Dizzy Gillespie

Before he became a legend, he was a boy from Cheraw who learned piano at four and trumpet at twelve, because his father —a local bandleader— left instruments lying around. At seventeen, after earning a scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute, he already dreamed of sounding like Roy Eldridge. His first professional gig came in 1935 with the Frank Fairfax Orchestra, but it was in Teddy Hill’s band where he recorded his first record, “King Porter Stomp.” There he also met Lorraine Willis, a dancer who initially ignored him but later became his wife and partner for over half a century. His time with Cab Calloway’s orchestra ended in a fight —including an incident with a knife and accusations of throwing a *spitball*— and in 1941 he was fired. Yet in the midst of the chaos, Gillespie was already writing arrangements for Woody Herman and Jimmy Dorsey, and in 1942 he played with Ella Fitzgerald’s orchestra. By 1943, he was in Earl Hines’ band, where composer Gunther Schuller would later recall hearing for the first time the “flat” chords and harmonic substitutions that would later define bop. The curious thing is that this band never recorded: the future was in the air, but no one knew it yet.

When Gillespie died in 1993, jazz had spent decades trying to match his level of organized madness. He left behind not only a dozen Grammy Awards, but a legion of trumpet players —from Miles Davis to Arturo Sandoval— who tried, and failed, to copy his sound. Because Dizzy wasn’t reproducible: he was the kind of musician who, when he blew into his trumpet, didn’t just make music —he reminded you that art could be a brilliant disaster.