Dizzy+Gillespie+by+Chloe


 * DIZZY GILLESPIE **

Dizzy Gillespie has the most recognizable face in jazz. When he plays his trumpet he looks like there is a grapefruit shoved in each of his cheeks. John Birks Gillespie was born on October 21, 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina. He was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer. The youngest of nine children, Dizzy was born to James and Lottie Gillespie. Whenever he played a solo, he was known as the “sound of surprise,” because you never knew what to expect.

His father, James Gillespie, was a bricklayer and a local bandleader, so Dizzy was able to play all kinds of instruments. His father used to make all of Dizzy’s older siblings practice instruments, but none of them liked to play music. It is sad that James Gillespie died when Dizzy was only ten years old and never heard him play trumpet. When he was only four years old, Dizzy began playing the piano. He taught himself to play the trombone and trumpet by the age of twelve. After hearing Roy Eldrige on the radio, he became Dizzy’s idol. Dizzy dreamed of becoming a jazz musician.

In 1932, Dizzy received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in Laurinburg, North Carolina because the school needed a trumpet player for its band. He attended two years before he moved with his family to Philadelphia when he was 18. In 1935, he was in a band led by Frankie Fairfax and earned the nickname Dizzy because of his goofy behavior and the crazy stuff he did on stage. In 1937, he left Philadelphia and moved to New York to try and become better know as a jazz player. That year he met his future wife, Lorraine, a chorus dancer at the Apollo Theatre. They married three years later and were together until his death. In 1939, he joined Cab Calloway’s big band, one of the highest-paid black bands in New York at the time. He worked in well-known swing bands with all the greats – Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Earl Hines, and Billie Holliday. In 1940, while on tour, he worked with Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke and others. Their group developed the new, more complex style of jazz that was called bebop.

In 1941, Dizzy was kicked out of Calloway’s band because Calloway did not like Dizzy’s mischievous humor or his daring approach to doing solos. One day during a performance, Calloway saw a spitball land on the stage and accused Dizzy of throwing it. Dizzy denied it, and they got into an argument. Calloway hit Dizzy, and Dizzy pulled out a switchblade knife and went after Calloway. The two were separated by other band members, but Dizzy had cut Calloway on the hand. In 1997, a movie was made about the incident called The Spitball Story.

In the late 1940s, he played a part in creating Afro-Cuban jazz and helped to introduce that modern jazz rhythm to a mainstream American audience. Afro-Cuban jazz was considered bebop-oriented. From 1945-1950, Dizzy had his own big band which gave him the opportunity to be a soloist and showman, but they did not make any money. In 1951, he formed his own record company but it also failed.

In 1953, someone accidentally fell on his trumpet which was sitting upright on a trumpet stand and bent the bell back. Afterwards when he played it, he discovered that the new shape improved the sound quality so from then on all of his trumpets were made with the bell tilted upwards at an angle of 45 degrees. The design became his visual trademark. The second you saw that bent trumpet, you thought of Dizzy Gillespie.

In 1956, Dizzy was the first jazz artist to be sent abroad by the United States government, spreading American goodwill and good music around the world. He was known as “the Ambassador of Jazz”. In 1964, he put himself as an independent write-in candidate for president and promised if he were elected the White House would be renamed “The Blues House.” He has received many, many awards and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles.

On January 6, 1993, in Englewood, New Jersey, Dizzy Gillespie died of pancreatic cancer at age 75. He is buried in the Flushing Cemetery in Queens, New York. Dizzy Gillespie was one of the most influential players in the history of jazz for many reasons.



References: Biography.com [] jazzandbluesmasters.com [] pbs.org [] wikipedia.org []

By: Chloe T.