Dizzy Gillespie

Musician

  • Born: October 21, 1917
  • Birthplace: Cheraw, South Carolina
  • Died: January 6, 1993
  • Place of death: Englewood, New Jersey

American musician and composer

As a renowned African American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer, Gillespie founded the jazz movement known as bebop by combining Latin rhythms with jazz music.

Area of achievement Music

Early Life

Dizzy Gillespie, born John Birks Gillespie, was the youngest of nine children. His mother and father were James and Lottie Gillespie. As a strict disciplinarian, James gave his children beatings with a leather strap every Sunday to account for all the mischief they were presumed to have gotten into during the week. James worked as a bricklayer during the week and as an amateur musician in a small band on the weekends. All the band’s instruments belonged to him, so they were kept in his house during the week. This gave Gillespie the chance to see and hear the instruments. He was so fascinated by them that he soon began studying the piano under James’s instruction. However, Gillespie has noted that his first real musical influence was his favorite elementary school teacher, Alice Wilson. Gillespie enthusiastically joined the school band that Wilson organized; however, when he arrived at the instrument room, the slide trombone was the only instrument left. He excitedly snatched it up, but his arms were too short to work its slide.

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Gillespie soon became fascinated with the sound of the trumpet he heard coming from his neighbor’s house. He invited himself to play it as often as he could and eventually managed to get a trumpet of his own. In 1933, his outstanding ability on the trumpet earned him a scholarship to North Carolina’s Laurinburg Technical Institute, where he studied both piano and trumpet. In 1935, Gillespie ended his high school education and joined his family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where they had already moved.

Life’s Work

In Philadelphia, Gillespie took various jobs in nightclubs playing his trumpet. His struggle as a professional musician had begun, but his friendly character and positive attitude made him many connections along the way. Consequently, he landed a spot in the Frankie Fairfax Band. It was during this time that he was dubbed “Dizzy” by fellow trumpeter “Fats” Palmer Davis. He and the other band members were impressed that Gillespie could also play the piano and were amused at the way he would get up and dance in the trumpet section.

Shortly after joining the band, Charlie Shavers, an acquaintance, asked Gillespie to come to New York to join Lucky Millinder’s band. Gillespie decided to take a chance and move to New York, and, although he did not join Millinder’s band, Shaver introduced him to many musicians in Harlem. One of the people he met was Teddy Hill, who hired him to join his band on a European tour. Gillespie’s youth, onstage antics, and musical variations were not well received by his bandmates. While playing with Hill’s band, he met Kenny Clarke, who also had an unorthodox playing style. They soon began collaborating and eventually joined Edgar Hayes’s group together. It was during this time that Gillespie met Lorraine Willis, a dancer at the Apollo who helped Gillespie through some hard times. He became smitten with Willis but was too poor to marry her.

In 1939, Gillespie was fortunate to land a position in the Cab Calloway Orchestra. Gillespie was impressed with the professional and sophisticated Calloway band; however, Calloway, who enforced strict discipline and demanded professional performances, was greatly annoyed by Gillespie’s antics. Yet it was not long before Gillespie had fans across the country, which put him in high favor with Calloway. In 1940, Gillespie met alto saxophone player Charlie “Bird” Parker and quickly became enamored with Parker’s playing style. The same year, on May 9, Gillespie finally married Willis.

During a trip to New York, Gillespie joined his old friend Kenny Clarke, who introduced him to pianist Thelonious Monk. When he played with Monk and Clarke, Gillespie recognized that they had a similar vision of multirhythmic music. Although he continued touring with Calloway, Gillespie was growing intolerant of the repetitive arrangements of swing music. Finally, in 1942, he left for New York, where he rejoined his true musical counterparts playing at Minton’s Playhouse. Parker visited Minton’s and was so impressed with what he heard that he decided to stay in New York.

Gillespie briefly joined the Lucky Millinder Band in 1942 and recorded “Little John Special.” Later, Gillespie and his downstairs neighbors, Shadow Wilson and Billy Eckstine, along with vocalist Sarah Vaughan, joined the Earl Hines Orchestra. When Parker joined them in 1943, he and Gillespie quickly realized that they truly were musical soulmates on their way to developing an exciting new bebop sound.

In 1944, Gillespie won an Esquire magazine New Star Award. That summer he took the opportunity to develop a new band with bassist Oscar Pettiford at the Onyx Club on Fifty-second Street in Manhattan. However, when Pettiford proved to be undependable, primarily because of drunkenness, the two of them agreed to go their separate ways. Shortly thereafter, Gillespie and Parker developed a quintet at the Three Deuces Club on Fifty-second Street. The way Gillespie and Parker communicated through their music was astounding. In To BE or Not to BOP (1979), Gillespie states, “[Parker] and I were like two peas. Sometimes I couldn’t tell whether I was playing or not because the notes were so close together.” Through his performances at Three Deuces, as well as the recordings he made, Gillespie was now an awesome force in the music world that many viewed as indomitable.

In 1945, Gillespie unsuccessfully toured with the first Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, called the Hepsations. The audiences felt that his music was undanceable. He returned to New York somewhat dejected but again joined Parker. He soon began to notice that Parker was allowing his drug addiction to hinder his ability to perform. After many failed attempts to persuade Parker to quit drugs, the band finally broke up. Subsequently, Gillespie received an invitation to go to Los Angeles to play at Billy Berg’s club. However, Berg required that Parker be included, and Gillespie reluctantly agreed.

The first of their performances at Berg’s were outstanding. However, Parker’s drugs quickly ran out, and, as he desperately sought more, he became increasingly undependable and was eventually replaced. The band ultimately failed and returned to New York in February, 1946. Gillespie’s deteriorated partnership with Parker marked the end of the spectacular performances by two of the most exciting players in the history of jazz. They would only play together a few more times.

Gillespie went through many bandmates looking for musicians who were as devoted to the development of bebop as he was. He hired James Moody, Joe Gayles, Dave Burns, Kenny Clarke, John Lewis, Milt Jackson, and Ray Brown, and Ella Fitzgerald as his singer. They took their show on the road, booking primarily into theaters rather than dance clubs, and met with great success. Gillespie achieved much acclaim for his work and was named Trumpet of the Year by Metronome magazine.

In 1947, the band began performing and recording more African-based rhythms with the help of conga drummer Chano Pozo. The new sound that resulted was instantly embraced by the public. Gillespie’s orchestra was now selling out shows throughout the United States. In 1950, however, the band’s popularity began to decline, and Gillespie decided to dissolve it. The following year he established his own record company called Dee Gee Records, but by 1953 the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had shut the company’s doors.

The same year, the bell of Gillespie’s trumpet was accidentally bent upward. When he tried to play it, he was pleased with how it sounded and, within a matter of months, had switched to the bent design permanently. Then, while performing a concert in Canada in 1953, Charles Mingus, a bassist, captured the concert on tape. The recording was subsequently released as a highly regarded album called The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever (1953).

Throughout the early 1950’s, Gillespie performed in many clubs and concerts. In 1956 the U.S. State Department asked him to embark on a worldwide tour as a goodwill ambassador. His music was enthusiastically received around the world. However, when funds from the government diminished, he had to dismantle the band. The end of the big-band era was drawing near.

In 1964 Gillespie decided to run for president of the United States. He was in favor of pulling troops from Vietnam and providing medicine and housing to the needy. He was also a staunch activist, both personally and financially, for the Civil Rights movement throughout the 1960’s. From 1968 to 1971 he played in European and world tours, and in 1972, he received the Handel Medallion from the City of New York as well as the Paul Robeson Award from Rutgers University’s Institute of Jazz Studies.

In the 1970’s, Gillespie published To BE or Not to BOP and played for many audiences, including the joint session of the state legislature of South Carolina and U.S. president Jimmy Carter. Throughout the 1980’s he remained a consequential influence in the jazz arena through his performances on world tours and appearances at concerts, universities, and tributes in his honor. In 1990 he played more than 250 performances in twenty-seven countries. The same year he and Lorraine celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

In the early 1990’s, Gillespie continued receiving honors and performing in concerts. However, his health was failing. He suffered with cataracts and diabetes and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1992. By the end of that year, he was bedridden. He died in an Englewood, New Jersey, hospital on January 6, 1993. He left behind an invaluable contribution to the music world in the form of perseverance, dedication, and success in his own genre bebop that few can rival.

Significance

Undoubtedly, Gillespie’s fortitude and unwillingness to compromise the music in which he so deeply believed changed the face of jazz forever. His polyrhythmic compositions have become jazz standards, and attempts to master them are still being struggled with today. As stated by many of his critics and contemporaries, Gillespie’s bebop sound eventually came to replace swing, and though many changes continue to take place in the jazz world, the most challenging efforts are still being made in the bebop style that Gillespie originated. For his accomplishments, Gillespie was awarded nineteen honorary degrees, a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement, the National Music Award, the Duke Ellington Award, and the National Medal of the Arts. He will be known in history as the patriarch of modern jazz and the unequivocal founder of bebop.

Bibliography

Gentry, Tony. Dizzy Gillespie. New York: Chelsea House, 1991. Gentry’s book contains biographical information emphasizing Gillespie’s life as a professional musician. Also contains a chronology, a select discography, photographs, an introductory essay by Coretta Scott King, a bibliography, and an index.

Gillespie, Dizzy, with Al Fraser. To BE or Not to BOP: Memoirs Dizzy Gillespie. New York: Doubleday, 1979. This is a detailed biographical sketch from Gillespie’s birth and early musical influences through his professional career to 1977. Includes short narratives by many of Gillespie’s family members, friends, and colleagues. Also contains photographs, a chronology, a selected discography, a filmography, a list of honors and awards, and an index.

Gourse, Leslie. Dizzy Gillespie and the Birth of Bebop. New York: Atheneum, 1994. Gourse’s book contains biographical information from Gillespie’s childhood to his death that emphasizes his lifelong commitment to developing his music and to the creation of bebop. Includes a bibliography and an index.

Haydon, Geoffrey. Quintet of the Year. Toronto, Ont.: MacFarlane, Walter, and Ross, 2002. In 1953, Gillespie, Parker, Bud Powell, Mingus, and Max Roach played their only concert together at Massey Hall in Toronto. Haydon tells the story of that remarkable concert and traces the lives of the five jazz players.

Horricks, Raymond. Dizzy Gillespie and the Be-Bop Revolution. New York: Hippocrene, 1984. This narrative emphasizes Gillespie’s professional career and the relationships he formed with fellow musicians. Horricks’s book also contains a brief musical history of the changes, progression of, and movement into bebop, as well as brief biographical sketches of several of Gillespie’s predecessors and contemporaries and the various roles they played in influencing the development of bebop. Includes photographs, discographical data, and a bibliography.

McRae, Barry. Dizzy Gillespie: His Life & Times. New York: Universe, 1988. McRae presents an extensive history of Gillespie’s professional career, provides information on his contemporaries, and discusses individual achievements Gillespie made apart from his various band membership accomplishments. Also includes an introduction, photographs, a discographical essay, a bibliography, and an index.

Maggin, Donald L. Dizzy: The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie. New York: HarperEntertainment, 2005. Traces Gillespie’s life and the evolution of his musical career, discussing his creation of bebop and his influence on the development of Latin jazz.

Shipton, Alyn. Groovin’ High: The Life of Dizzy Gillespie. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Shipton, jazz critic for The Times of London, combines musical criticism, scholarship, and anecdote to provide a chronicle of Gillespie’s life and musical evolution.

1941-1970: March 28, 1946: Parker’s Playing Epitomizes Bebop; January 21, 1949-March 9, 1950: Davis Develops 1950’s Cool Jazz; July 17-18, 1954: First Newport Jazz Festival Is Held.