Early life and career ,
Cecil Payne,
Miles Davis, and
Ray Brown, between 1946 and 1948 The youngest of nine children of Lottie and James Gillespie, Dizzy Gillespie was born in
Cheraw, South Carolina. His father was a local bandleader, so instruments were made available to the children. James died when Dizzy was only ten years old. Gillespie started to play the piano at age four; by the time he was 12, he taught himself how to play the trombone and the trumpet. From the night Gillespie heard his idol,
Roy Eldridge, on the radio, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician. He won a music scholarship to the
Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina, which he attended for two years before accompanying his family when they moved to Philadelphia in 1935. Gillespie's first professional job was with the
Frank Fairfax Orchestra in 1935, after which he joined the orchestras of
Edgar Hayes and later
Teddy Hill, replacing Frankie Newton as second trumpet in May 1937. Teddy Hill's band was where Gillespie made his first recording, "King Porter Stomp". In August 1937 while gigging with Hayes in Washington D.C., Gillespie met a young dancer named Lorraine Willis who worked a Baltimore–Philadelphia–New York City circuit which included the
Apollo Theater. Willis was not immediately friendly, but Gillespie was attracted anyway. The two married on May 9, 1940. Gillespie stayed with Teddy Hill's band for a year, then left and freelanced with other bands. During his time in Calloway's band, Gillespie started writing big band arrangements for
Woody Herman,
Jimmy Dorsey, and others. Gillespie did not serve in
World War II. At his
Selective Service interview, he told the local board, "in this stage of my life here in the United States whose foot has been in my ass?" and "So if you put me out there with a gun in my hand and tell me to shoot at the enemy, I'm liable to create a case of 'mistaken identity' of who I might shoot." He was classified
4-F. In 1943, he joined the
Earl Hines band. Composer
Gunther Schuller said: ... In 1943 I heard the great Earl Hines band which had Bird in it and all those other great musicians. They were playing all the flatted fifth chords and all the modern harmonies and substitutions and Gillespie runs in the trumpet section work. Two years later I read that that was 'bop' and the beginning of modern jazz ... but the band never made recordings. Gillespie said, "[p]eople talk about the Hines band being 'the incubator of bop' and the leading exponents of that music ended up in the Hines band. But people also have the erroneous impression that the music was new. It was not. The music evolved from what went before. It was the same basic music. The difference was in how you got from here to here to here ... naturally each age has got its own shit." Gillespie joined the
big band of Hines's long-time collaborator
Billy Eckstine, and it was as a member of Eckstine's band that he was reunited with fellow band member
Charlie Parker. In 1944, Gillespie left Eckstine's band because he wanted to play with a small combo (which typically comprised no more than five musicians, playing trumpet, saxophone, piano, bass and drums). Dizzy recommended
Fats Navarro for the job with Eckstine, who proved to be an ample replacement.
Rise of Bebop Bebop was known as the first modern jazz style, but was unpopular at its onset. In fact, bebop was not considered revolutionary at first, but was seen as an outgrowth of swing. Regardless, swing introduced a diversity of new musicians in the bebop era such as
Charlie Parker,
Thelonious Monk,
Bud Powell,
Kenny Clarke,
Oscar Pettiford, and Gillespie. Through these musicians, a new vocabulary of musical phrases was created. Parker's system also held methods of adding chords to existing chord progressions and implying additional chords within the improvised lines. With Parker, Gillespie performed at famous jazz clubs including
Minton's Playhouse and
Monroe's Uptown House. Gillespie compositions like "
Groovin' High", "
Woody 'n' You", and "
Salt Peanuts" sounded radically different, harmonically and rhythmically, from the
swing popular at the time. "
A Night in Tunisia", written in 1942 while Dizzy was with Earl Hines's band, is noted for its syncopated bass line - a feature common in today's music. "Woody 'n' You" was recorded in a session led by
Coleman Hawkins with Gillespie as a featured
sideman on February 16, 1944 (
Apollo), the first formal recording of bebop. Dizzy appeared in recordings by the Billy Eckstine band and started recording prolifically as a leader and sideman in early 1945. He was not content to let bebop sit in a niche of small groups in small clubs. A concert by one of his small groups in New York's Town Hall on June 22, 1945, presented bebop to a broad audience; recordings of it were released in 2005. He started to organize big bands in late 1945. In December 1945, Dizzy Gillespie and his Bebop Six, which included Parker, started an extended gig at
Billy Berg's club in Los Angeles. Reception was mixed and the band broke up. In February 1946, Gillespie signed a contract with
Bluebird, gaining the distribution power of RCA for his music. He and his big band headlined the 1946 film ''
Jivin' in Be-Bop''. 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 put together his successful big bands starting in 1947. Gillespie and his big bands, with arrangements provided by
Tadd Dameron,
Gil Fuller, and
George Russell, popularized bebop and made him a symbol of the new music. His big bands of the late 1940s also featured Cuban
rumberos Chano Pozo and
Sabu Martinez, sparking interest in Afro-Cuban jazz. Gillespie appeared frequently as a soloist with
Norman Granz's
Jazz at the Philharmonic. Gillespie and his Bebop Orchestra was the featured star of the 4th Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at
Wrigley Field in Los Angeles which was produced by
Leon Hefflin Sr. On September 12, 1948. The young Gillespie had recently returned from Europe where his music was widely popular. The program description noted "the musicianship, inventive technique, and daring of this young man has created a new style, which can be defined as off the chord solo gymnastics." Also performing that day were
Frankie Laine,
Little Miss Cornshucks,
The Sweethearts of Rhythm,
The Honeydrippers,
Big Joe Turner,
Jimmy Witherspoon, The Blenders, and The Sensations. In 1948, Gillespie was involved in a traffic accident when the bicycle he was riding was bumped by an automobile. He was slightly injured and found 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. In 1951, Gillespie founded his record label,
Dee Gee Records; it closed in 1953. On January 6, 1953, he threw a party for his wife Lorraine at Snookie's, a club in Manhattan, where his trumpet's bell was accidentally bent upward. However, he liked the sound so much he had a special trumpet made with a 45-degree raised bell, a customization that would become his trademark. In 1956 Gillespie organized a band to go on a State Department tour of the Middle East which was well-received internationally and earned him the nickname "the Ambassador of Jazz". 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 jazz concert in 1973 (behind him is drummer
Art Blakey) In the late 1940s, Gillespie was involved in the movement called
Afro-Cuban music, bringing
Afro-Latin American music and elements to greater prominence in jazz and even pop music, particularly
salsa.
Afro-Cuban jazz is based on traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms. 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. Gillespie also worked with Mario Bauza in New York jazz clubs on 52nd Street and several famous dance clubs such as the
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 lifelong friends. Gillespie helped develop and mature the Afro-Cuban jazz style. Afro-Cuban jazz was considered bebop-oriented, and some musicians classified it as a modern style. Afro-Cuban jazz was successful because it never decreased in popularity and it always attracted people to dance. Gillespie's most famous contributions to Afro-Cuban music are
"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 Pozo. In 1977, Gillespie met
Arturo Sandoval during a jazz cruise to Havana. Sandoval toured with Gillespie and defected in Rome in 1990 while touring with Gillespie and the United Nation Orchestra.
Final years , France, July 1991|left|275x275px In the 1980s, Gillespie led the United Nations Orchestra. For three years
Flora Purim toured with the Orchestra. She credits Gillespie with improving her understanding of jazz. In 1982, he was sought out by
Motown musician
Stevie Wonder to play his solo in Wonder's 1982 hit single, "
Do I Do". He starred in the film
The Winter in Lisbon that was released as
El invierno en Lisboa in 1992 and re-released in 2004. The soundtrack album, featuring him, was recorded in 1990 and released in 1991. The film is a crime drama about a jazz pianist who falls for a dangerous woman while in Portugal with an American expatriate's jazz band. In December 1991, during an engagement at Kimball's East in Emeryville, California, he suffered a crisis from what turned out to be
pancreatic cancer. He performed one more night but cancelled the rest of the tour for medical reasons, ending his 56-year touring career. He led his last recording session on January 25, 1992. On November 26, 1992,
Carnegie Hall, following the Second
Baháʼí World Congress, celebrated Gillespie's 75th birthday concert and his offering to the celebration of the centenary of the passing of
Baháʼu'lláh. Gillespie was to appear at Carnegie Hall for the 33rd time. The line-up included
Jon Faddis,
James Moody,
Paquito D'Rivera, and
the Mike Longo Trio with Ben Brown on bass and
Mickey Roker on drums. Gillespie was too unwell to attend. "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."
Death A longtime resident of
Englewood, New Jersey, Gillespie died of
pancreatic cancer on January 6, 1993, at the age of 75. His funeral was held on January 12 at St. Peter's Lutheran Church, with
Roberta Flack singing Amazing Grace. His grave in
Flushing Cemetery, Queens is unmarked. ==Politics and religion==