the Dizzy Gillespie biography

Born John Birks Gillespie in South Carolina, 1917, the trumpeter took over his idol, Roy Eldridge’s chair in the Teddy Hill band, where his penchant for clowning and horseplay soon earned him his nickname (and gained him the sack from the Cab Calloway band). An early example of his playing can be found on Kerousac and Stardust from 1941 (The Harlem Jazz Scene) , which contain both the Eldridge influence ad some of the harmonic ideas that led him into bebop. A period as trumpeter and arranger with the revolutionary Billy Eckstine band of 1944 set the seal on his emergence as the leading trumpeter of the new music, and his small combo recordings between 1944-46 with young modernists like Milt Jackson and Al Haig – 52nd Street Theme, Night In Tunisia, Ol’ Man Rebop, Anthropology (The Greats of Dizzy Gillespie) or with tenorist Dexter Gordon or Sonny Stitt – Blue ‘n’ Boogie, One Bass Hit, Oop Bop Sh’Bam, A Handful Of Gimme, That’s Earl, Brother (In The Beginning) are classics of the genre.

In 1945, collaboration with bebop’s greatest figure, Charlie Parker, produced the magnificent Groovin’ High, Dizzy Atmosphere, All The Things You Are, Salt Peanuts, Shaw ‘Nuff, Lover Man and Hot House (In The Beginning) , while a vast and confusing tangle of recordings covers their work together in the studio, concert hall and broadcast (Lullaby In Rhythm, The Definitive Charlie Parker, Vol 2, Bird & Diz, Diz ‘n’ Bird in Concert and The Quintet Of The Year) , all of it the finest music that modern jazz has to offer. Unlike Parker, however, Dizzy combined imaginative genius with a talent for public presentation and his beret, horn – rim glasses and goatee soon became the bebop uniform.

In 1946 he organized a big band and worked with arrangers like Gil Fuller, Tadd Dameron, George Russell and John Lewis to transplant what was essentially combo music into wider format. The finest pieces, Emanon Things To Come and Our Delight (In The Beginning) show the excitement and incredible technique of the band in playing the complex scores, while Dizzy’s pioneering work with Latin American rhythms is illustrated by the blasting Manteca and Cubano Be, Cubano Bop (The Greatest of Dizzy Gillespie) . By late 1949 the crisis hit the big-band scene, and Dizzy was forced to pander to popular tastes with numbers like You Stole My Wife You Housethief (Strictly Bebop) and in 1950 it was disbanded. A good deal of hilarious scat-singing accompanies some brilliant trumpet playing on numbers like Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac and School Days from a Salle Pleyel concert of 1953, while earlier combos, one including a young John Coltrane, showcase the leader’s lyricism, drive and rhythmic assurance on Tin Tin Deo and Birks Works; The Champ (Dee Gee Days) was the biggest – selling bebop number of the period.

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