musical director for Eckstine, whose backers got him a job on 52nd Street. After leaving Eckstine, Gillespie substituted in the Duke Ellington (1899–1974) Orchestra for about four weeks, then formed his own group to play at the newly opened Onyx Club on 52nd Street. Gillespie had been playing bebop (a new, radically different form of jazz) whenever he could since 1940, the year he married Lorraine Willis. Now he was able to play it full time. 52nd Street became the proving ground for a new jazz style that had previously been played primarily at late night jam sessions. "The opening of the Onyx Club represented the birth of the bebop era," Gillespie recalled in his book, To Be or Not to Bop. Also in 1944 Gillespie received the New Star Award from Esquire magazine, the first of many awards he would receive in his career.

Describing the new style his quintet played, Gillespie wrote, "We'd take the chord structures of various standard and pop tunes and create new chords, melodies, and songs from them." Gillespie's quintet and the presentation of modern jazz reached its peak in 1953—with a concert at Massey Hall in Toronto that featured Gillespie, Parker, Bud Powell (1924–1966), Max Roach (1924–), and legendary jazz bassist Charles Mingus (1922–1979). Billed by jazz critics as "the greatest jazz concert ever," it was recorded by Mingus and later released on Debut Records. Gillespie's legacy In 1989, the year he turned seventy-two, Dizzy Gillespie received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences' Grammy Award ceremonies. The honor—one of many awarded to the trumpet virtuoso—recognized nearly fifty years of pioneering jazz performances. That same year he received the National Medal of Arts from President George Bush (1924–).

Not letting age slow him down, in 1989 Gillespie gave three hundred performances in twenty-seven countries, appeared in one hundred U.S. cities in thirty-one states and the District of Columbia, headlined three television specials, performed with two symphonies, and recorded four albums. The next year, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts ceremonies celebrating the centennial of American jazz, Gillespie received the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers' Duke Award for fifty years of achievement. Although Gillespie's failing health was due to pancreatic (having to do with the organ that helps digestion) cancer, Gillespie continued to play the music that he loved late into his life. His last public appearance was in Seattle in February of 1992. Gillespie passed away quietly in his sleep on October 6, 1993, at the age of seventy-five. For More Information Horricks, Raymond. Dizzy Gillespie and the Bebop Revolution. New York: Hippocrene, 1984. Lees, Gene. You Can't Steal a Gift: Dizzy, Clark, Milt, and Nat.

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. McRae, Barry. Dizzy Gillespie. New York: Universe Books, 1988. Shipton, Alyn. Groovin' High: The Life of Dizzy Gillespie. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. User Contributions: Dizzy Gillespie Death | Jazz giant Dizzy Gillespie dead at 75 - tribunedigital-baltimoresun Jazz giant Dizzy Gillespie dead at 75 January 07, 1993|By J. D. Considine | J. D. Considine,Pop Music Critic Over the years, jazz has produced musicians who were brilliant players and musicians who were likable popularizers. But only a handful have ever managed to be both, and few of them could balance creativity and charm as well as Dizzy Gillespie did. Mr. Gillespie died in his sleep yesterday at Englewood Hospital in New Jersey, where he had been treated for pancreatic cancer. was 75. He was clearly one of the giants of jazz.

Along with saxophonist Charlie "Yardbird" Parker, he was at the forefront of the be-bop revolution. Indeed, "Bird and Diz" remain as closely associated with the bop scene as ketchup and mustard are with hamburgers, and Mr. Gillespie's trademark beret, black glasses and goatee seemed for many to define the quintessential cool of the bop era. Nor was be-bop the only innovation for which he could take credit. If Louis Armstrong can be said to have invented jazz trumpet playing, Mr. Gillespie reinvented it, pushing the instrument to its limits with his high-note acrobatics and impossibly fast runs. He brought a level of virtuosity to the instrument that few trumpeters have matched -- and even then, those who could match his technique were rarely able to equal his ideas. But no matter how dazzling his playing got, Mr. Gillespie never let technical accomplishment crowd out the sheer joy he felt in playing music. Like Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Gillespie came across as outrageously happy to perform, and he took any opportunity to exercise his impish wit.

As a result, he was seen as a natural ambassador for the music he believed in and assembled several jazz ensembles for tours sponsored by the State Department, visiting Africa, South America and the Middle East as a cultural envoy. But Dizzy Gillespie -- born John Birks Gillespie in Cheraw, S.C., on Oct. 21, 1917 -- saw himself primarily as a player. "I always thought I was a musician," he told Musician magazine's Chip Stern a year ago. "Thought I was a musician before I really was a musician." At first, Mr. Gillespie played trombone, but, as he told Mr. Stern, "my arms weren't long enough to make that stretch," so he switched to trumpet. His earliest jazz jobs were with bands led by Teddy Hill and Lionel Hampton, from which he moved to the Cab Calloway Orchestra in 1939. His stylistic model was trumpeter Roy Eldridge, whose shoes he filled in the Hill band, but it wasn't long before the young trumpeter had a found a sound of his own. Listen to his solo on Mr.

Calloway's 1940 recording of "Pickin' Up the Cabbage," for instance, and even though his sense of line bears an obvious debt to Mr. Eldridge's forthright swing style, the harmonic ideas Mr. Gillespie assays are unique. Mr. Calloway fired Mr. Gillespie in 1941 for allegedly throwing spitballs during a performance (he hadn't), and the trumpeter moved on to bands led by Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Carter. He was already building a reputation as a composer, thanks to tunes such as "A Night in Tunisia." He was also spending many a late night at a New York club called Minton's, where he jammed with such fellow innovators as Charlie Christian, Thelonious Monk and Kenny Clarke. But it wasn't until he joined the Earl Hines big band that Mr. Gillespie met his musical match, saxophonist Charlie Parker. As personalities, the two couldn't have been any more different. Mr. Gillespie was cheerful, professional and clean-living, while Mr. Parker was mercurial, irresponsible and a chronic abuser of drugs and alcohol.

On a musical level, though, they were ideally suited, inspiring each other to unexpected greatness. Mr. Parker and Mr. Gillespie -- Bird and Diz -- played in several big bands together, including the legendary Billy Eckstine Orchestra (which debuted in Baltimore on June 9, 1944) and Mr. Gillespie's own, short-lived big band. But the duo's small-group recordings remain their greatest legacy, with "Groovin' High," "Shaw 'Nuff" and "Salt Peanuts" being perhaps the best known. Mr. Gillespie's reputation as an innovator didn't end there, though. He had hooked up with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo (born Luciano Pozo y Gonzales) and, in 1946, introduced a percussion-heavy twist on be-bop he called "cubop." Most writers at the time stressed the music's debt to Caribbean music, but as Mr. Gillespie put it in his 1979 autobiography, "To Be or Not to Bop," Mr. Pozo's real musical roots lay elsewhere. The Cuban, he wrote, was "stone African.

He knew rhythm -- rhythm from Africa." It was that rhythm that sparked recordings such as "Manteca," which the Gillespie band first recorded in 1947 and which remains a jazz standard. He launched a write-in campaign for president in 1964, promising Lena Horne as his vice president and Miles Davis as the head of the CIA. He lost but made it to the White House anyway in 1978, when President Jimmy Carter invited him to play "Salt Peanuts" to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival. Through it all, his playing sparkled, dazzled and shone. "Sometimes you surprise yourself, let me tell you," he said in a recent interview. "There's no telling how long you can play, with the proper feelings." And make no mistake -- Dizzy Gillespie always had the proper feelings. MORE: Dizzy Gillespie — Free listening, videos, concerts, stats and photos at Last.fm soul John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer and occasional singer.

Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown 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. In the 1940s Gillespie, together with Charlie Parker , became a major figure… read more

Question: Which instrument did the jazz musician 'Dizzy' Gillespie play?
Answer: TRUMPET