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ABOUT
Dizzy Gillespie was born in South Carolina in 1917 as the Second World War came to a close. He was a bright student and completed his schooling via a scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute, thirty miles away, where he received his first serious tuition on the trumpet. During his eighteenth year he moved with his widowed mother to Philadelphia, and he soon became involved in the busy local music scene, as well as earning the nickname Dizzy through his wild and irreverent antics.
Encouraged by his fellow trumpeter Charlie Shavers to come to New York in 1937, he landed a job with the Teddy Hill band. During the next few years, while holding down jobs with numerous bands, including those of Benny Carter and Earl Hines, Gillespie perfected a totally new approach to trumpet improvisation. He acquired an enviable facility, especially in the previously forbidding upper register, and constantly used uneven phrase lengths and unusual note choices. The period with Hines was particularly significant because it represented the first continuous period in which Gillespie played every day alongside his contemporary Charlie Parker, whose innovations on alto saxophone paralleled Gillespie’s own developments. Together they were responsible for bringing to fruition the style known as bebop. |
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