Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie & Louis Armstrong UMBRELLA MAN

2008-02-09T00:28:00.000+02:00

Two great jazz musicians SHOW !

Dizzy Tucks Into a Cake

2008-01-26T00:37:00.000+02:00

12th July 1958 - Cannes Jazz Festival

Dizzy's Trumpet

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The Louisiana State Museum Jazz Collection

Gillespie donated it to the old Jazz Museum after visiting it and being favorably impressed.

Has the famous "bent" bell.

Dizzy Gillespie plays to Blind Tom

2008-01-03T00:32:00.000+02:00

Dizzy Gillespie Plays "When The Saints Go Marchin' In"
At Thomas Wiggins (Blind Tom) Gravesite
near Columbus, Georgia, May 1979
Photo courtesy of Columbus Times.

Dizzy Gillespie tribute statue

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Dizzy Gillespie was born in Cheraw on October 21st, 1917.
And here is a tribute statue in Cheraw, South Carolina

HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME

2007-11-27T19:22:00.000+02:00

Dizzy has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7057 Hollywood Boulevard in the Hollywood section of the City of Los Angeles.

Dizzy Gillespie With Al Haig And Others

2007-11-27T19:08:00.000+02:00

Bebop Reunion: Soundstage 1976

Al Haig and Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Ray Brown, Milt Jackson, Kenny Clarke,Sarah Vaughan, James Moody and Joe Carroll.

Dizzy's Trumpet

2007-11-26T02:18:00.000+02:00

One day the comedian James "Stump" Cross fell on Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet, bending the bell to a 45-degree angle.

To his surprise, Gillespie was so pleased with the instrument's oddly muted sound that he had it redesigned with an upturned bell.

Dizzy Gillespie : Antics and Tributes

2007-11-23T00:20:00.000+02:00

"When Pee Wee Marquette finished announcing an attraction at Birdland, he usually walked off the bandstand leaving the microphone at the height he had adjusted it for himself, about three feet from the floor.
"One night, Pee Wee announced, ‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, Birdland proudly presents, Dizzy Gillespie!’ and walked away from the microphone. Out came Dizzy on his knees to accept the applause and announce the first tune. The microphone needed no adjustment." (Bill Crow, 1990)

"I wanted to play high and fast like Dizzy just to prove to myself that I could do it. A lot of cats used to be putting me down back in the bebop days because their ears could only pick up what Dizzy was doing. That’s what they thought playing the trumpet was all about. And when somebody like me came along, trying something different, he ran the risk of being put down." (Miles Davis, 1989)

"Gillespie was one of the few of the early beboppers who did not destroy himself. He ran his career with intelligence, and even when later movements in music seemed to make bop obsolete, he continued to work, emerging, in the 1970s, as something as close to an elder statesman as the music has ever seen. Like [Coleman] Hawkins, he kept his standards and continued to play his own way despite shifts of taste." (James Lincoln Collier, 1978)

One of Dizzy Gillespie’s distinctive trumpets, on which the bells were bent sharply upwards, was sold by a London auction house in 1996. Gillespie himself described how the unusual modification came about on the night of 6 January 1953:

"The truth is that the shape of my horn was an accident . . . When I got back to the club [Snookie’s, on 45th Street, New York], Stump ‘n’ Stumpy had been fooling around on the bandstand, and one had pushed the other, and he’d fallen back on to my horn. Instead of the horn just falling, the bell bent. When I got back, the bell was sticking up in the air. Illinois Jacquet had left. He said, ‘I’m not going to be here when that man comes back and sees his horn sticking up at that angle.’
"When I came back, it was my wife’s birthday and I didn’t want to be a drag. I put the horn to my mouth and started playing it. Well, when the bell went back, it made a smaller hole because of the dent . . . The sound had been changed and it could be played softly, very softly, not blarey . . . I contacted the Martin Company, and I had Lorraine, who’s also an artist, draw me a trumpet at a forty-five degree angle . . . They made me a trumpet and I’ve been playing one like that ever since." --The Cronicle of Jazz--

image Copyright by © Val Wilmer

2007-11-22T14:29:00.000+02:00

Dizzy Gillespie playing his trumpet 1955

Dizzy Gillespie and Joe Williams on the Marty Faye show. Chicago, 1962

2007-11-22T14:08:00.000+02:00

Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Charlie Parker

Latin Jazz Jam session featuring

Dizzy Gillespie on conga,

John Faddus on trumpet,

Earl May on bass & Al Gaffa on guitar.
Birdland, New York City, 1960's

2007-11-22T13:29:00.000+02:00

From left to right:

Dizzy Gillespie, Al Cass and Harry "Sweets" Edison

Joe Newman & Dizzy GillespieJune 11, 1970

Newport Jazz FestivalNewport, Rhode Island, U.S.A.

Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown, James Moody, Jazzfestival Berne, May 1985
Copyright by B.&Th. Künzler, CH-3065 Bolligen-Bern

2007-11-22T13:22:00.000+02:00

Dizzy Gillespie & Charlie Parker

Dizzy Gillespie & Coleman Hawkins

Dizzy Gillespie on the steps of City Hall, 1976.
Collection: Mayor Abraham Beame

2007-11-22T13:11:00.001+02:00

Dizzy Gillespie with his moon cheeks playing his horn in 1947.

Edinburg Usher Hall

Dizzy Gillespie playing the trumpet in a club in 1948

Dizzy Gillespie, Jazzfestival Montreux
Copyright by B.&Th. Künzler, CH-3065 Bolligen-Bern

King of “The Street”

2007-11-22T10:31:00.000+02:00

by William Gottlieb

By 1947, the block in New York City on 52nd St., between 5th and 6th Avenues, long known as Swing Street, had begun to slip. This "Center of the Jazz World" was being hit by a nationwide economic decline, as well as by the street wide growth of an unappetizing drug scene and, most severely, by the encroachments of Rockefeller Center, whose new skyscrapers were beginning to push out the many brownstone buildings in whose basements the jazz clubs had settled. Finally, there was the gradual replacement of swing by bebop, a style of jazz that alienated many of the swing fans who had supported the clubs.

But bop had a vitality of its own; and for a while, it filled The Street with a new group of musicians and new (or converted) audiences. The leader of this revolutionary movement and "The King of 52nd Street" was Dizzy Gillespie.

Earlier, John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie had been known for his wild antics. When, in the beginning, he was hired by orchestra leader Teddy Hill, he often played rehearsals dressed in hat, gloves and overcoat. Teddy gave him the name "Dizzy" but was quick to add that with all his eccentricities and practical jokes, he was the most stable of us all...”Diz crazy? Diz was crazy like a fox."
Dizzy was a joy to interview and photograph. Normally, when taking a picture, I don’t move my subjects but show them performing or in a dressing room. However, once in 1947, when Dizzy was working in a club on The Street , I asked him to stand next to an appropriate street sign. Without any direction from me, he struck just the right pose. Perfect!

John Birks Gillespie

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John Birks Gillespie was born on October 21, 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina, the youngest of nine children. He emerged as a trumpet player whose role as a founding father of modern jazz made him a major figure in 20th-century American music. His signature moon cheeks and bent trumpet made him one of the world's most instantly recognizable figures.

Dizzy Gillespie was a featured and favorite performer at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York. To this date, he remains the only artist to be booked for an entire month at the club! The occasion was his 75th birthday and, sadly, he did not live to celebrate another. Dizzy was loved by all who knew him and is especially missed at the Blue Note, where his memory and his music live on.

In a nearly 60-year career as a composer, bandleader and innovative player, Gillespie cut a huge swath through the jazz world. In the early 1940's, along with the alto saxophonist Charlie (Yardbird) Parker, he initiated be-bop, the sleek, intense, high speed revolution that has become jazz's most induring style. In subsequent years, he incorporated Afro-Cuban music into jazz, creating a new genre from the combination.

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

In 1939, he joined Cab Calloway's band and stayed for two years, then worked briefly with big bands led by Ella Fitzgerald, Claude Hopkins, Les Hite, Lucky Millender, Charlie Barnet, Fletcher Henderson and Benny Carter. In June of 1945, he led his own small band (1945) which later that year was augmented into a big band. During the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Dizzy alternated between leading small and big bands. Dizzy also did concert tours as a soloist with the "Jazz At The Philharmonic" presentations. He continued to do widespread touring during the late 1970s, mainly with a quintet, with many overseas visits to Africa, Australia, Cuba, Europe, etc. Gillespie was featured at President Jimmy Carter's 1978 White House Jazz Party and induced Carter to provide the vocals for a rendition of "Salt Peanuts."

In the last decade, his career seemed recharged, and he became ubiquitous on the concert circuit as a special guest. New York Times writer Peter Watrous in decribing Dizzy's month long engagement at the Blue Note wrote, "In honor of his 75th birthday, Mr. Gillespie played for four weeks at the Blue Note in Manhattan in a stint that featured perhaps the greatest selection of jazz music ever brought together for a tribute." Dizzy Gillespie died of cancer on January 6, 1993.

In 1960, Gillespie was elected by the Readers into the Down Beat Hall of Fame.

Source: dominic.preuss@duke.edu

NYC in Aug, 1947

2007-11-22T10:23:00.000+02:00

Mary Lou Williams at her apartment in NYC in Aug, 1947

From left to right around Mary Lou are Dizzy Gillespie, Tadd Dameron, Hank Jones, Milt Orent, Dixie Bailey and Jack Teagarden

Partial Discography

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Dizzy Gillespie (RCA 1937)
Compact Jazz: Dizzy Gillespie (Verve 1943)
Groovin' High (Musicraft 1945)
Oo Bop (Tradition 1945)
Dizzier and Dizzier (RCA 1947)
BeBop Enters Sweden 1947-1949 (Dragon 1947)
The Dizzy's Diamonds: The Best of Verve... (Verve 1950)
Dizzy Gillespie (Everest 1952)
'Round Midnight: Dizzy Gillespie (Verve 1954)
A Night in Tunisia (VSP 1955)
Talkin' Verve (Polygram 1957)
Gillespiana / Carnegie Hall Concert Live (Verve 1960)
The Greatest of Dizzy Gillespie (RCA 1961)
The Essential Dizzy Gillespie (Verve 1961)
The Cool World / Dizzy Goes Hollywood (Verve 1963)
The Trumpet Kings at Montreux (1975)
The Dizzy Gillespie Big 7 at the Montreux Jazz Festival (1975)
Montreux (1977)
Digital at Montreux 1980)
20 Golden Pieces of Dizzie Gillespie (Bulldog 1981)
Dizzy Gillespie: The Sonny Lester Collection (Lestor Recordings 1990)
Compact JAzz: The Dizzy Gillespie Big Band (Verve 1992)
The Best of Dizzy Gillespie (Pablo 1992)
Bird Songs: The Final Redordings (Live) (Telarc 1992)
Verve Jazz Masters 10 (Verve 1994)
Birk's Works: Verve Big Band Sessions (Verve 1995)
Greatest Hits (RCA 1996)
Giant / Portrait of Jenny (Collectables 1996)
1945 (Classics 1996)
Jazz After Dark : Great Songs (Public Music 1996)
Complete Dial Masters: Modern Jazz Trumpeters (Jazz Classics 1997)
Dizzy Gillespie: Members Edition (United Audio 1997)
Jam Session, 1955 (live) (Moon 1998)
Jazz Collector Edition (Savoy Jazz 1998)