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Dizzy Gillespie Biography

byname of John Birks Gillespie

(1917–1993)

Related Works

Singles
1940 Pickin' the Cabbage
1947 Oop-Pop-A-Da

Salt Peanuts
Swing Low Sweet Cadillac
Umbrella Man
In The Land Of Ooo Blah Dee
Albums
1953 Jazz At Massey Hall
1955 One Night In Washington
1957 Greatest Trumpet Of Them All
1962 The New Continent
1963 Something Old, Something New
1963 Dizzy Gillespie et les Double Six
1968 Reunion Big Band
1974 Dizzy Gillespie's Big 4
1974 The Trumpet King Meets Joe Turner
1975 Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods
1975 Jazz Maturity
1975 Bahiana
1976 Dizzy's Party
1977 Free Ride
1980 Digital At Montreux
1981 Plays And Raps In His Greatest Concert
1982 To A Finland Station
1980s New Faces
1980s Closer To The Source
Compilations
Dizzy Gillespie: The Development Of An American Artist 1940-46
DeeGee (1951-2)
Compositions
1944 Woody'n'You
1945 Salt Peanuts
1947 Cubana Be, Cubana Bop
1947 Manteca
Birks Works
Con Alma
Kush
Tin Tin Deo
Autobiography
1979 To Be Or Not To Bop

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Jazz trumpeter, composer. Born John Birks Gillespie on October 21, 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina. He worked in prominent swing bands (1937–44), including those of Benny Carter and Charlie Barnet. As a bandleader, often with Charlie Parker on saxophone, he developed the music known as bebop, with dissonant harmonies and polyrhythms, a reaction to swing.

Gillespie's own big band (1946–50) was his masterpiece, affording him scope as both soloist and showman. He was immediately recognizable from the unusual shape of his trumpet, with the bell tilted upwards at an angle of 45° - the result of someone accidentally sitting on it in 1953, but to good effect, for when he played it afterwards he discovered that the new shape improved the sound quality, and he had it incorporated into all his trumpets thereafter.

Gillespie's memoirs To Be or Not to Bop (with Al Fraser) appeared in 1979. In 1990, he received the Kennedy Center Honors Award.