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Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, along with Charlie Parker, ushered in the era of Be-Bop in the American jazz tradition. He was born Cheraw, South Carolina, and was the youngest of nine children. He began playing piano at the age of four and received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina. Most noted for his trademark "swollen cheeks", Gillespie admitted to copying the style of trumpeter Roy Eldridge early in his career.
He replaced Eldridge in the 'Teddy Hill' Band after Eldridge's departure. He eventually began experimenting and creating his own style which would eventually come to the attention of Mario Bauza, the Godfather of Afro-Cuban jazz who was then a member of the Cap Calloway Orchestra, joining Calloway in 1939, Gillespie was fired after two years when he cut a portion of the Calloway's buttocks with a knife after Calloway accused him of throwing spitballs (the two men later became lifelong friends and often retold this story with great relish until both of their deaths).
Although noted for his on and off-stage clowning, Gillespie endured as one of the founding fathers of the Afro-Cuban &/or Latin Hazz tradition. Influenced by Bauza, known as Gillespies musical father, he was able to fuse Afro-American jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythms to form a burgeoning CuBop sound. Always a musical ambassador, he toured Africa, the Middle East and Latin America under the sponsorship of the US State Department. Quite often he returned, not only with fresh musical ideas, but with musicians who would eventually go on the achieve world renown.
Among his proteges and collaborators are 'Chano Pozo'. the great Afro-Cuban percussionist; Danilo perez, a master pianist and composer originally from Pnama; Arturo Sandoval, trumpeter, composer and music educator originally from Cuba; Mongo Santamaria, an Afro-Cuban conguero, bongeuro and composer; David Sanchez, saxophonist and composer; Chucho Valdes, an Afro-Cuban virtuoso pianist and composer; and Bobby Sanabria, a Bronx, NY-born Nuyorican percussionist, composer, educator, bandleader and expert in the Afro-Cuban musical tradition. Indeed, many Latin jazz classics such as "Manteca", "A Night in Tunisia" and "Guachi Guaro [Soul Sauce]" were composed by Gillespie and his musical collaborators.
With a strong sense of pride in his Afro-American heritage, he left a legacy of musical excellence that embraced and fused all musical forms, but particularly those forms with roots deep in Africa such as the music of Cuba, other Latin American countries and the Caribbean. Additionally, he left a legacy of goodwill and good humor that infused jazz musicians and fans throughout the world with the genuine sense of jazz's ability to transcend national and ethnic boundaries—for this reason, Gillespie was and is an international treasure.
Awards
New Star Award, Esquire Magazine (1944); Handel Medallion, City of New York (1972); Paul Robeson Award, Rutgers University Institute of Jazz Studies (1972); Performs "Salt Peanuts" with President Carter at White House Jazz Concert (1978); Inducted into Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame (1982); Lifetime Achievement Award, National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) (1989); National Medal of Arts, President Bush (1989); Duke Ellington Award, Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (1989); Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1989); Kennedy Center Honors Award (1990); Fourteen honorary degrees, including Ph.D., Rutgers University (1972); Ph.D., Chicago Conservatory of Music (1978); Awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Max Roach: Hot House: The Complete Jazz at Massey Hall Recordings
by Richard J Salvucci
This is the stuff of legend, one for the ages. It all started here; the greatest jazz concert of all time. How many times has the Massey Hall Concert (Toronto, 1953) been described that way? For the average All About Jazz reader, Massey Hall happened before he or she was born. Besides, there were other famous jazz concerts such as The Carnival of Swing (Randall's Island, NY, 1938), Benny Goodman's 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert (that remained unreleased until 1958), Gene ...
Continue ReadingGillespie in the Fifties
by Patrick Burnette
Most jazz fans know Dizzy Gillespie's crucial role in the creation of bebop and every good collection should have at least a few tracks from his glory days of the forties. The man wrote “Night in Tunisia" for heaven's sake! But what happened later on, after his partner Bird was gone and the listening public had moved on from ooh-bop-sh-bam madness? In this episode we look at five recordings from the following decade and ponder why a genius-level player like ...
Continue ReadingDizzy Gillespie & Charlie Parker: Live Revisited
by Chris May
The first six tracks on this album, which were recorded at New York City's Town Hall on June 22, 1945, are amongst the most exciting in the jazz compendium. Not only because of their intrinsic artistic merit but also because they mark one of the first, if not the first, occasion the vanguard of the bop revolution emerged from the basements of 52nd Street, equipped with a fully formed manifestation of the new music, on to a stage bigger than ...
Continue ReadingHot vs. Cool: A Battle of Jazz + New Releases
by David Brown
A battle of bands this week, as we spin Leonard Feather's 1952 recording Hot vs. Cool: A Battle of Jazz. This double 7" EP featuring a bop group led by Dizzy Gillespie and a trad jazz band led by Jimmy McPartland facing off on the stage of Birdland. Then, new releases from Eve Risser, Marta Warelis, Eri Yamamoto, Panorama Jazz Band, Camille Bertault, Tim Bern/Matt Mitchell and more. Plus, a set of love songs with Sun Ra, Anita O'Day and ...
Continue ReadingCharlie Parker: Be Bop Live
by Mark Corroto
The name of the record label is ezz-thetics, which was also a composition by George Russell and an album of the same name (which featured Eric Dolphy) released by Riverside Records in 1961. Maybe a better moniker for the label is “Lest We Forget." Not that we could ever abandon Charlie Parker, but today when streaming services replace CDs and LPs, which also replaced 78s and live radio broadcasts (the streaming service of its day), Parker has the possibility of ...
Continue ReadingCharlie Parker Quintets: Be Bop Live
by Stefano Merighi
Benvenuti a uno dei convegni di bellezza più eccitanti che il jazz abbia mai prodotto. Royal Roost, New York City, dicembre 1948-febbraio 1949, due mesi in cui Charlie “Bird" Parker teneva il cartellone nel club della Quarantasettesima, sconvolgendo il pubblico con alcune tra le sue esibizioni più brillanti. Il bop era già linguaggio assimilato ormai, ma l'eccezionalità di quelle serate confermava Parker come punta di diamante di tutta la cultura africana-americana, al di là delle correnti jazzistiche.Questo doppio ...
Continue ReadingCharlie Parker: Birth Of Bebop - Celebrating Bird At 100
by Mark Corroto
Let's face it, there is absolutely nothing new to say about the music of Charlie Parker, unless (insert joke here) you happen to be Phil Schaap. Lao Tzu's quote “The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long" is fitting. John Coltrane was 40 when he died in 1967, Eric Dolphy 36 in 1964, and Clifford Brown died at 25 in 1956. Parker was dead at the age of thirty-five in 1955. His legend has grown larger with ...
Continue ReadingGillespie Quintet Live: Gillespiana, 1961
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Like Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts (1965, '68 and '73) and Chico O'Farrill's Second Afro-Cuban Suite (1954), Lalo Schifrin's Gillespiana is a jazz masterwork. Now, SteepleChase Records in Denmark has released Dizzy Gillespie Quintet: Gillespiana in Concert, recorded in Copenhagen on November 20, 1961. Gillespiana was a work originally written by Lalo for Gillespie's 16-piece orchestra. It was recorded in 1960. As he told me during an interview at his home in Beverly Hills in 2012, he composed the suite as ...
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Backgrounder - Dizzy Gillespie - Gillespiana
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
In 1956, a year after Juan Perón's regime was overthrown, Lalo Schifrin returned to Buenos Aires, Argentina, from Paris a professional jazz musician—much to his parents' dismay. “They feared I wouldn't be able to earn a living," Lalo told me in 2012 at his home in Beverly Hills. When Dizzy Gillespie performed in Buenos Aires later that year, Mr. Schifrin attended his concerts and played for him at a reception. “Dizzy asked me to come to the U.S., but I ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Dizzy Gillespie
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Dizzy Gillespie's birthday today!
John Birks “Dizzy" Gillespie, along with Charlie Parker, ushered in the era of Be-Bop in the American jazz tradition. He was born Cheraw, South Carolina, and was the youngest of nine children. He began playing piano at the age of four and received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina. Most noted for his trademark “swollen cheeks", Gillespie admitted to copying the style of trumpeter Roy Eldridge early ...
read more
Jazz Musician of the Day: Dizzy Gillespie
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Dizzy Gillespie's birthday today!
John Birks “Dizzy" Gillespie, along with Charlie Parker, ushered in the era of Be-Bop in the American jazz tradition. He was born Cheraw, South Carolina, and was the youngest of nine children. He began playing piano at the age of four and received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina. Most noted for his trademark “swollen cheeks", Gillespie admitted to copying the style of trumpeter Roy Eldridge early ...
read more
Jazz Musician of the Day: Dizzy Gillespie
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Dizzy Gillespie's birthday today!
John Birks “Dizzy" Gillespie, along with Charlie Parker, ushered in the era of Be-Bop in the American jazz tradition. He was born Cheraw, South Carolina, and was the youngest of nine children. He began playing piano at the age of four and received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina. Most noted for his trademark “swollen cheeks", Gillespie admitted to copying the style of trumpeter Roy Eldridge early ...
read more
The Giants of Jazz, 1972
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
In July 1972, when I was 15, I boarded a commuter train at the Croton-Harmon station near my family's house and traveled an hour south to New York City and Carnegie Hall to see the Giants of Jazz. The ensemble was appearing as part of the Newport Jazz Festival. The supergroup was conceived by George Wein, the Newport Jazz Festival's founder. As George wrote in his memoir: From the start I had envisioned a band featuring Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Dizzy Gillespie
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Dizzy Gillespie's birthday today!
John Birks “Dizzy" Gillespie, along with Charlie Parker, ushered in the era of Be-Bop in the American jazz tradition. He was born Cheraw, South Carolina, and was the youngest of nine children. He began playing piano at the age of four and received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina. Most noted for his trademark “swollen cheeks"... Read more.
Place our Musician of the Day widget on your ...
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Six Videos: Big-Band Gillespie
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
From his earliest days in the trumpet sections of big bands led by Teddy Hill, Cab Calloway, Les Hite, Lucky Millinder and Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie wanted to front an orchestra of his own. His first shot came in 1946 when he recorded for Musicraft and played New York cubs. His bebop band continued into 1947, '48 and '49, recording for RCA Victor. Throughout his career, Gillespie would be most at home fronting a big band or soloing in front ...
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When Bop Meant Business
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Bebop officially emerged in 1945 when Dizzy Gillsepie recorded Be-Bop (also known as Dizzy's Fingers). The jazz press didn't start using the term until 1946 to define an entire genre of emerging music. While bop continued to develop in New York and Los Angeles, it wasn't until late 1948 and '49 that the jazz style hit its popularity peak. Why 1949? For one, the American Federation of musicians and the record labels had finally come to an agreement on contributions ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Dizzy Gillespie
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Dizzy Gillespie's birthday today!
John Birks “Dizzy" Gillespie, along with Charlie Parker, ushered in the era of Be-Bop in the American jazz tradition. He was born Cheraw, South Carolina, and was the youngest of nine children. He began playing piano at the age of four and received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina. Most noted for his trademark “swollen cheeks"... Read more.
Place our Musician of the Day widget on your ...
read more
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