On October 21, 1917, an iconic figure in the history of jazz music who was instantly recognizable even to millions of non-jazz fans by his puffed-out cheeks and his trademark trumpet, with its horn bent upwards at a 45-degree angle, John Birks Gillespie—better known as Dizzy—was born on this day in 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina. In the late 1930s, at the height of the Swing era, John Gillespie worked his way through a succession of increasingly prestigious big bands, earning a reputation as a talented performer and as a free spirit worthy of the nickname, Dizzy. By 1939, at the age of 22, he was playing for Cab Calloway, one of the most successful bandleaders of the time. Amazingly, Gillespie was mainly self taught. During their late-night jam sessions in the early 1940s at New York clubs like Mintons Playhouse in Harlem, Gillespie, Parker and Monk, among several others, established an entirely new sound in jazz: bebop. Because of a recording ban instigated by union musicians during the bulk of World War II, the evolution of bebop was not documented in commercial recordings. In the postwar era, however, the revolutionary new style took the jazz world by storm and established Gillespies international reputation. In addition to acting as one of bebops founding fathers, Dizzy Gillespie also pioneered the fusion of Afro-Cuban rhythms with jazz music in the 1940s, helping to create another jazz genre of enormous popularity and importance.
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 15:50:59 +0000
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