Dizzy Gillespie: Biography from Answers.com

Dizzy Gillespie

jazz musician; trumpet player; composer; bandleader

Personal Information

Real name, John Birks Gillespie; born October 21, 1917, to James and Lottie Gillespie; youngest of nine children; father was a bricklayer by day and a musician by night; raised in Cheraw, SC; family moved to Philadelphia, PA, 1935; married Lorraine Willis (a dancer), 1940.
Education: Attended Laurinburg Institute; left before graduating to join family in Philadelphia.

Career

Moved to New York City in 1937 and began playing trumpet in jam sessions with various musicians; played with the Teddy Hill Orchestra, beginning in 1937, and the Cab Calloway Orchestra, 1939-41; made first recording in 1939 with Lionel Hampton; joined Earl "Fatha" Hines band, 1942; with Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Parker, and others, formed new group headed by Billy Eckstein, 1943; also played for other bands including the Duke Ellington Orchestra, c. 1943; formed own quintet, 1944; has played in, led, and composed for numerous big bands, orchestras, and small groups throughout the world.

Life's Work

In 1989, the year he became 72 years of age, Dizzy Gillespie received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences' Grammy ceremonies. The award, one of many bestowed on this trumpet virtuoso, recognized nearly 50 years of pioneering jazz performances. That same year he received the National Medal of Arts from President Bush "for his trail-blazing work as a musician who helped elevate jazz to an art form of the first rank, and for sharing his gift with listeners around the world."

Not letting age slow him down, Gillespie in 1989 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. In addition to the previously mentioned awards, he was crowned a traditional chief in Nigeria; he received France's most prestigious cultural award, the Commandre d'Ordre des Artes et Lettres; and he was named regent professor at the University of California and received his fourteenth honorary doctoral degree, this one from the Berklee College of Music. The next year at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts ceremonies celebrating the centennial of American jazz, Gillespie received ASCAP's Duke Award for 50 years of achievement as a composer, performer, and bandleader.

Fifty years after he helped found a new style of progressive jazz that came to be known as bebop, Dizzy Gillespie is still contributing all he can to the development of modern jazz--his band is a training ground for younger musicians. In mid-1990 he led and wrote the arrangements for a group that included John Lee (bass), Ed Cherry (guitar), Ignacio Berroa (drums), Paul Hawkins (conga drum), and Ron Holloway (saxophone). More than 40 years earlier, Gillespie was the first bandleader to use a conga player. Chano Pozo, a Cuban who couldn't speak English, played conga for a memorable year with the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra before meeting an untimely death in 1948. Employing Latin rhythms and forging an Afro-Cuban style of polyrhythmic music was one of Gillespie's many contributions to the development of modern jazz.

As a trumpet virtuoso, Gillespie stands firmly as a major influence in the development of the jazz trumpet. Before Gillespie, there was New Orleans musician Buddy Bolden, the earliest known jazz cornetist, who was followed by King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, and Roy Eldridge. In his memoir, To Be Or Not To Bop, Gillespie described the influence of Armstrong and Eldridge on his trumpet playing: "Roy Eldridge was a French-style trumpet player. Eldridge was in a direct line from Louis Armstrong, and he was the voice of that era, the thirties. I hardly ever listened to Louis, but was always aware of where Roy's inspiration came from. So I was looking at Louis Armstrong, you see, because they are one and the same. My inspiration came through Roy Eldridge, from Louis Armstrong and King Oliver and Buddy Bolden. That's the way it happened." Successors to this line of innovative jazz trumpeters after Gillespie include Miles Davis, who developed a style of cool jazz that contrasted with Gillespie's hard bop, and contemporary trumpeters like Wynton Marsalis and Wallace Roney.

Gillespie played with bands in Philadelphia from 1935 to 1937 before moving to New York. In Philadelphia, where his family had moved from Cheraw, South Carolina, Gillespie learned Eldridge's trumpet solos from fellow trumpeter Charlie Shavers while earning his nickname for his erratic and mischievous behavior. When Gillespie was in the Frankie Fairfax band in Philadelphia, he carried his new trumpet in a paper bag; that caused fellow musicians like Bill Doggett to call him "Dizzy." While Gillespie himself acknowledges the paper bag incident, he says the nickname didn't stick until later.

Gillespie's basic style of solo trumpet playing at that time involved "running them changes," improvising on chord changes in a song and introducing new chord changes based on the song's melody. He had taught himself piano and used the instrument to experiment with new melodies and chord changes. When he came to New York in 1937, he didn't have a specific job there, but he was introduced to other musicians by Charlie Shavers. Gillespie and other musicians played jam sessions, sometimes after hours at clubs in Harlem like Monroe's Uptown House and Dicky Wells'. He would also sit in with other bands, and while sitting in with Chick Webb's band at the Savoy Ballroom, he met Mario Bauza, a Cuban trumpeter who introduced Gillespie to Latin rhythms.

Within the year, Gillespie was hired into the Teddy Hill Orchestra for a European tour when the regular trumpet player didn't want to go. Hill probably liked Gillespie's style, which was similar at that time to Roy Eldridge's, who had left Hill's band to join Fletcher Henderson. As early as 1937, New York musicians were generally impressed with Gillespie, who was only 19, noting "he had a whole different conception of solo trumpet playing." In his solos he utilized the upper register of notes above high C, played with great speed, and used new rhythms and chord changes. Gillespie made his first recordings with the Teddy Hill Orchestra just prior to leaving for Europe. On the European tour, billed as "The Cotton Club Show," Gillespie was the youngest member of the band.

Gillespie joined the Cab Calloway Orchestra in 1939 and stayed until 1941. Gillespie wrote in his memoir, "It was the best job that you could possibly have, high class." They 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 style and knowledge. In 1939 the top trumpet players for recording dates in New York were Roy Eldridge, Charlie Shavers, and Buck Clayton. Gillespie was fourth on the list but somehow managed to land a recording date with Lionel Hampton, resulting in the famous "Hot Mallets" session. In this session, Gillespie became the first to record in the modern jazz style with a small group. Lionel Hampton said of this session, as quoted in Gillespie's book, "[Gillespie] came out with a new style, came out with a bebop style. He came out with a different style than we'd ever heard before. A lot of people don't know that was the creation of bebop, the beginning of bebop." Of course, it wasn't called bebop just yet.

Gillespie left the Calloway aggregation in 1941 following a misunderstanding with the leader. During a performance someone from the vicinity of the trumpet section was having fun aiming spitballs at the leader, who was singing in front of the band at the time. Naturally, Calloway assumed Gillespie was responsible. This time, however, Gillespie was set up and was completely innocent. Words led to action, and Gillespie pulled a knife on Calloway and actually cut him a few times. While the two men later made up and remained friends, Gillespie had to leave the band. It's an interesting and well-known incident, illustrating the flip side of Gillespie's jovial personality. He was often in situations where he might need to defend himself, and he was fully prepared to do so.

Gillespie joined the Earl "Fatha" Hines band in 1942, about the same time Charlie Parker did. Although Parker became famous as an alto saxophonist, he was playing tenor sax at that time in the Hines band. Gillespie first met Parker in Kansas City in 1940, when he was on tour with Cab Calloway. The two of them jammed together at the Booker T. Washington Hotel in Kansas City for several hours. As Gillespie wrote, "I guess Charlie Parker and I had a meeting of the minds, because both of us inspired each other." They hung out together quite a lot during their stint in the Hines band.

By the time he joined Earl Hines, Gillespie had composed "A Night in Tunisia," one of his most famous songs. He was also writing arrangements for other bandleaders, including Jimmy Dorsey, Teddy Hill, Cab Calloway, and Woody Herman. He would write bebop arrangements for their bands, because every bandleader at that time was interested in having one or two bebop numbers in their repertoires. Several musicians have commented that even if Gillespie couldn't play the trumpet, he could have made a name for himself on the basis of his original compositions and arrangements. Other jazz standards credited in whole or in part to Gillespie include "Groovin' High," "Manteca," "Woody 'n You," "Con Alma," and "Salt Peanuts."

A large part of the Earl Hines band left in 1943 to form a new group headed by Billy Eckstine. Former Hines members who joined Eckstine included Sarah Vaughan, Gillespie, Parker, and others. Gillespie became musical director for Eckstine, whose backers got him a job on 52nd Street. The band also included saxophonists Gene Ammons and Dexter Gordon. Gillespie stayed with Eckstine for about seven months, touring and playing on 52nd Street. "The Street," as described by critic Pete Migdol in Gillespie's memoir, "was the hippest block with regard to its short distance and that amount of music.... This was the top talent street, and it was, of course, discoverer of a lot of the new people for that era."

After leaving Eckstine, Gillespie subbed in the Duke Ellington Orchestra for about four weeks, then formed his own group to play at the newly opened Onyx Club on 52nd Street. Billie Holiday (also in this issue) was also playing at the Onyx Club in 1944. Gillespie had been playing bebop whenever he could since 1940, the year he married Lorraine Willis and met Charlie Parker. Now he was able to play it full time. The Street became the proving ground for the 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. "In our long sojourn on 52nd Street we spread our message to a much wider audience." His first quintet at the Onyx Club in 1944 included Oscar Pettiford (bass), Max Roach (drums), George Wallington (piano), Don Byas (tenor sax), and Gillespie. Gillespie had tried to get Parker to join, but Parker had temporarily returned to Kansas City.

In 1944 Gillespie also 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." For example, Tadd Dameron's composition, "Hothouse," was based on "What Is This Thing Called Love?," and Parker's "Ornithology" came out of "How High The Moon." Gillespie also noted, "Our music had developed more into a type of music for listeners." There would be little dancing to the new bebop. Rhythm and phrasing were also important to the new jazz style. "The most important thing about our music was, of course, the style, how you got from one note to another, how it was played.... We had a special way of phrasing. Not only did we change harmonic structure, but we also changed rhythmic structure."

Gillespie's quintet also played other clubs, including the Downbeat and the Three Deuces, where the quintet included Charlie Parker (alto sax) and Bud Powell (piano). He also played for two months in Hollywood with Parker, Milt Jackson (vibes), Ray Brown (bass), Al Haig (piano), and Stan Levy (drums). This was the first exposure of bebop on the West Coast and it was very well received. It was around this time that the term "bebop" came into use. Gillespie recalled, "People, when they'd wanna ask for one of those numbers and didn't know the name, would ask for bebop. And the press picked it up and started calling it bebop. The first time the term bebop appeared in print was while we played at the Onyx Club."

Gillespie's quintet and the presentation of modern jazz in that format reached its apex in 1953, with a concert at Massey Hall in Toronto that featured Gillespie, Parker, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus (bass), and Max Roach. As Roach recalled in Gillespie's memoir, "The five people that Dizzy had originally thought about in the group at the Onyx didn't really materialize until we did Jazz at Massey Hall, that album, in 1953." Billed by jazz critics as "the greatest jazz concert ever," it was recorded by Mingus, who was a last-minute substitute for Oscar Pettiford, and later released on Debut Records.

There is, of course, much more to the Dizzy Gillespie story: His big bands and orchestras that he first organized in the late 1940s, his small groups from the early 1950s that served as incubators for young musicians like John Coltrane, his work with musicians like saxophonist James Moody and pianist/composer Lalo Schifrin, his role as unofficial ambassador of jazz beginning with a 1956 world tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department, his own short-lived record label (Dee Gee Records, 1951-53), his appearance at the very first Newport Jazz Festival in 1954, his marriage of more than 50 years to Lorraine, and more. Much of it is documented in To Be Or Not To Bop, which was published in 1979.

Gillespie died of pancreatic cancer complicated by diabetes, on January 6, 1993, at Englewood Hospital in Englewood, New Jersey.

Awards

New Star Award from Esquire magazine, 1944; Lifetime Achievement Award from National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences, 1989; National Medal of Arts from President George Bush, 1989; Commadre d'Ordre des Artes et Lettres (France), 1989; Duke Award from ASCAP, 1989; and numerous other awards and honors, including several honorary degrees.

Works

Selective Discography

(With the Quintet) Jazz at Massey Hall, Fantasy/Debut, 1953.
Dizzier and Dizzier, RCA, 1954.
Groovin' High, Savoy, 1955.
The Champ, Savoy, 1956.
The Dizzy Gillespie Story, Savoy, 1957.
Concert In Paris, Roost, 1957.
Jazz From Paris, Verve, 1957.
Dizzy In Greece, Verve, 1957.
The Trumpet Kings, Verve, 1957.
For Musicians Only, Verve, 1958.
Manteca, Verve, 1958.
Birk's Works, Verve, 1958.
Dizzy Gillespie at Newport, Verve, 1958.
Dizzy Gillespie Duets, Verve, 1958.
Have Trumpet Will Excite, Verve, 1959.
The Ebullient Dizzy Gillespie, Verve, 1959.
The Greatest Trumpet Of Them All, Verve, 1960.
Gillespiana, Verve, 1961.
An Electrifying Evening, Verve, 1962.
Carnegie Hall Concert, Verve, 1962.
Dizzy On The French Riviera, Philips, 1962.
New Wave, Philips, 1963.
Something Old, Something New, Philips, 1963.
Cool World, Philips, 1964.
The Essential Dizzy Gillespie, Verve, 1964.
Jambo Caribe, Limelight, 1964.
The New Continent, Limelight, 1965.
Montreux '77, Pablo, 1977.
Dee Gee Days, Savoy, 1985.
New Faces, GRP, 1985.
Oo Pop A Da, Affinity, 1985.
Dizzy Gillespie and His Sextets, Musicraft, 1986.
Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra, Musicraft, 1986.
Dizziest, RCA Bluebird, 1987.
Enduring Magic, Black Hawk, 1987.
Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra, Giants of Jazz, 1988.
Small Combos, Giants of Jazz, 1988.
(With Max Roach) Max and Dizzy: Paris 1989, A&M, 1990.

Writings

(With Al Fraser) To Be or Not To Bop: Memoirs of Dizzy Gillespie, Doubleday, 1979.