John Birks Gillespie (1917 - 1993)

Biography

Occupation(s) Musician & Composer

Instruments Trumpet, piano and vocals

Years active 1935–1993

Labels: Pablo, RCA Victor, Savoy, and Verve

The youngest of nine children of James and Lottie Gillespie, Dizzy Gillespie ^[1] was born in Cheraw, South Carolina. ^[2] His father was a local bandleader^[3],

Dizzy.

so instruments were made available to the children. Gillespie started to play the piano at the age of four.^[4] Gillespie's father died when he was only ten years old. He 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, on the radio, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician.^[5]

He won a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina which he attended for two years before accompanying his family when they moved to Philadelphia.^[6]

Gillespie's first professional job was with the Frank Fairfax Orchestra in 1935.^[7]

Dizzy Gillespie.

Gillespie did not serve in World War II. At his Selective Service interview, he told the local board, "in this stage of my life here in the United States whose foot has been in my ass?" He was classified 4-F. ^[8] In 1943, he joined the Earl Hines band. Composer Gunther Schuller said,

Gillespie said of the Hines band, "[p]eople 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".^[9]

Gillespie joined the big band of Hines' long-time collaborator Billy Eckstine, and it was as a member of Eckstine's band that he was reunited with Charlie Parker, a fellow member. In 1945, Gillespie 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.

Dizzy Gillespie

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 the instrument 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.^[10] 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 to make him a "bent" trumpet from a sketch produced by Lorraine, and from that time forward played a trumpet with an upturned bell.^[11] 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.

Whatever the origin of Gillespie's trumpet, by June 1954 he was using a professionally manufactured horn of this design, and it was to become a trademark for the rest of his life.^[12] Such trumpets were made for him by Martin (from 1954), King Musical Instruments (from 1972) and Renold Schilke (from 1982, a gift from Jon Faddis).^[13] 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.^[14][15] In April 1995, Gillespie's Martin trumpet was auctioned at Christie's in New York City with instruments used by Coleman Hawkins, Jimi Hendrix, and Elvis Presley.^[16] An image of Gillespie's trumpet was selected for the cover of the auction program. The battered instrument was sold to Manhattan builder Jeffery Brown for $63,000, the proceeds benefiting jazz musicians with cancer.^[17][18][19]

Dizzy Gillespie was a member of the Bahá’í Faith, which he joined in 1968 soon after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr..^[20] He later wrote that: "...[Bahá’í] went along with what I had always believed. I believed in the oneness of mankind. I believed we all come from the same source, that no race of people is inherently superior to any other."^[21]

Sources

1. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzy_Gillespie
2. ↑ Appiah, Anthony; Gates, Henry Louis (2005). Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. Oxford University Press. pp. 796–. ISBN 978-0-19-517055-9. Retrieved 9 July 2018. (https://books.google.com/books?id=TMZMAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA796#v=onepage&q&f=false)
3. ↑ Finkelman, Paul; Wintz, Cary D. (2009). Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century Five-volume Set. Oxford University Press, US. pp. 1–. ISBN 978-0-19-516779-5. Retrieved 9 July 2018.
4. ↑ "Dizzy Gillespie is born - Oct 21, 1917". HISTORY.com. Retrieved 2017-03-13.
5. ↑ Reich, Howard (28 March 1993). "Dizzy's Legacy: James Moody Carries on the Tradition of His Mentor". Chicago Tribune.
6. ↑ "Priestly, Brian. "The Definitive Dizzy Gillespie". Vervemusicgroup.com. Retrieved October 20, 2010.
7. ↑ Vail, Ken (2003). Dizzy Gillespie: the Bebop Years, 1937–1952. Scarecrow Press. pp. 6, 12. ISBN 0810848805.
8. ↑ Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960, 74
9. ↑ *Dance, Stanley (1983). The World of Earl Hines. [Includes a 120-page interview with Hines]. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80182-5: p. 260
10. ↑ Maggin, Donald L. (2006). Dizzy: The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie. HarperCollins. p. 253. ISBN 0-06-055921-7.
11. ↑ Hamlin, Jesse (27 July 1997). "A Distinctly American Bent / Dizzy Gillespie's misshapen horn highlights Smithsonian's traveling show". SFGate. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
12. ↑ Shipton, Alyn. Groovin' High: The Life of Dizzy Gillespie New York: Oxford University Press. (pp. 258–259)
13. ↑ Hamlin, Jesse (27 July 1997). "A Distinctly American Bent / Dizzy Gillespie's misshapen horn highlights Smithsonian's traveling show". SFGate. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
14. ↑ Hamlin, Jesse (27 July 1997). "A Distinctly American Bent / Dizzy Gillespie's misshapen horn highlights Smithsonian's traveling show". SFGate. Retrieved 10 July 2018.
15. ↑ "Dizzy Gillespie's B-flat trumpet along with one of his Al Cass mouthpieces". National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved September 8, 2008.
16. ↑ Fisher, Don (April 23, 1995). "Christie's To Auction Prized Martin Guitar Collection – L.V. Man's Love To Be Instrument of His Retirement". The Morning Call. Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. p. 2.
17. ↑ "Bent, Battered Trumpet Sells For Dizzy $63,000". Deseret News. April 26, 1995.
18. ↑ "Object of Desire: Bell Epoque". New York Magazine. 28 (17): 111. April 24, 1995. ISSN 0028-7369.
19. ↑ Macnie, Jim (May 13, 1995). "Jazz Blue Notes". Billboard. 107 (19): 60. ISSN 0006-2510.
20. ↑ "John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie 1917-1993)". In The Baha'i World In Memoriam 1992-1997. p. 36-40. Haifa : Baha'i World Centre, 2010. https://file.bahai.media/c/cd/In_Memoriam_1992-1997.pdf
21. ↑ Baha'i World Service. "Dizzy Gillespie Encounters the Baha’i Faith". October 25, 2017. BahaiTeachings.org https://bahaiteachings.org/dizzy-gillespie-encounters-bahai-faith/