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John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (pronounced /gɪˈlɛspi/; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, singer, and composer.
Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, and John Faddis.[1]
In addition to featuring in the epochal moments in bebop, he was instrumental in founding Afro-Cuban jazz, the modern jazz version of what early-jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton referred to as the "Spanish Tinge". Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge[citation needed] but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. Dizzy's beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop.
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Biography
Early life and career
He was born in Cheraw, South Carolina, the youngest of nine children. Dizzy's father, James, was a local bandleader, so instruments were made available to Dizzy. John Birks Gillespie's mother went by the name Lottie Gillespie. He started to play the piano at the age of four. His father had already died when Gillespie was only ten years old. Gillespie taught himself how to play the trombone as well as the trumpet all at the age of twelve. He would play his friend's trumpet, and from the night that he heard his idol, Roy Eldridge, play on the radio, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician.[2] Dizzy Gillespie received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in Laurinburg, North Carolina. However, he turned it down in order to start his music career.[3]
Dizzy's first professional job was with the Frank Fairfax orchestra in 1935, after which he joined the respective orchestras of Edgar Hayes and subsequently Teddy Hill, essentially replacing his main influence Roy Eldridge as first trumpet in 1937. Teddy Hill’s Band was where Dizzy Gillespie made his first recording “King Porter Stomp”. At this time, Dizzy met a young woman named Lorraine from the Apollo Theatre, whom he married in 1940. They remained married until his death in 1993. Dizzy stayed with Teddy Hill’s Band for a year, and then he left and free-lanced around with numerous other bands.[1] 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 the Vocalion label, #5467 - a 78rpm backed with a co-composition with Calloway's drummer at the time, Cozy Cole, entitled "Paradiddle"). Gillespie left Calloway in late 1941 over a notorious incident with a knife. Calloway did not like how Gillespie played his music, nor did he like the humor that Gillespie gave to the audience. Calloway even went so far as to call Gillespie’s music “Chinese Music”. During a performance one night, Calloway was playing a solo and one of his band members hit him in the back with a spitball. Calloway was very angry, and because he did not like Gillespie, accused him first. Gillespie said that he did not throw the spitball, and both musicians started arguing. The argument got so bad that Gillespie actually pulled out his weapon. Also during his time in Calloway's band, Dizzy Gillespie started writing big band music for bandleaders like Woody Herman and Jimmy Dorsey.[1] He then freelanced with a few bands - most notably being Ella Fitzgerald's orchestra, composed of members of the late Chick Webb's band, in 1942.
In 1943, Gillespie joined the Earl Hines orchestra. The legendary big band of Billy Eckstine gave his unusual harmonies a better setting, and it was as a member of Eckstine's band that he was reunited with Parker, after earlier being members of Hines's more conventional band. In 1945, Gillespie left Eckstine's band because he wanted to play with a smaller combo of musicians. A small combo comprised of no more than five musicians. The instruments were typically the trumpet, saxophone, piano, bass, and the drums.[4]
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 introducted a diversity of new musicians in the bebop era like Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Pettiford, and Gillespie. Through these musicians, a new vocabulary of musical phrases was created.[5] With Charlie Parker, Gillespie jammed at famous jazz clubs like Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House, where the first seeds of bebop were planted. Charlie Parker's system also held methods of adding chords to existing chord progressions and implying additional chords within the improvised lines.[5]
Gillespie compositions like "Groovin' High", "Woody n' You", "Salt Peanuts", and "A Night in Tunisia" (A Night in Tunisia was composed by Monk and given to Dizzy as a gift.) sounded radically different, harmonically and rhythmically, from the Swing music popular at the time. Written in 1942, while Gillespie was playing with Earl Hines' band, the song is noted for have a feature that is common in today's music, a non-walking bass line.[citation needed] The song also displays Afro-Cuban rhythms.[6] One of their first (and greatest) 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, like 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]
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. Dizzy Gillespie and his band tried to popularize bop and make Dizzy Gillespie a symbol of the new music.[7] 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.[8]
In 1948 Dizzy 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.[9]
In 1956 he organized a band to go on a State Department tour of the Middle East and earned the nickname "the Ambassador of Jazz".[10][11] 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 Latin and African elements to greater prominence in jazz and even pop music, particularly salsa. Afro-Cuban jazz is based on traditional Cuban rhythms. Dizzy 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. Dizzy Gilespie 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 life-long friends. Dizzy helped develop and mature the Afro-Cuban jazz style.[12]
Afro-Cuban jazz was considered bebop-oriented, and some musicians classified it as a modern style or swing. Afro-Cuban jazz was successful because it never decreased in popularity and it always attracted people to dance to its unique rhythms.[12] 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 and death
Credit: Nambassa Trust and Peter Terry http://www.nambassa.com
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 Jazz Hall of Fame.
In 1964 the artist put himself forward as a presidential 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).[13][14] He said his running mate would be Phyllis Diller.
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, Dizzy 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.[15] 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, Dizzy Gillespie had a cameo 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.[citation needed] He was also crowned a traditional chief in Nigeria, received the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres -- France's most prestigious cultural award—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.[16][17] In 1993 he received the Polar Music Prize in Sweden.[citation needed]
November 26, 1992 at Carnegie Hall in New York, following the Second Bahá'í World Congress was Dizzy'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."[18]
Gillespie also starred in a film called The Winter in Lisbon released in 2004.[19] 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.[20]
A longtime resident of Corona, Queens[21], 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, Dizzy 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.[22]
Dizzy 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.[23][24][25] He is often called the Bahá'í Jazz Ambassador.[26] He is honored with weekly jazz sessions at the New York Bahá'í Center.[27]
Origins of iconic "bent" trumpet
Gillespie's image is almost inseparable from his trademark trumpet whose bell was bent at a 45 degree angle rather than a traditional straight trumpet. In honor of this trademark, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History has collected Gillespie's B-flat trumpet.[28] According to Gillespie's autobiography, this was originally the result of accidental damage caused during a job on January 6, 1953, but the constriction caused by the bending altered the tone of the instrument, and Gillespie liked the effect. Gillespie's biographer Alyn Shipton writes that Gillespie likely got the idea when he saw a similar instrument in 1937 in Manchester, England while on tour with the Teddy Hill Orchestra. Gillespie came across an English trumpeter who was using such an instrument because his vision was poor and the horn made reading music easier. 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, Gillespie 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.[29]
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