DIZZY GILLESPIE
G'day folks,
An iconic
figure in the history of jazz music who was instantly recognizable even to
millions of non-jazz fans by his puffed-out cheeks and his trademark trumpet,
with its horn bent upwards at a 45-degree angle, John Birks Gillespie—better
known as “Dizzy”—was born in 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina.
The youngest
of nine children in a musical family, John Gillespie began playing piano at the
age of four and took up the trombone and trumpet at the age of 12. He showed
enough talent on the latter instrument to earn a music scholarship to North
Carolina’s Laurinburg Institute at the age of 15, but even through his high
school years, Gillespie was essentially self-taught.
In the late
1930s, at the height of the Swing era, John Gillespie worked his way through a
succession of increasingly prestigious big bands, earning a reputation as a
talented performer and as a free spirit worthy of the nickname, “Dizzy.” By
1939, at the age of 22, he was playing for Cab Calloway, one of the most
successful bandleaders of the time. Dizzy would stay with Calloway’s band
through 1941, but more important than the recordings on which he appeared
during this period were the connections he made with fellow musicians who would
greatly influence the next phase of his career—musicians that included the
great saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker and the pianist Thelonious Monk.
During their
late-night jam sessions in the early 1940s at New York clubs like Minton’s
Playhouse in Harlem, Gillespie, Parker and Monk, among several others,
established an entirely new sound in jazz: bebop. Because of a recording ban
instigated by union musicians during the bulk of World War II, the evolution of
bebop was not documented in commercial recordings.
In the postwar era, however,
the revolutionary new style took the jazz world by storm and established
Gillespie’s international reputation. In addition to acting as one of bebop’s
founding fathers, Dizzy Gillespie also pioneered the fusion of Afro-Cuban
rhythms with jazz music in the 1940s, helping to create another jazz genre of
enormous popularity and importance.
The jazz
pioneer died of pancreatic cancer on January 6, 1993, at the age of 75.
Clancy's comment: Those cheeks were unbelievable. Loved ya work, Dizzy!
I'm ...
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