Gillespie, Dizzy (1917-1993)

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Gillespie, Dizzy (1917-1993)

On stage, wearing his black beret, goatee, and wire-rimmed glasses, Dizzy Gillespie was the much-imitated archetype of the jazz hipster. When he raised his trademark bent horn and began to play, cheeks puffed out like a giant chipmunk, he created a sound that defined American jazz, and many of his compositions become lasting jazz standards. Gillespie came of age during a golden time in jazz. In the 1930s and 1940s, brilliant musicians like Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and Max Roach were playing together in wildly creative jam sessions that would change the face of American music. Though Gillespie's technical expertise and soaring harmonies on the trumpet made him an integral part of this new movement, perhaps his greatest contribution was his ability to thrive as an African-American musician and public figure in the inhospitable climate of the pre-civil-rights United States. During a career that lasted six decades, Gillespie's upbeat attitude, personal stability, and charismatic showmanship were major factors in the popularization of jazz.

Gillespie was born John Birks Gillespie, the youngest of nine children, in the small town of Cheraw, South Carolina. His working-class parents had little energy to devote to their youngest son's education, but Gillespie's father was a part-time bandleader on his weekends off from his bricklaying job. Young John practiced on the band instruments around the house, learning piano and percussion before finally settling on the trumpet as his favorite. When a Works Progress Administration job convinced him he did not want to do manual labor, Gillespie got a scholarship to attend the all-black Laurinburg Technical Institute in North Carolina. There he began to study music theory and the principles of harmony with which he would experiment throughout his career.

In 1935, Gillespie quit school to move to Philadelphia, where he honed his skills on the horn in jam sessions and joined his first band. By 1937, he had arrived at the new jazz mecca, Harlem. Gillespie began to prove himself to the great New York bandleaders and soon had a job in Cab Calloway's band, wowing audiences and musicians alike with his creative virtuosity and stage antics. Fellow trumpeter Palmer Davis gave him the name Dizzy because of his childlike exuberance and zaniness on stage. "Man, this is a dizzy cat," Davis said, and the name stuck. Adding to Gillespie's eccentric image was his unique trumpet, the horn of which was bent almost straight up. Created by accident when a drunken reveler stepped on it, Gillespie insisted on keeping his "bent horn," claiming he could hear his own sound better.

Though it endeared him to fans, Gillespie's unbridled humor got him in trouble more than once, and he lost his job with Calloway in the mid-1940s when the bandleader tired of being the butt of jokes. It was then that Gillespie joined the famous Harlem jam sessions that produced the wildly radical, urgent beat that came to be known as bebop. Polished and developed by Gillespie and saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker, bebop got its name from Gillespie's chanted intro to the songs: "Dee-ba-pa-'n-bebop…." Soon fans were yelling, "Play some of that bebop music." Bebop gave jazz a deeper and more complex dimension, and Parker and Gillespie's innovations continue to influence the development of jazz. Though jazz is perhaps the most intrinsically American of all music forms, like everything in America, it is a combination of many influences. Early in his career, Gillespie was introduced to Cuban music, with its roots in the rhythms of Africa. Together with Cuban musicians like Charo Pozo, Gillespie was instrumental in developing the genre of Afro-Cuban jazz, which he worked to popularize up until his death. In 1946, Gillespie started his first big band, where he introduced Pozo on the conga drum. This was an historic event because African-style drums had been banned since the days of slavery, and Gillespie's band marked the first time a jazz drummer had used his hands rather than sticks to play his instrument. It was by such subtle, yet joyously radical maneuvers that Gillespie managed to challenge the racist system while keeping his good nature and popularity. The 1989 film A Night in Havana documents Gillespie's connection to Cuban music and culture.

Unlike many other jazz musicians, Gillespie did not fall victim to substance abuse or a self-destructive lifestyle. He married dancer Lorraine Willis in 1940 and remained happily married to her until his death in 1993. In the 1960s, he converted to Baha'i, a religion of Persian origin that focuses on tolerance and love. Gillespie himself was widely loved and respected, even in unexpected places. In 1956, the State Department chose Gillespie as a good will ambassador and sent him to the Middle East and Latin America. Principled as ever, the jazz man refused to speak for the government. Instead, he got to know individuals, played free concerts for children and the poor, and brought back rhythms like the samba and bossa nova to enrich American musical culture.

In 1964, Gillespie surprised the public by running for president. Running on a platform that included abolishing racism and uniting the world's people, Gillespie as always had his tongue in cheek, proposing that the White House be renamed the "Blues House" and suggesting Miles Davis as CIA chief and Malcolm X as attorney general. One of his campaign songs advised, "Your politics oughta be a groovier thing / So get a good President who's willing to swing."

Until his death from cancer in 1993, Gillespie maintained a vigorous schedule, releasing more than five hundred recordings and performing in close to three hundred live concerts a year. His contribution to jazz and to American music in general resides not only in his considerable legacy of classic hits such as "A Night in Tunisia," "Groovin' High," and "Salt Peanuts," but also in his down-to-earth ability to make his music accessible and transcendent at the same time. Drummer Max Roach said of him, "Dizzy was the catalyst, the man who inspired us all."

—Tina Gianoulis