Dizzy Gillespie Essay Example

born in 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina and passed away in 1993 in Englewood, New Jersey. He extensively studied harmony, theory, and played various instruments. In 1935, he started working with Frank Fairfax in Philadelphia. Two years later, Gillespie joined the Teddy Hill band, replacing Roy Eldridge. Throughout his career, he also collaborated with Mercer Ellington, Cab Calloway, Benny Carter, Charlie Barnet, among others. In 1939, Parker and Gillespie crossed paths for the first time. At that time, Gillespie was already an established senior musician who had a few years of experience and demonstrated greater theoretical and performance skills.

Parker would rapidly close the distance. Fate made a wise decision when it partnered Gillespie with Parker, as Gillespie was arguably the only jazz trumpeter who possessed both a sophisticated grasp of harmonic theory and unparalleled technical skill on his instrument. He was the first jazz trumpet player capable of playing fast melodies in the bebop style. The synchronized riff and extensive solos by Shaw show that Dizzy Gillespie, in 1945, was an immensely talented individual with almost limitless technical abilities.

Furthermore, Gillespie's compositions, alongside those of Parker and other young musicians, were becoming the new standards for bebop style. A fundamental showcase of the bebop musician's talent was observed in Gillespie's Groovin' High as he took the chordal structure from a renowned popular song and created a brand-new jazz theme for bebop by abandoning its melody. However, it is important to mention that during this time, both Parker and Gillespie did not receive widespread recognition for their achievements among jazz musicians and critics.

Johnny Hodges, the lead altoist of the Duke Ellington

orchestra, was recognized as the most outstanding saxophonist of the year for the Esquire All-American Jazz Band from 1945 to 1947. He shared this honor with Cootie Williams, who played trumpet in both Ellington's and Louis Armstrong's bands. These awards were given by musicians and critics. This period saw a resurgence of Dixieland music and flourishing big bands, while bebop musicians maintained their distinctiveness from the traditional musical establishment.

The jazz performers who were considered outcasts had distinct qualities that set them apart from society. These qualities encompassed language, attire, living environment, and conduct. While other musicians opted for tuxedos or dark-blue suits, hip musicians embraced goatees, berets, wing-collar shirts, and drape-shape suits. Jazz performers were already isolated but bopsters went even further by establishing their own distinct culture. A respected jazz critic elucidated that the unique language of jazz engenders a sense of community among the musicians, something they frequently seek.

Barry Ulanov (1957, p. 99) describes jazz as more than just a language - it is a code that grants access to exclusive circles within the genre. It establishes one as an elite member and allows them to deny entry to others. Bebop musicians created their own language, which closely resembled that spoken by other jazz musicians. However, it had enough specific details to act as a password, instantly distinguishing friends from enemies. Whenever outsiders caught on and started using reserved words, the language would evolve and change.

Dizzy Gillespie was a trumpeter who played for several well-known swing era bands. He started his career at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom with Teddy Hill and His Orchestra. After that, he joined Cab

Calloway, Benny Carter, Charlie Barnet, Les Hite, Earl Hines, Coleman Hawkins, and Duke Ellington. Gillespie became famous for his unpredictable yet exceptional solo performances. He also showcased his talent in ensemble playing and had an impressive skill for arranging music. Over time, he incorporated vocal elements into his solos that were uncommon in jazz. This included using chromatically augmented and diminished chords as well as expanding triads to ninth, eleventh, and even thirteenth chords.

While in New York, Gillespie frequently visited a jazz club on West 118th Street in Harlem managed by Henry Minton. The club had a house band led by Teddy Hill and included talented musicians such as Roy Eldridge on trumpet, Dickie Wells on trombone, Chu Berry on saxophone, Kenny Clarke on drums, and Thelonius Monk on piano. Charlie "Bird" Parker, a promising saxophone player from Kansas City, was also a regular at the club. In 1945, recordings capturing Gillespie and Parker's performances in this innovative style were produced.

The recordings made by the Dizzy Gillespie All Star Quintet in the spring of 1945 encapsulate the essence of bebop, or bop. These sessions feature a track called "Shaw 'Nuff" which consists of five 32-bar choruses. The chord changes from George Gershwin's "I've Got Rhythm" are used throughout. In this track, Gillespie and Parker collaborate on the first and fifth choruses, while Parker takes a solo in the second chorus, Gillespie in the third, and pianist Al Haig in the fourth. Despite the rapid tempo, all solos are executed with precision and clarity (Nat Hentoff, 1975, 195).

Bebop music often used chords from popular songs as a basis, with new

melodies created to fit these changes. These melodies emphasized intricate passage work and unconventional rhythms. Bebop performances rarely featured traditional melodies, instead showcasing the virtuosic skills and energetic performances of the best players. Many listeners considered bebop to be a series of captivating technical passages without recognizable melodic patterns. The song "Ko-Ko" exemplifies the groundbreaking nature of this new style.

The introductory segment showcases solo performances by Gillespie and Parker, followed by their unified playing. The rhythmic patterns are highly irregular, almost masking the underlying 4/4 meter. The melodic lines lack clear vocal influences. Next, Parker delivers two choruses using the chord changes of Ray Noble's "Cherokee," with accompaniment from bass, drums, and piano. These passages demonstrate unprecedented skill, speed, and creative melodic ideas, never before heard in jazz.

The piece concludes with a half-chorus by drummer Max Roach and a somewhat abbreviated version of the introduction (Guthrie Ramsey, 1994). After a joint trip to California in late 1945, Gillespie and Parker parted ways, marking the end of their collaboration. Gillespie went on to form various large bands and small ensembles, continuing to play music until today and assuming the role of an influential figure in the style he helped create. Parker, on the other hand, pursued a diverse career following this period.

Between 1946 and 1947, he spent several months in a mental hospital in California. However, he continued to make recordings until 1951, even though his physical and mental health deteriorated significantly. Sadly, he passed away in 1955. As a result of his declining health, he only made occasional appearances at Badland, a New York club named after him. Much

like Gillespie, he preferred playing with small groups. Trumpeter Miles Davis frequently joined him during live performances and recording sessions from 1947 to 1951, often achieving the same level of precision that Gillespie and Parker were renowned for.

After parting ways with Gillespie, Parker rarely played at the incredibly fast tempos that characterized the early bebop style. As he matured as a musician, his style became more focused on expression rather than virtuosity. Despite this shift, Parker's ability to perform remained exceptional until the end. However, some of his most unforgettable performances in the later years of his career were at medium or slow tempos. These performances often drew inspiration from vocal patterns found in the 12-bar blues or from beloved Tin Pan Alley songs.

"Relaxin' at Camarillo" (1947) is a bebop blues with a faster tempo compared to the typical blues, whereas "Parker's Mood" (1948) is more of a conventional blues in terms of its tempo, mood, and melody. However, Parker's exceptional touch comes from his unique melodic invention and phrasing. Despite his involvement in pioneering jazz styles, Parker is primarily remembered for his extraordinary improvisation skills and mastery of his instrument. Jazz critics and historians widely recognize him as the greatest solo artist in jazz history and he has been revered by multiple generations of jazz enthusiasts.

Bird's legacy continues to thrive even 30 years after his death (Farah Griffin, 1995, 3). Bebop, originating in Harlem, quickly spread throughout the jazz world. Bud Powell emerged as the leading bebop pianist, successfully adapting the style for the piano by playing melodically and rhythmically complex single-line melodies with his right hand, while

using sparse, jagged, and dissonant chords in the left hand. Tadd Dameron also developed a bebop-influenced piano style and incorporated these new techniques into his own band. Notably, he was highly innovative in arranging music for large ensembles, drawing heavily from bebop.

During the 1940s and early '50s, larger bands began incorporating bebop elements into their music by blending bebop's melodic and metrical concepts with big-band jazz. Dizzy Gillespie's band exemplified this fusion from 1946 to 1950, particularly in their composition "Things To Come" (1946) by Walter Fuller for Gillespie's small ensemble known as "Bebop" in 1945. In the first chorus, five trumpets and five saxophones play together as sections, highlighting the integration. The piece also features solos by Gillespie and others in subsequent choruses, culminating in an almost symphonic ending.

Woody Herman's bands in the late 1940s maintained the big-band jazz tradition by keeping the same instrumentation and including some of the repertoire. In addition, they incorporated talented white bebop players and occasionally incorporated elements of this new style into their performances. The composition "Lemon Drop" (1948) is based on the chord changes from "I Got Rhythm," a popular choice for bebop compositions, and showcases multiple solos in the bebop style. Dizzy Gillespie combines various approaches to creating music in jazz by blending improvised melodic ideas with written arrangements.

By embracing improvisation as the foundation of jazz music, he challenges a commonly accepted belief in the Western music tradition and modernism. Additionally, Gillespie highlights the significance of technology in shaping "modern" cultural forms, specifically referencing the potential role of the tape recorder. Drummer Kenny Clarke supports Gillespie's ideas, asserting that

many musicians viewed these processes as manifestations of modernism.

Additionally, Clarke's dislike of the term "bebop" reveals his strong opinions about how his music was perceived in American culture. He believed that the label tainted his music with a commercial image that did not reflect its artistic value. However, in the context of African American culture in the 1940s, the divisions between modernist artistic expressions, commercial expressions, and those of the general public were not as clear (Thomas Owens, 1992).

During the 1940s, African American music in all its paradoxes, contradictions, tensions, and joys became a powerful medium for expressing various aspects of African American life. This musical expression, known as Afro-modernism, had been developing before that time but reached its highest point in the 1940s. The idea of modernity is linked to industrialization, urbanization, bureaucracy, and secularization.

The idea of modernism encompasses different aspects such as history, society, politics, aesthetics and expression. It has been part of Western culture since the 5th century a.d. until the rise of postmodernism in the late 20th century. The concept of modernity reflects how people have always actively thought about the connection between the past, present and future.

According to Marshall Berman, modernism refers to the efforts made by modern individuals to both adapt to and assert their agency in the modern world. This includes African Americans, who sought to find their place in the contemporary world through musical expressions that reflected their attitudes. Therefore, Afro-modernism questions how African Americans perceived modernity during this specific time period.

Dizzy Gillespie viewed his composition "A Night in Tunisia" as an embodiment of inventive imagination in

contemporary jazz and a means to establish the historical importance of himself and his artistic collaborators within the African Diaspora. Furthermore, the piece explored the idea of cultural interchange between the North and South in Afro-modernist jazz, encompassing both its past and future.

Gillespie thought that the initial bass pattern in the composition connected this sonic experiment to different elements. These elements consisted of an African past, Gillespie's own South Carolinian past, and a future for jazz music influenced by Afro-Cuban traditions. Gillespie welcomed the collaborative process that resulted in the creation of "A Night in Tunisia" as part of a new cultural conversation across the Atlantic. By doing so, he formed a world that required integrating African American experiences of modernity into the wider African Diaspora.

Dizzy Gillespie, in his memoirs, acknowledged only two types of music: "there's only good and bad." (Gillespie, To Be, or Not, 492-93) Right from the start, Gillespie resisted limitations; he embraced the melodies, techniques, and styles of any music that intrigued him without making a fuss. Through his remarkable sounds, Gillespie disregarded conventional ideas of jazz and revolutionized modern American music.

The techniques used in bebop incorporated a highly advanced harmony and fast, fluid phrasing that surpassed other players in jazz history. Some people found the speed alone to be deceptive, not understanding the foundational elements of jazz. They interpreted the rapid cascades of sound as unrestrained and intimidating expressions of violent aggression. However, for many musicians of that time who wanted to break away from the traditional harmonics and meter of dance band jazz, bebop was a freeing experience that immediately and profoundly influenced

their sense of hearing and thinking.

Gillespie's trumpet lines in the stratosphere excited listeners not only because of his impressive range but also because of his shared conceptual approach to jazz, where the harmonic structures of the tune did not impose limits on improvisation. To some untrained ears, bebop's astonishing freshness was seen as a hostile rejection of musical form, meter, and melody.