Bebop or bop is a style of jazz characterized by fast tempo, instrumental virtuosity and improvisation based on the combination of harmonic structure and melody. It was developed in the early and mid-1940s. It first surfaced in musicians' argot some time during the first two years of American involvement in the Second World War. This style of jazz ultimately became synonymous with modern jazz, as either category reached a certain final maturity in the 1960s.

Etymology[link]

"In spite of the explanations of the origins of these words, players actually did sing the words 'bebop' and 'rebop' to an early bop phrase as shown in the following example."^[1]  Play (help·info)

The word "bebop" is usually stated^{[by whom?]} to be nonsense syllables (vocables) which were made in scat singing, and is supposed^{[weasel words]} to have been first attested^{[by whom?]} in 1928.^[2] Some researchers^[who?] speculate that it was a term used by Charlie Christian, because it sounded like something he hummed along with his playing.^[3] Dizzy Gillespie tells that the audiences coined the name after hearing him scat the then-nameless tunes to his players and the press ultimately picked it up, using it as an official term: "People, when they'd wanna ask for those numbers and didn't know the name, would ask for bebop."^[4]

However, the most plausible^{[weasel words]} theory is that it derives from the cry of "Arriba! Arriba!" used by Latin American bandleaders of the period to encourage their bands.^[5] This squares with the fact that, originally, the terms "bebop" and "rebop" were used interchangeably. By 1945, the use of "bebop"/"rebop" as nonsense syllables was widespread in R&B music, for instance Lionel Hampton's "Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop," and a few years later in rock and roll, for instance Gene Vincent's "Be-Bop-A-Lula" (1956).

History[link]

The 1939 recording of "Body and Soul" by Coleman Hawkins is an important antecedent of bebop. Hawkins' willingness to stray—even briefly—from the ordinary resolution of musical themes and his playful jumps to double-time signaled a departure from existing jazz. The recording was popular; but more importantly, from a historical perspective, Hawkins became an inspiration to a younger generation of jazz musicians, most notably Charlie Parker, in Kansas City.

In the 1940s, the younger generation of jazz musicians created a new style that came out of the 1930s' swing music. They partially strived to counter the popularization of swing with non-danceable music that demanded listening.^[6] Mavericks like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk were influenced by the preceding generation's adventurous soloists, such as pianists Art Tatum and Earl Hines, tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young and trumpeter Roy Eldridge. Gillespie and Parker, both out of the Earl Hines Band in Chicago had traveled with some of the pre-bop masters, including Jack Teagarden, Earl Hines and Jay McShann. While Gillespie was with Cab Calloway, he practiced with bassist Milt Hinton and developed some of the key harmonic and chordal innovations that would be the cornerstones of the new music; Charlie Parker did the same with bassist Gene Ramey while with McShann's group. These forerunners of the new music (which would later be termed "bebop," or "bop"-- although Parker himself never used that term, feeling it demeaned the music) began exploring advanced harmonies, complex syncopation, altered chords and chord substitutions. The bop musicians advanced these techniques with a more freewheeling, intricate and often arcane approach.

Minton's Playhouse in New York served as an incubator and experimental theater for early bebop players,^[7] including Don Byas, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Christian, who had already hinted at the bop style in innovative solos with Benny Goodman's band. Part of the atmosphere created at jams like the ones found at Minton's Playhouse was an air of exclusivity: the "regular" musicians would often reharmonize the standards in order to exclude those whom they considered outsiders or simply weaker players.^[6]

Christian's major influence was in the realm of rhythmic phrasing. Christian commonly emphasized weak beats and off beats, and often ended his phrases on the second half of the fourth beat. Christian experimented with asymmetrical phrasing, which was to become a core element of the new bop style. Swing improvisation was commonly constructed in two or four bar phrases that corresponded to the harmonic cadences of the underlying song form. Bop improvisers would often deploy phrases over an odd number of bars, and overlap their phrases across bar lines and across major harmonic cadences. Christian and the other early boppers would also begin stating a harmony in their improvised line before it appeared in the song form being outlined by the rhythm section. This momentary dissonance creates a strong sense of forward motion in the improvisation. Swing improvisers commonly emphasized the first and third beats of a measure. But in a bebop composition such as Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts," the rhythmic emphasis switches to the second and fourth beats of the measure. Such new rhythmic phrasing techniques give the typical bop solo a feeling of floating free over the underlying song form, rather than being tied into the song form.

Swing drummers had kept up a steady four-to-the-bar pulse on the bass drum. Bop drummers, led by Kenny Clarke, moved the drumset's time-keeping function to the ride or hi-hat cymbal, reserving the bass drum for accents. Bass drum accents were colloquially termed "dropping bombs." Notable bop drummers such as Max Roach, Shadow Wilson, Philly Joe Jones, Roy Haynes, and Kenny Clarke began to support and respond to soloists, almost like a shifting call and response.

This change increased the importance of the string bass. Now, the bass not only maintained the music's harmonic foundation, but also became responsible for establishing a metronomic rhythmic foundation by playing a "walking" bass line of four quarter notes to the bar. While small swing ensembles commonly functioned without a bassist, the new bop style required a bass in every small ensemble.

By 1950, a second wave of bebop musicians—such as Clifford Brown and Sonny Stitt—began to smooth out the rhythmic eccentricities of early bebop. Instead of using jagged phrasing to create rhythmic interest, as the early boppers had, these musicians constructed their improvised lines out of long strings of eighth notes, and simply accented certain notes in the line to create rhythmic variety.

Musical style[link]

	All The Things You Are By Charlie Parker from In a Soulful Mood
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers. The music itself seemed jarringly different to the ears of the public, who were used to the bouncy, organized, danceable tunes of Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller during the swing era. Instead, bebop appeared to sound racing, nervous, and often fragmented. But to jazz musicians and jazz music lovers, bebop was an exciting and beautiful revolution in the art of jazz.

While swing music tended to feature orchestrated big band arrangements, bebop music highlighted improvisation. Typically, a theme (a "head," often the main melody of a pop or jazz standard of the swing era) would be presented together at the beginning and the end of each piece, with improvisational solos based on the chords of the tune. Thus, the majority of a song in bebop style would be improvisation, the only threads holding the work together being the underlying harmonies played by the rhythm section. Sometimes improvisation included references to the original melody or to other well-known melodic lines ("quotes," or "riffs"). Sometimes they were entirely original, spontaneous melodies from start to finish.

Chord progressions for bebop tunes were often taken directly from popular swing-era songs and reused with a new and more complex melody, forming new compositions. This practice was already well-established in earlier jazz, but came to be central to the bebop style. The style made use of several relatively common chord progressions, such as blues (at base, I-IV-V, but infused with II-V motion) and 'rhythm changes' (I-VI-II-V, the chords to the 1930s pop standard I Got Rhythm). Late bop also moved towards extended forms that represented a departure from pop and show tunes.

Bebop musicians also employed several harmonic devices not typical of previous jazz. Complicated harmonic substitutions for more basic chords became commonplace. These substitutions often emphasized certain dissonant intervals such as the flat ninth, sharp ninth, or the sharp eleventh/tri-tone. This unprecedented harmonic development which took place in bebop, is often traced back to a transcendent moment experienced by Charlie Parker while performing "Cherokee" at Clark Monroe's Uptown House, New York, in early 1942.

I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used, ... and I kept thinking there's bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes. I couldn't play it.... I was working over ‘Cherokee,’ and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. It came alive—Parker.^[8]

Gerhard Kubik postulates that the harmonic development in bebop sprung from the blues, and other African-related tonal sensibilities, rather than twentieth century Western art music, as some have suggested. Kubik states: “Auditory inclinations were the African legacy in [Parker’s] life, reconfirmed by the experience of the blues tonal system, a sound world at odds with the Western diatonic chord categories. Bebop musicians eliminated Western-style functional harmony in their music while retaining the strong central tonality of the blues as a basis for drawing upon various African matrices.” (2005)^[9] Samuel Floyd states that blues were both the bedrock and propelling force of bebop, bringing about three main developments.

• A new harmonic conception, using extended chord structures that led to unprecedented harmonic and melodic variety.
• A developed and even more highly syncopated, linear rhythmic complexity and a melodic angularity in which the blue note of the fifth degree was established as an important melodic-harmonic device.
• The reestablishment of the blues as the music's primary organizing and functional principle.^[10]

While for an outside observer, the harmonic innovations in bebop would appear to be inspired by experiences in Western "serious" music, from Claude Debussy to Arnold Schoenberg, such a scheme cannot be sustained by the evidence from a cognitive approach. Claude Debussy did have some influence on jazz, for example, on Bix Beiderbecke's piano playing. And it is also true that Duke Ellington adopted and reinterpreted some harmonic devices in European contemporary music. West Coast jazz would run into such debts as would several forms of cool jazz. But bebop has hardly any such debts in the sense of direct borrowings. On the contrary, ideologically, bebop was a strong statement of rejection of any kind of eclecticism, propelled by a desire to activate something deeply buried in self. Bebop then revived tonal-harmonic ideas transmitted through the blues and reconstructed and expanded others in a basically non-Western harmonic approach. The ultimate significance of all this is that the experiments in jazz during the 1940s brought back to African-American music several structural principles and techniques rooted in African traditions—Kubik (2005).^[11]

Instrumentation[link]

Several Bebop musicians headlining on 52nd Street, May 1948

The classic bebop combo consisted of saxophone, trumpet, bass, drums, and piano. This was a format used (and popularized) by both Charlie Parker (alto sax) and Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet) in their 1940s groups and recordings, sometimes augmented by an extra saxophonist or guitar (electric or acoustic), occasionally adding other horns (often a trombone), or other strings (usually violin) or dropping an instrument and leaving only a quartet.

Although only one part of a rich jazz tradition, bebop music continues to be played regularly throughout the world. Trends in improvisation since its era have changed from its harmonically-tethered style, but the capacity to improvise over a complex sequence of altered chords is a fundamental part of any jazz education.

Influence[link]

By the mid-1950s musicians (Miles Davis and John Coltrane among others) began to explore directions beyond the standard bebop vocabulary. Simultaneously, other players expanded on the bold steps of bebop: "cool jazz" or "West Coast jazz", modal jazz, as well as free jazz and avant-garde forms of development from the likes of George Russell.

Bebop style also influenced the Beat Generation whose spoken-word style drew on jazz rhythms, and whose poets often employed jazz musicians to accompany them. The bebop influence also shows in rock and roll, which contains solos employing a form similar to bop solos, and "hippies" of the 60s and 70s, like the boppers had a unique, non-conformist style of dress, a vocabulary incoherent to outsiders, and a communion through music. Fans of bebop were not restricted to the United States; the music gained cult status in France and Japan.

More recently, Hip-hop artists (A Tribe Called Quest, Guru) have cited bebop as an influence on their rapping and rhythmic style. Bassist Ron Carter even collaborated with A Tribe Called Quest on 1991's The Low End Theory, and vibraphonist Roy Ayers and trumpeter Donald Byrd were featured on Jazzmatazz, by Guru, in the same year. Bebop samples, especially bass lines, ride cymbal swing clips, and horn and piano riffs are found throughout the hip-hop compendium.

Musicians[link]

Notable musicians identified with bebop:

Music portal

Quotation[link]

- Kenny Clarke ^[12]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Berendt, Joachim E. The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond. Trans. Bredigkeit, H. and B. with Dan Morgenstern. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1975.
• Deveaux, Scott.. The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
• Gidden, Gary. Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker. New York City: Morrow, 1987.
• Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Baillie, Harold B. Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition of Jazz in the 1940s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Rosenthal, David. Hard bop: Jazz and Black Music, 1955-1965. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
• Scaruffi, Piero. [2003] A History of Jazz Music, 1900-2000, chapter on Bebop (2007) ISBN 978-0-9765531-3-7

External links[link]

• Verve History of Jazz page on Bebop
• for a summary of Bebop's influence today
• Bebop Basics for Guitar
• Charlie Parker bebop solo licks
• Free Jazz Piano Lessons with emphasis on bebop

Dizzy Gillespie
Gillespie in concert, Deauville, Normandy, France
Background information
Birth name	John Birks Gillespie
Born	(1917-10-21)October 21, 1917 Cheraw, South Carolina, U.S.
Died	January 6, 1993(1993-01-06) (aged 75) Englewood, New Jersey, U.S.
Genres	Bebop Afro-Cuban jazz
Occupations	Trumpeter, bandleader, singer, composer
Instruments	Trumpet, piano, trombone
Years active	1935–1993
Labels	Pablo Records, Verve Records, Savoy Records, RCA Victor Records, Milan Records, Douglas Records
Associated acts	Charlie Parker Cab Calloway Bud Powell

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie ( /ɡɨˈlɛspi/; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer and, occasionally, singer.^[1]

Allmusic's Scott Yanow wrote, "Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time (some would say the best), Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up copying Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis's emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy's style was successfully recreated . . . Arguably Gillespie is remembered, by both critics and fans alike, as one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time."^[2]

Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge^[3] but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop.

In the 1940s Gillespie, together with Charlie Parker, became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz.^[4] He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Jon Faddis^[5] and Chuck Mangione.^[6]

Biography[link]

Early life and career[link]

Dizzy Gillespie, Tadd Dameron, Hank Jones, Mary Lou Williams and Milt Orent in 1947

Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina, the youngest of nine children of James and Lottie Gillespie. James was a local bandleader, so instruments were made available to Dizzy. He started to play the piano at the age of four. Dizzy's father died when the boy was only ten years old. Dizzy taught himself how to play the trombone as well as the trumpet by the age of twelve. From the night he heard his idol, Roy Eldridge, play on the radio, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician.^[7] He received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in Laurinburg, North Carolina, which he attended for two years before accompanying his family when they moved to Philadelphia.^[8]

Dizzy's first professional job was with the Frank Fairfax Orchestra in 1935, after which he joined the respective orchestras of Edgar Hayes and Teddy Hill, essentially replacing Roy Eldridge as first trumpet in 1937. Teddy Hill’s band was where Dizzy Gillespie made his first recording, King Porter Stomp. At this time, Dizzy met a young woman named Lorraine from the Apollo Theatre, whom he married in 1940. They remained married until his death in 1993. Dizzy stayed with Teddy Hill’s band for a year, then left and free-lanced with numerous other bands.^[5] In 1939, Dizzy joined Cab Calloway's orchestra, with which he recorded one of his earliest compositions, the instrumental Pickin' the Cabbage, in 1940. (Originally released on Paradiddle, a 78rpm backed with a co-composition with Cozy Cole, Calloway's drummer at the time, on the Vocalion label, #5467).

Tadd Dameron, Mary Lou Williams and Dizzy Gillespie in 1947

Dizzy was fired by Calloway in late 1941, after a notorious altercation between the two. The incident is recounted by Dizzy, along with fellow Calloway band members Milt Hinton and Jonah Jones, in Jean Bach's 1997 film, The Spitball Story. Calloway did not approve of Dizzy's mischievous humor, nor of his adventuresome approach to soloing; according to Jones, Calloway referred to it as “Chinese music.” During one performance, Calloway saw a spitball land on the stage, and accused Dizzy of having thrown it. Dizzy denied it, and the ensuing argument led to Calloway striking Dizzy, who then pulled out a switchblade knife and charged Calloway. The two were separated by other band members, during which scuffle Calloway was cut on the hand.

During his time in Calloway's band, Dizzy Gillespie started writing big band music for bandleaders like Woody Herman and Jimmy Dorsey.^[5] He then freelanced with a few bands - most notably Ella Fitzgerald's orchestra, composed of members of the late Chick Webb's band, in 1942.

In 1943, Dizzy 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 Dizzy 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.^[9]

Gillespie said of the Hines band, "People 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".^[10]

Next, Gillespie joined Billy Eckstine's (Earl Hines' long-time collaborator) big band and it was as a member of Eckstine's band that he was reunited with Charlie Parker, a fellow member of Hines's band. In 1945, Dizzy left Eckstine's band because he wanted to play with a small combo. A "small combo" typically comprised no more than five musicians, playing the trumpet, saxophone, piano, bass and drums.

The rise of bebop[link]

Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown, Milt Jackson and Timmie Rosenkrantz in September 1947, New York

Bebop was known as the first modern jazz style. However, it was unpopular in the beginning and was not viewed as positively as swing music was. Bebop was seen as an outgrowth of swing, not a revolution. Swing introduced a diversity of new musicians in the bebop era like Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Pettiford, and Gillespie. Through these musicians, a new vocabulary of musical phrases was created.^[11] With Charlie Parker, Gillespie jammed at famous jazz clubs like Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House. Charlie Parker's system also held methods of adding chords to existing chord progressions and implying additional chords within the improvised lines.^[11]

Gillespie compositions like "Groovin' High", "Woody n' You" and "Salt Peanuts" sounded radically different, harmonically and rhythmically, from the swing music popular at the time. "A Night in Tunisia", written in 1942, while Gillespie was playing with Earl Hines' band, is noted for having a feature that is common in today's music, a non-walking bass line.^{[citation needed]} The song also displays Afro-Cuban rhythms.^[12] One of their first (and greatest) small-group performances together was only issued in 2005: a concert in New York's Town Hall on June 22, 1945. Gillespie taught many of the young musicians on 52nd Street, including Miles Davis and Max Roach, about the new style of jazz. After a lengthy gig at Billy Berg's club in Los Angeles, which left most of the audience ambivalent or hostile towards the new music, the band broke up. Unlike Parker, who was content to play in small groups and be an occasional featured soloist in big bands, Gillespie aimed to lead a big band himself; his first, unsuccessful, attempt to do this was in 1945.^{[citation needed]}

Gillespie with John Lewis, Cecil Payne, Miles Davis, and Ray Brown, between 1946 and 1948

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 finally put together his first successful big band. Dizzy Gillespie and his band tried to popularize bop and make Dizzy Gillespie a symbol of the new music.^[13] He also appeared frequently as a soloist with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic. He also headlined the 1946 independently-produced musical revue film Jivin' in Be-Bop.^[14]

In 1948 Dizzy was involved in a traffic accident when the bicycle he was riding was bumped by an automobile. He was slightly injured, and found that 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.^[15]

In 1956 he organized a band to go on a State Department tour of the Middle East which was extremely well received internationally and earned him the nickname "the Ambassador of Jazz".^[16][17] 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 music[link]

Miriam Makeba and Dizzy Gillespie in concert, Deauville (Normandy, France), July 20, 1991.

In the late 1940s, Gillespie was also 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. Dizzy 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. Dizzy Gilespie also worked with Mario Bauza in New York jazz clubs on 52nd Street and several famous dance clubs such as 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 life-long friends. Dizzy helped develop and mature the Afro-Cuban jazz style.^[18]

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 to its unique rhythms.^[18] Gillespie's most famous contributions to Afro-Cuban music are the compositions "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 the great but ill-fated Cuban conga player, Chano Pozo. In 1977, Gillespie discovered Arturo Sandoval while researching music during a tour of Cuba.

Later years[link]

Gillespie performing in 1955

His biographer Alyn Shipton quotes Don Waterhouse approvingly that Dizzy in the fifties "had begun to mellow into an amalgam of his entire jazz experience to form the basis of new classicism". Another opinion is that, unlike his contemporary Miles Davis, Gillespie essentially remained true to the bebop style for the rest of his career.^{[citation needed]}

In 1960, he was inducted into the Down Beat magazine's Jazz Hall of Fame.

During the 1964 United States presidential campaign the artist, with tongue in cheek, put himself forward as an independent write-in candidate.^[19][20] He promised that if he were elected, the White House would be renamed "The Blues House," and a cabinet composed of Duke Ellington (Secretary of State), Miles Davis (Director of the CIA), Max Roach (Secretary of Defense), Charles Mingus (Secretary of Peace), Ray Charles (Librarian of Congress), Louis Armstrong (Secretary of Agriculture), Mary Lou Williams (Ambassador to the Vatican), Thelonious Monk (Travelling Ambassador) and Malcolm X (Attorney General).^[21][22] He said his running mate would be Phyllis Diller. Campaign buttons had been manufactured years ago by Gillespie's booking agency "for publicity, as a gag",^[23] but now proceeds from them went to benefit the Congress of Racial Equality, Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr.;^[24] in later years they became a collector's item.^[25] In 1971 Gillespie announced he would run again^[26][27] but withdrew before the election for reasons connected to the Bahá'í Faith.^[28]

Gillespie published his autobiography, To Be or Not to Bop, in 1979.

Gillespie was a vocal fixture in many of John Hubley and Faith Hubley's animated films, such as The Hole, The Hat, and Voyage to Next.

In the 1980s, Dizzy Gillespie led the United Nation Orchestra. For three years Flora Purim toured with the Orchestra and she credits Gillespie with evolving her understanding of jazz after being in the field for over two decades.^[29] David Sánchez also toured with the group and was also greatly influenced by Gillespie. Both artists later were nominated for Grammy awards. Gillespie also had a guest appearance on The Cosby Show as well as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.

In 1982, Dizzy Gillespie had a cameo appearance on Stevie Wonder's hit "Do I Do". Gillespie's tone gradually faded in the last years in life, and his performances often focused more on his proteges such as Arturo Sandoval and Jon Faddis; his good-humoured comedic routines became more and more a part of his live act.

Dizzy Gillespie with drummer Bill Stewart at 1984 Stanford Jazz Workshop

In 1988, Gillespie had worked with Canadian flautist and saxophonist Moe Koffman on their prestigious album Oo Pop a Da. He did fast scat vocals on the title track and a couple of the other tracks were played only on trumpet.

In 1989 Gillespie gave 300 performances in 27 countries, appeared in 100 U.S. cities in 31 states and the District of Columbia, headlined three television specials, performed with two symphonies, and recorded four albums.^{[citation needed]} He was also crowned a traditional chief in Nigeria, received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres; France's most prestigious cultural award. He was named Regent Professor by the University of California, and received his fourteenth honorary doctoral degree, this one from the Berklee College of Music. In addition, he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award the same year. The next year, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts ceremonies celebrating the centennial of American jazz, Gillespie received the Kennedy Center Honors Award and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers Duke Ellington Award for 50 years of achievement as a composer, performer, and bandleader.^[30][31] In 1993 he received the Polar Music Prize in Sweden.^[32]

Dizzy Gillespie with the Italian singer Sergio Caputo.

November 26, 1992 at Carnegie Hall in New York, following the Second Bahá'í World Congress was Dizzy's 75th birthday concert and his offering to the celebration of the centenary of the passing of Bahá'u'lláh. Gillespie was to appear at Carnegie Hall for the 33rd time. The line-up included: Jon Faddis, Marvin "Doc" Holladay, James Moody, Paquito D'Rivera, and the Mike Longo Trio with Ben Brown on bass and Mickey Roker on drums. But Gillespie didn't make it because he was in bed suffering from cancer of the pancreas. "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."^[33]

Gillespie also starred in a film called The Winter in Lisbon released in 2004.^[34] He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7057 Hollywood Boulevard in the Hollywood section of the City of Los Angeles. He is honored by the December 31, 2006 - A Jazz New Year's Eve: Freddy Cole & the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.^[35]

Death and legacy[link]

Gillespie in concert at Colonial Tavern, Toronto, 1978

A longtime resident of Englewood, New Jersey,^[36] he died of pancreatic cancer January 6, 1993, aged 75, and was buried in the Flushing Cemetery, Queens, New York. Mike Longo delivered a eulogy at his funeral. He was also with Gillespie on the night he died, along with Jon Faddis and a select few others.

At the time of his death, Dizzy Gillespie was survived by his widow, Lorraine Willis Gillespie; a daughter, jazz singer Jeanie Bryson; and a grandson, Radji Birks Bryson-Barrett. Gillespie had two funerals. One was a Bahá'í funeral at his request, at which his closest friends and colleagues attended. The second was at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York open to the public.^[37]

Dizzy Gillespie, a Bahá'í since 1970, was one of the most famous adherents of the Bahá'í Faith which helped him make sense of his position in a succession of trumpeters as well as turning his life from knife-carrying roughneck to global citizen, and from alcohol to soul force, in the words of author Nat Hentoff, who knew Gillespie for forty years. He spoke about the Baha'i Faith frequently on his trips abroad.^[38][39][40] He is often called the Bahá'í Jazz Ambassador.^[41] He is honored with weekly jazz sessions at the New York Bahá'í Center in the memorial auditorium.^[42]

Style[link]

Statue of Dizzy Gillespie in his hometown Cheraw, South Carolina

Gillespie has been described as the "Sound of Surprise".^[43] The Rough Guide to Jazz describes his musical style:

The whole essence of a Gillespie solo was cliff-hanging suspense: the phrases and the angle of the approach were perpetually varied, breakneck runs were followed by pauses, by huge interval leaps, by long, immensely high notes, by slurs and smears and bluesy phrases; he always took listeners by surprise, always shocking them with a new thought. His lightning reflexes and superb ear meant his instrumental execution matched his thoughts in its power and speed. And he was concerned at all times with swing — even taking the most daring liberties with pulse or beat, his phrases never failed to swing. Gillespies’s magnificent sense of time and emotional intensity of his playing came from childhood roots. His parents were Methodists, but as a boy he used to sneak off every Sunday to the uninhibited Sanctified Church. He said later, ‘The Sanctified Church had deep significance for me musically. I first learned the significance of rhythm there and all about how music can transport people spiritually.'"^[44]

In Dizzy's obituary, Peter Watrous describes his performance style:

In the naturally effervescent Mr. Gillespie, opposites existed. His playing — and he performed constantly until nearly the end of his life — was meteoric, full of virtuosic invention and deadly serious. But with his endlessly funny asides, his huge variety of facial expressions and his natural comic gifts, he was as much a pure entertainer as an accomplished artist."^[45]

Wynton Marsalis summed up Gillespie as a player and teacher:

His playing showcases the importance of intelligence. His rhythmic sophistication was unequaled. He was a master of harmony — and fascinated with studying it. He took in all the music of his youth — from Roy Eldridge to Duke Ellington — and developed a unique style built on complex rhythm and harmony balanced by wit. Dizzy was so quick-minded, he could create an endless flow of ideas at unusually fast tempo. Nobody had ever even considered playing a trumpet that way, let alone had actually tried. All the musicians respected him because, in addition to outplaying everyone, he knew so much and was so generous with that knowledge..."^[46]

"Bent" trumpet[link]

Dizzy Gillespie with his bent trumpet, performing in 1988

Gillespie's trademark trumpet featured a bell which bent upward at a 45-degree angle rather than pointing straight ahead as in the conventional design. According to Gillespie's autobiography, this was originally the result of accidental damage caused by the dancers Stump and Stumpy falling onto it while it was on a trumpet stand on stage at Snookie's in Manhattan on January 6, 1953, during a birthday party for Gillespie's wife Lorraine.^[47] The constriction caused by the bending altered the tone of the instrument, and Gillespie liked the effect. He had the trumpet straightened out the next day, but he could not forget the tone. Gillespie sent a request to Martin Committee to make him a "bent" trumpet from a sketch produced by Lorraine, and from that time forward Gillespie played a trumpet with an upturned bell.^[48]

Gillespie's biographer Alyn Shipton writes that Gillespie probably got the idea for a bent trumpet when he saw a similar instrument in 1937 in Manchester, England, while on tour with the Teddy Hill Orchestra. According to this account (from British journalist Pat Brand) Gillespie was able to try out the horn and the experience led him, much later, to commission a similar horn for himself.

Whatever the origins of Gillespie's upswept trumpet, by June 1954, he was using a professionally manufactured horn of this design, and it was to become a visual trademark for him for the rest of his life.^[49] Such trumpets were made for him by Martin Committee (from 1954), King Musical Instruments (from 1972) and Renold Schilke (from 1982, a gift from Jon Faddis).^[48] Gillespie favored mouthpieces made by Al Cass. In December 1986 Gillespie gave the National Museum of American History his 1972 King "Silver Flair" trumpet with a Cass mouthpiece.^[48][50][51] In April 1995, Gillespie's Martin trumpet was auctioned at Christie's in New York City, along with instruments used by other famous musicians such as Coleman Hawkins, Jimi Hendrix and Elvis Presley.^[52] An image of Gillespie's trumpet was selected for the cover of the auction program. The battered instrument sold to Manhattan builder Jeffery Brown for $63,000, the proceeds benefiting jazz musicians suffering from cancer.^[53][54][55]

Discography[link]

As leader[link]

• 1937-49: The Complete RCA Victor Recordings (RCA Victor)
• 1945-47: Groovin' High (Savoy)
• 1950: Bird and Diz (Clef) - with Charlie Parker
• 1951-52: Dee Gee Days: The Savoy Sessions (Savoy) - includes all tracks on The Champ (Savoy) and School Days (Regent)
• 1952-53: The Great Blue Star Sessions 1952-1953 (EmArcy) - includes all tracks on Dizzy Gillespie and His Operatic Strings Orchestra (Fontana) and some tracks released on Dizzy at Home and Abroad (Atlantic)
• 1953: Dizzy Digs Paris (Giant Steps) - includes all tracks on Dizzy Over Paris (Roost)
• 1953: Jazz at Massey Hall (Debut) - with Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Max Roach
• 1953: Diz and Getz (Norgran) - with Stan Getz
• 1954: Afro (Norgran)
• 1954: Dizzy and Strings (Norgran)
• 1954: Roy and Diz (Clef) - with Roy Eldridge
• 1954-55: Jazz Recital (Norgran) - also released as Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra
• 1955: One Night in Washington (Elektra Musician [1983])
• 1956: Modern Jazz Sextet (Norgran)
• 1956: World Statesman (Norgran)
• 1956: Dizzy in Greece (Verve)
• 1956: For Musicians Only (Verve) - with Stan Getz and Sonny Stitt
• 1957: Birks' Works (Verve)
• 1957: Dizzy Gillespie and Stuff Smith (Verve)
• 1957: Sittin' In (Verve) - with Stan Getz and Coleman Hawkins
• 1957: Dizzy Gillespie at Newport (Verve)
• 1957: Duets (Verve) - with Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt
• 1957: The Greatest Trumpet of Them All (Verve) - with Benny Golson
• 1957: Sonny Side Up (Verve) - with Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt
• 1959: The Ebullient Mr. Gillespie (Verve)
• 1959: Have Trumpet, Will Excite! (Verve)
• 1960: A Portrait of Duke Ellington (Verve)
• 1960: Gillespiana (Verve) - composed and arranged by Lalo Schifrin
• 1961: An Electrifying Evening with the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet (Verve)
• 1961: Carnegie Hall Concert (Verve)
• 1961: Perceptions (Verve) - composed and arranged by J.J. Johnson, conducted by Gunther Schuller
• 1962: Dizzy on the French Riviera (Philips)
• 1962: The New Continent (Limelight) - composed and arranged by Lalo Schifrin
• 1963: New Wave (Philips)
• 1963: Something Old, Something New (Philips)
• 1963: Dizzy Gillespie and the Double Six of Paris (Philips)
• 1964: Dizzy Goes Hollywood (Philips)
• 1964: The Cool World (Philips)
• 1964: Jambo Caribe (Limelight)
• 1965: Gil Fuller & the Monterey Jazz Festival Orchestra featuring Dizzy Gillespie (Pacific Jazz) - with Gil Fuller
• 1966: The Melody Lingers On (Limelight)
• 1967: Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac (Impulse!)
• 1967: Live at the Village Vanguard (Solid State)
• 1968: The Dizzy Gillespie Reunion Big Band (MPS)
• 1969: It's My Way (Solid State) - also released as My Way
• 1969: Cornucopia (Solid State)
• 1970: The Real Thing (Perception) - with James Moody
• 1970: Portrait of Jenny (Perception)
• 1971: Giants (Perception) - with Bobby Hackett and Mary Lou Williams
• 1971: Dizzy Gillespie and the Mitchell Ruff Duo in Concert (Mainstream) - with Willie Ruff and Dwike Mitchell
• 1971: The Giants of Jazz (Atlantic) - with Art Blakey, Al McKibbon, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Stitt and Kai Winding
• 1973: The Giant (America)
• 1973: The Source (America)
• 1974: Dizzy Gillespie's Big 4 (Pablo)
• 1974: The Trumpet Kings Meet Joe Turner (Pablo) - with Joe Turner, Roy Eldridge, Harry "Sweets" Edison and Clark Terry
• 1974: Oscar Peterson and Dizzy Gillespie (Pablo) - with Oscar Peterson
• 1974: Oscar Peterson and The Trumpet Kings - Jousts (Pablo) - with Oscar Peterson
• 1975: The Bop Session (Sonet) - with Sonny Stitt, John Lewis, Hank Jones, Percy Heath and Max Roach
• 1975: Jazz Maturity...Where It's Coming From (Pablo) - with Oscar Peterson and Roy Eldridge
• 1975: Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods (Pablo) - with Machito
• 1975: The Dizzy Gillespie Big 7 (Pablo) - also released as Dizzy
• 1975: The Trumpet Kings at Montreux '75 (Pablo) - with Roy Eldridge, Clark Terry and Oscar Peterson
• 1975: Bahiana (Pablo)
• 1976: Carter, Gillespie Inc. (Pablo) - with Benny Carter
• 1976: Dizzy's Party (Pablo)
• 1977: Free Ride (Pablo) - composed and arranged by Lalo Schifrin
• 1977: The Gifted Ones (Pablo) - with Count Basie
• 1977: Dizzy Gillespie Jam (Pablo) - with John Faddis
• 1980: The Trumpet Summit Meets the Oscar Peterson Big 4 (Pablo) - with Freddie Hubbard, Clark Terry and Oscar Peterson
• 1980: The Alternate Blues (Pablo) - with Freddie Hubbard, Clark Terry and Oscar Peterson
• 1980: Digital at Montreux, 1980 (Pablo)
• 1981: Musician, Composer, Raconteur (Pablo)
• 1981: To a Finland Station (Pablo) - with Arturo Sandoval
• 1984: Closer to the Source (Atlantic)
• 1985: New Faces (GRP)
• 1986: Dizzy Gillespie Meets Phil Woods Quintet - with Phil Woods
• 1988: Endlessly (Impulse!)
• 1988: Oop-Pop-A-Da (Soundwings) - with Moe Koffman
• 1989: Live at the Royal Festival Hall (Enja) - with the United Nation Orchestra
• 1989: Max + Dizzy: Paris 1989 (A&M) - with Max Roach
• 1989: The Paris All Stars Homage to Charlie Parker (A&M) with Jackie McLean, Phil Woods, Stan Getz, Milt Jackson, Hank Jones, Percy Heath and Max Roach
• 1989: The Symphony Sessions (ProJazz)
• 1990: The Winter in Lisbon (Milan) - soundtrack
• 1991: Live! at Blues Alley (with Ron Holloway, Ed Cherry, John Lee, Ignacio Berroa)
• 1992: Bird Songs: The Final Recordings (Telarc)
• 1992: To Bird with Love (Telarc)
• 1992: To Diz with Love (Telarc)

As sideman[link]

With Benny Carter

• New Jazz Sounds (Norgran, 1954)

With CTI All Stars

• Rhythmstick (CTI, 1990)

With Quincy Jones

• Back on the Block (Warner Bros., 1989)

With Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich

• Krupa and Rich (Clef, 1955)

With Mike Longo

• Talk with the Spirits (Pablo, 1976)

With the Manhattan Transfer

• Vocalese (Atlantic, 1985)

With Carmen McRae

• Carmen McRae at the Great American Music Hall (Blue Note, 1976)

With Charles Mingus

• Charles Mingus and Friends in Concert (Columbia, 1972)

With Katie Bell Nubin

• Soul, Soul Searching (Verve, 1960)

With Oscar Peterson

• Oscar Peterson Jam - Montreux '77 (Pablo)

With Mongo Santamaria

• Montreux Heat! (Pablo, 1980)
• Summertime (Pablo, 1980)

With Woody Shaw

• Woody Shaw and Friends at Monterey Jazz Festival 1979 (Concord Jazz, 1979)

With Lillian Terry

• Oo-Shoo-Be-Doo-Be...Oo, Oo...Oo, Oo (Black Saint, 1985)

With Randy Weston

• Spirits of Our Ancestors (Verve, 1992)

Filmography[link]

• 1983 Jazz in America (Embassy)
• 1986 In Redondo Beach/Jazz In America ( Embassy)
• 1991 Dizzy Gillespie: A Night in Tunisia (VIEW)
• 1993 Live in London (Kultur Video)
• 1998 Dizzy Gillespie & Charles Mingus (Vidjazz)
• 1998 Dizzy Gillespie: Ages (Vidjazz)
• 1999 Jazz Casual: Dizzy Gillespie (Rhino)
• 2001 Jivin'in Be-Bop (Jazz Classic Video)
• 2001 Dizzy Gillespie: A Night in Chicago (VIEW)^[56]
• 2001 Live at the Royal Festival Hall 1987 (Pioneer)
• 2002 Live in Montreal (Image)
• 2003 20th Century Jazz Masters
• 2003 Swing Era (with Mel Torme) (Idem)
• 2005 Norman Granz Jazz in Montreux: Presents Dizzy Gillespie Sextet '77 (Eagle Vision USA)
• 2005 Summer Jazz Live at New Jersey 1987 (FS World Jazz / Alpha Centauri Entertainment)
• 2005 A Night in Havana: Dizzy Gillespie in Cuba (New Video Group)
• 2006 Jazz Icons: Live in '58 & '70 (Universal)
• 2008 London Concerts 1965 & 1966 (Impro-Jazz Spain)

Bibliography[link]

• To Be, or Not...to Bop. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.

References[link]

External links[link]

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