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Dizzy - Ken Burns Jazz
To download this recording via iTunes, click here: Ken Burns's Jazz: Dizzy Gillespie - Dizzy Gillespie
To buy this recording from Amazon.com, click here: Ken Burns JAZZ Collection: Dizzy Gillespie
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
The Definitive Dizzy Gillespie
Ken Burns Jazz Series
Dizzy Gillespie plays trumpet on all tracks, accompanied by:
01. PICKIN' THE CABBAGE (2:45)
- J. Gillespie -
Cab Calloway and His Orchestra:
Mario Bauza, Lammar Wright, Sr., trumpet;
Tyree Glenn, trombone, vibraphone;
Quentin Jackson, Keg Johnson, trombone;
Jerry Blake, Hilton Jefferson, alto saxophone;
Andrew Brown, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone;
Chu Berry, Walter "Foots" Thomas, tenor saxophone;
Bennie Payne, piano;
Danny Barker, guitar;
Milt Hinton, bass;
Cozy Cole, drums;
Calloway, vocal;
Add Gillespie, arranger
Recorded March 8, 1940
Available on CD: Cab Calloway:
Best of the Big Bands (Columbia/Legacy CK 45336)
02. DISORDER AT THE BORDER (2:55)
- C. Hawkins -
Coleman Hawkins and His Orchestra:
Vic Coulson, Ed Vandever, trumpet;
Leonard Lowry, Leo Parker, alto saxophone;
Ray Abrams, Don Byas, Hawkins, tenor saxophone;
Budd Johnson, baritone saxophone;
Clyde Hart, piano;
Oscar Pettiford, bass;
Max Roach, drums
Recorded February 22,1944
Available on CD: Coleman Hawkins: Rainbow Mist (Delmark CD 459)
03. SALT PEANUTS (2:58)
- J. Gillespie – K. Clarke -
Dizzy Gillespie Sextet:
Trummy Young, trombone;
Don Byas, tenor saxophone;
Clyde Hart, piano;
Oscar Pettiford, bass;
Shelly Manne, drums
Recorded January 9, 1945
04. I CAN'T GET STARTED (3:04)
- V. Duke – I. Gershwin -
Dizzy Gillespie Sextet:
Trummy Young, trombone;
Don Byas, tenor saxophone;
Clyde Hart, piano;
Oscar Pettiford, bass;
Shelly Manne, drums
Add Byas, arranger
Recorded January 9, 1945
05. A NIGHT IN TUNISIA (3:10)
- J. Gillespie - F. Paparelli -
Boyd Raeburn and His Orchestra:
Tommy Allison, Stan Fishelson, Benny Harris, trumpet;
Walter Robertson, trumpet, trombone;
Jack Carmen, Ollie Wilson, Trummy Young, trombone;
Johnny Bothwell, Hal McKusick, alto saxophone;
Al Cohn, Joe Megro, tenor saxophone;
Serge Chaloff, baritone saxophone;
Raeburn, bass saxophone;
Ike Carpenter, piano;
Steve Jordan, guitar;
Oscar Pettiford, bass;
Shelly Manne, drums;
Add Gillespie, arranger
Recorded January 26, 1945
06. DIZZY ATMOSPHERE (2:45)
- J. Gillespie -
07. GROOVIN' HIGH (2:40)
- J. Gillespie -
Dizzy Gillespie Sextet:
Charlie Parker, alto saxophone;
Clyde Hart, piano;
Remo Palmieri, guitar;
Slam Stewart, bass;
Cozy Cole, drums
Recorded February 28, 1945
Available on CD: Shaw 'Nuff (Musicraft/Discovery MVSCD 53)
08. THINGS TO COME (2:45)
- W. Fuller - J. Gillespie -
09. ONE BASS HIT, NO. 2 (2:53)
- O. Pettiford -
Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra:
Dave Burns, Talib Dawud, John Lynch, Elmon Wright, trumpet;
Leon Comegeys, Gordon Thomas, Alton Moore, trombone;
John Brown, Howard Johnson, alto saxophone;
Ray Abrams, Warren Luckey, tenor saxophone;
Pee Wee Moore, baritone saxophone;
John Lewis, piano;
Ray Brown, bass;
Kenny Clarke, drums;
Gil Fuller, arranger
Recorded July 9,1946
Available on CD: Shaw 'Huff (Musicraft/Discovery MVSCD 53)
10. MANTECA (3:06)
- J. Gillespie – W. Fuller – L. Pozo -
Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra:
Benny Bailey, Dave Burns, Elmon Wright, Lammar Wright, Jr., trumpet;
Ted Kelly, Bill Shepherd, trombone;
John Brown, Howard Johnson, alto saxophone;
"Big Nick" Nicholas, Joe Gayles, tenor saxophone;
Cecil Payne, baritone saxophone;
Milt Jackson, vibraphone;
John Lewis, piano;
Al McKibbon, bass;
Kenny Clarke, drurns;
Chano Pozo, conga, vocal;
Gil Fuller, arranger;
Add Gillespie, vocal
Recorded December 30,1947
Available on CD: Greatest Hits (RCA Bluebird 68499-2-RB)
11. BLOOMDIDO (3:25)
- C. Parker -
Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie Quintet:
Parker, alto saxophone;
Thelonious Monk, piano;
Curly Russell, bass;
Buddy Rich, drums
Recorded June 6, 1950
Available on CD: Charlie Parker-Dizzy Gillespie: Bird and Diz (Verve 314 521 436-2)
12. TIN TIN DEO (2:39)
- G. Fuller – L. Pozo -
Dizzy Gillespie Sextet:
John Coltrane, tenor saxophone;
Milt Jackson, vibraphone;
Kenny Burrell, guitar;
Percy Heath, bass;
Kansas Fields, drums;
Calypso Boys (Fred Strong and 2 others), percussion
Recorded March 1,1951
Available on CD: The Dee Gee Years (Savoy 92967)
13. BIRKS' WORKS (4:53)
- D. Giliespie -
Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra:
Talib Daawud, Lee Morgan, E. V. Perry, Carl Warwick, trumpet;
Al Grey, Melba Liston, trombone;
Rod Levitt, bass trombone;
Ernie Henry, Jimmy Powell, alto saxophone;
Benny Golson, Billy Mitchell, tenor saxophone;
Billy Root, baritone saxophone;
Wynton Kelly, piano;
Paul West, bass;
Charli Persip, drums;
Ernie Wilkins, arranger
Recorded April 7, 1957
Available on CD: Birks' Works: The Verve Big Band Sessions (Verve 314 527 900-2)
14. THE ETERNAL TRIANGLE (14:10)
- S. Stitt -
Sonny Rollins, Sonny Stitt, tenor saxophone;
Ray Bryant, piano;
Tornmy Bryant, bass;
Charli Persip, drums
Recorded December 19, 1957
Available on CD: Dizzy Gillespie-Sonny Rollins-Sonny Stitt: Sonny Side Up
(Verve 314 521 426-2)
15. NO MORE BLUES (CHEGA DE SAUDADE) (10:20)
- A.C. Jobim - V. DeMoraes -
Dizzy Gillespie Sextet:
Leo Wright, alto saxophone;
Lalo Schifrin, piano, arranger;
Elek Bacsik, guitar;
Chris White, bass;
Rudy Collins, drums;
Pepito Riestria, percussion; band, percussion
Recorded July 24, 1962
16. SWING LOW, SWEET CADILLAC (7:24)
- J. Gillespie -
James Moody, tenor saxophone, vocal;
Mike Longo, piano;
Frank Schifano, electric bass;
Otis "Candy" Finch, drums;
Add Gillespie, Moody, and band, vocal
Recorded May 25 or 26, 1967
Available on CD: Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac (Impulse IMPD-178)
Some of these tracks were transferred from disc sources. Surface noise is audible.
_____________________________________________________________________
The name Dizzy Gillespie means many different things to different people, Some consider him most important as a virtuoso of the trumpet, some value his stylistic innovations, some find him most compelling as a band leader, while others appreciate the showmanship and humor that were an integral part of his performances.
All these factors helped to enliven and maintain a career that lasted for close to sixty years, and which hardly seemed possible when he started out in the backwoods town of Cheraw, South Carolina, The youngest of nine children whose father was a brickmason (and amateur musician), he was born John Birks Gillespie on October 21,1917 and began his teenage years during the Great Depression, 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, with which he visited Paris and London. His playing had already evolved from a Louis Armstrong-inspired approach and showed a strong Roy Eldridge influence. But two years later, when he joined the prestigious Cab Calloway band, there were hints of the future Gillespie style. In addition, before relations soured and Gillespie was fired (unjustly accused of disrupting a theater engagement by the band), Calloway had recorded a couple of his original compositions. One of them, "Pickin' the Cabbage” was identified in Gillespie's autobiography, To Be or Not to Bop, as the first in a long line of pieces, including the famous "A Night in Tunisia" and "Manteca” that demonstrated his interest in combining jazz with Latin American music.
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, influenced both by modern European composers and by Latin American rhythms, The period with Hines was particularly significant (though unfortunately not documented on record) 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 - a name inspired by the abrupt two-note phrasing heard, for instance, in the melody of "Groovin' High.”
As the leading personality of this seemingly revolutionary sect, Gillespie was sufficiently well known by the winter of 1943-44 to take his own group into one of the clubs on New York's Fifty-second Street, at that period the Mecca of small-band jazz. When Parker returned to New York a year later, the two made many appearances and a series of records together that are still viewed as classics, including "Groovin' High,” "Dizzy Atmosphere,” and an alternative version of "Salt Peanuts.” All these are Gillespie compositions and, alongside the unpredictably long phrases typical of bebop, the main themes of both "Atmosphere" and "Peanuts" also reveal his continuing love of big-band swing. So it wasn't surprising that, in the second half of the 1940s, he led his own large outfit, creating such exciting and timeless pieces as "Manteca" (with the Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo) and the astonishing "Things to Come.”
He featured many promising musicians who went on to carve their own careers, such as pianist John Lewis and vibraphonist Milt Jackson (who became key members of the Modern Jazz Quartet) and saxophonists James Moody and John Coltrane. The economics of the band business, however, dictated that for most of his career from 1950 onwards Gillespie led quintets or sextets, or toured in all-star formats like Jazz at the Philharmonic and the Giants of Jazz. Fortunately, he was also often involved in star-studded groups convened for the sole purpose of a studio session, including the 1950 reunion with Parker and pianist Thelonious Monk (the only time the three recorded together) or the 1957 date with saxophonists Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins.
Twice, however, Gillespie defied economic constraints and assembled new big bands. The first, active from 1956 to 1958, was put together so Gillespie could act as a musical ambassador in the Middle East and South America: Funded by the US State Department, it contained both black and white musicians, to prove how well integrated American society was suddenly becoming. He continued to find bookings back home for this band as long as he could, and to record such splendid tracks as "Birks' Works.” In the last years of life (he died in 1993) he formed a semi-regular big band called the United Nation Orchestra, whose personnel included several of his younger proteges, among them trumpeters Jon Faddis and Arturo Sandoval, pianist Danilo Perez, and saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera. Significantly, these last three and some of the other members had all emigrated to the US from those same Latin American countries whose music was already intriguing Gillespie back in the 1930s.
That the jazz scene gradually caught up with him in the second half of his long career was first proved in the 1960s when, fifteen years after he created "Manteca,” the Brazilian bossa nova became internationally successful. Gillespie welcomed such songs as "Chega de Saudade" by Antonio Carlos Jobim as additions to his repertoire, and also as proof that his influence was becoming worldwide. Similarly, the melodic and rhythmic language of bebop, which he had been instrumental in creating in the early 1940s, was by the 1970s no longer a minority pursuit. Instead it had become universally acknowledged as the classic way to play jazz, and the most artistically demanding form of the music so far.
Brian Priestley
MAY 2000
Brian Priestley, a pianist and arranger, has written books about Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Charles Mingus. He is a co-author of Jazz: The Rough Guide (Penguin, 2000).
_____________________________________________________________________
Compilation Produced by Ben Young
A&R: Steve Berkowitz, Sarah Botstein, Michael Brooks, Ken Burns, Michael Cuscuna, Peter Miller, Seth Rothstein, Lynn Novick, Richard Seidel, and Ben Young
Mastered by Kevin "Queen 039" Reeves at Universal Mastering-East
Discographical information: Didier Deutsch, Carlos Kase, and Ben Young
Liner notes edited by Peter Keepnews
Photo credits: William P. Gottlieb from the Library of Congress Collection: outside tray card, p.6; Herman Leonard: front and back covers of booklet. Inside traycard, p.8
Courtesy credits: "Pickin' the Cabbage:' "Salt Peanuts" courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment Inc.; "Disorder at the Border" courtesy of Delmark Records; "I Can't Get Started" courtesy of GNP Crescendo Records: "A Night in Tunisia", "Dizzy Atmosphere", "Groovin' High", "Things to Come", "One Bass Hit, No. 2" produced under license from London-Sire Records Inc.; "Manteca" courtesy of BMG Entertainment; "Tin Tin Deo" courtesy of Savoy Entertainment Group, Inc. on behalf of Savoy Records, owned by Denon Corporation (USA)
To buy this recording from Amazon.com, click here: Ken Burns JAZZ Collection: Dizzy Gillespie
_____________________________________________________________________________________________The Definitive Dizzy Gillespie
Ken Burns Jazz Series
Dizzy Gillespie plays trumpet on all tracks, accompanied by:
01. PICKIN' THE CABBAGE (2:45)
- J. Gillespie -
Cab Calloway and His Orchestra:
Mario Bauza, Lammar Wright, Sr., trumpet;
Tyree Glenn, trombone, vibraphone;
Quentin Jackson, Keg Johnson, trombone;
Jerry Blake, Hilton Jefferson, alto saxophone;
Andrew Brown, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone;
Chu Berry, Walter "Foots" Thomas, tenor saxophone;
Bennie Payne, piano;
Danny Barker, guitar;
Milt Hinton, bass;
Cozy Cole, drums;
Calloway, vocal;
Add Gillespie, arranger
Recorded March 8, 1940
Available on CD: Cab Calloway:
Best of the Big Bands (Columbia/Legacy CK 45336)
02. DISORDER AT THE BORDER (2:55)
- C. Hawkins -
Coleman Hawkins and His Orchestra:
Vic Coulson, Ed Vandever, trumpet;
Leonard Lowry, Leo Parker, alto saxophone;
Ray Abrams, Don Byas, Hawkins, tenor saxophone;
Budd Johnson, baritone saxophone;
Clyde Hart, piano;
Oscar Pettiford, bass;
Max Roach, drums
Recorded February 22,1944
Available on CD: Coleman Hawkins: Rainbow Mist (Delmark CD 459)
03. SALT PEANUTS (2:58)
- J. Gillespie – K. Clarke -
Dizzy Gillespie Sextet:
Trummy Young, trombone;
Don Byas, tenor saxophone;
Clyde Hart, piano;
Oscar Pettiford, bass;
Shelly Manne, drums
Recorded January 9, 1945
04. I CAN'T GET STARTED (3:04)
- V. Duke – I. Gershwin -
Dizzy Gillespie Sextet:
Trummy Young, trombone;
Don Byas, tenor saxophone;
Clyde Hart, piano;
Oscar Pettiford, bass;
Shelly Manne, drums
Add Byas, arranger
Recorded January 9, 1945
05. A NIGHT IN TUNISIA (3:10)
- J. Gillespie - F. Paparelli -
Boyd Raeburn and His Orchestra:
Tommy Allison, Stan Fishelson, Benny Harris, trumpet;
Walter Robertson, trumpet, trombone;
Jack Carmen, Ollie Wilson, Trummy Young, trombone;
Johnny Bothwell, Hal McKusick, alto saxophone;
Al Cohn, Joe Megro, tenor saxophone;
Serge Chaloff, baritone saxophone;
Raeburn, bass saxophone;
Ike Carpenter, piano;
Steve Jordan, guitar;
Oscar Pettiford, bass;
Shelly Manne, drums;
Add Gillespie, arranger
Recorded January 26, 1945
06. DIZZY ATMOSPHERE (2:45)
- J. Gillespie -
07. GROOVIN' HIGH (2:40)
- J. Gillespie -
Dizzy Gillespie Sextet:
Charlie Parker, alto saxophone;
Clyde Hart, piano;
Remo Palmieri, guitar;
Slam Stewart, bass;
Cozy Cole, drums
Recorded February 28, 1945
Available on CD: Shaw 'Nuff (Musicraft/Discovery MVSCD 53)
08. THINGS TO COME (2:45)
- W. Fuller - J. Gillespie -
09. ONE BASS HIT, NO. 2 (2:53)
- O. Pettiford -
Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra:
Dave Burns, Talib Dawud, John Lynch, Elmon Wright, trumpet;
Leon Comegeys, Gordon Thomas, Alton Moore, trombone;
John Brown, Howard Johnson, alto saxophone;
Ray Abrams, Warren Luckey, tenor saxophone;
Pee Wee Moore, baritone saxophone;
John Lewis, piano;
Ray Brown, bass;
Kenny Clarke, drums;
Gil Fuller, arranger
Recorded July 9,1946
Available on CD: Shaw 'Huff (Musicraft/Discovery MVSCD 53)
10. MANTECA (3:06)
- J. Gillespie – W. Fuller – L. Pozo -
Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra:
Benny Bailey, Dave Burns, Elmon Wright, Lammar Wright, Jr., trumpet;
Ted Kelly, Bill Shepherd, trombone;
John Brown, Howard Johnson, alto saxophone;
"Big Nick" Nicholas, Joe Gayles, tenor saxophone;
Cecil Payne, baritone saxophone;
Milt Jackson, vibraphone;
John Lewis, piano;
Al McKibbon, bass;
Kenny Clarke, drurns;
Chano Pozo, conga, vocal;
Gil Fuller, arranger;
Add Gillespie, vocal
Recorded December 30,1947
Available on CD: Greatest Hits (RCA Bluebird 68499-2-RB)
11. BLOOMDIDO (3:25)
- C. Parker -
Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie Quintet:
Parker, alto saxophone;
Thelonious Monk, piano;
Curly Russell, bass;
Buddy Rich, drums
Recorded June 6, 1950
Available on CD: Charlie Parker-Dizzy Gillespie: Bird and Diz (Verve 314 521 436-2)
12. TIN TIN DEO (2:39)
- G. Fuller – L. Pozo -
Dizzy Gillespie Sextet:
John Coltrane, tenor saxophone;
Milt Jackson, vibraphone;
Kenny Burrell, guitar;
Percy Heath, bass;
Kansas Fields, drums;
Calypso Boys (Fred Strong and 2 others), percussion
Recorded March 1,1951
Available on CD: The Dee Gee Years (Savoy 92967)
13. BIRKS' WORKS (4:53)
- D. Giliespie -
Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra:
Talib Daawud, Lee Morgan, E. V. Perry, Carl Warwick, trumpet;
Al Grey, Melba Liston, trombone;
Rod Levitt, bass trombone;
Ernie Henry, Jimmy Powell, alto saxophone;
Benny Golson, Billy Mitchell, tenor saxophone;
Billy Root, baritone saxophone;
Wynton Kelly, piano;
Paul West, bass;
Charli Persip, drums;
Ernie Wilkins, arranger
Recorded April 7, 1957
Available on CD: Birks' Works: The Verve Big Band Sessions (Verve 314 527 900-2)
14. THE ETERNAL TRIANGLE (14:10)
- S. Stitt -
Sonny Rollins, Sonny Stitt, tenor saxophone;
Ray Bryant, piano;
Tornmy Bryant, bass;
Charli Persip, drums
Recorded December 19, 1957
Available on CD: Dizzy Gillespie-Sonny Rollins-Sonny Stitt: Sonny Side Up
(Verve 314 521 426-2)
15. NO MORE BLUES (CHEGA DE SAUDADE) (10:20)
- A.C. Jobim - V. DeMoraes -
Dizzy Gillespie Sextet:
Leo Wright, alto saxophone;
Lalo Schifrin, piano, arranger;
Elek Bacsik, guitar;
Chris White, bass;
Rudy Collins, drums;
Pepito Riestria, percussion; band, percussion
Recorded July 24, 1962
16. SWING LOW, SWEET CADILLAC (7:24)
- J. Gillespie -
James Moody, tenor saxophone, vocal;
Mike Longo, piano;
Frank Schifano, electric bass;
Otis "Candy" Finch, drums;
Add Gillespie, Moody, and band, vocal
Recorded May 25 or 26, 1967
Available on CD: Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac (Impulse IMPD-178)
Some of these tracks were transferred from disc sources. Surface noise is audible.
_____________________________________________________________________
The name Dizzy Gillespie means many different things to different people, Some consider him most important as a virtuoso of the trumpet, some value his stylistic innovations, some find him most compelling as a band leader, while others appreciate the showmanship and humor that were an integral part of his performances.
All these factors helped to enliven and maintain a career that lasted for close to sixty years, and which hardly seemed possible when he started out in the backwoods town of Cheraw, South Carolina, The youngest of nine children whose father was a brickmason (and amateur musician), he was born John Birks Gillespie on October 21,1917 and began his teenage years during the Great Depression, 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, with which he visited Paris and London. His playing had already evolved from a Louis Armstrong-inspired approach and showed a strong Roy Eldridge influence. But two years later, when he joined the prestigious Cab Calloway band, there were hints of the future Gillespie style. In addition, before relations soured and Gillespie was fired (unjustly accused of disrupting a theater engagement by the band), Calloway had recorded a couple of his original compositions. One of them, "Pickin' the Cabbage” was identified in Gillespie's autobiography, To Be or Not to Bop, as the first in a long line of pieces, including the famous "A Night in Tunisia" and "Manteca” that demonstrated his interest in combining jazz with Latin American music.
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, influenced both by modern European composers and by Latin American rhythms, The period with Hines was particularly significant (though unfortunately not documented on record) 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 - a name inspired by the abrupt two-note phrasing heard, for instance, in the melody of "Groovin' High.”
As the leading personality of this seemingly revolutionary sect, Gillespie was sufficiently well known by the winter of 1943-44 to take his own group into one of the clubs on New York's Fifty-second Street, at that period the Mecca of small-band jazz. When Parker returned to New York a year later, the two made many appearances and a series of records together that are still viewed as classics, including "Groovin' High,” "Dizzy Atmosphere,” and an alternative version of "Salt Peanuts.” All these are Gillespie compositions and, alongside the unpredictably long phrases typical of bebop, the main themes of both "Atmosphere" and "Peanuts" also reveal his continuing love of big-band swing. So it wasn't surprising that, in the second half of the 1940s, he led his own large outfit, creating such exciting and timeless pieces as "Manteca" (with the Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo) and the astonishing "Things to Come.”
He featured many promising musicians who went on to carve their own careers, such as pianist John Lewis and vibraphonist Milt Jackson (who became key members of the Modern Jazz Quartet) and saxophonists James Moody and John Coltrane. The economics of the band business, however, dictated that for most of his career from 1950 onwards Gillespie led quintets or sextets, or toured in all-star formats like Jazz at the Philharmonic and the Giants of Jazz. Fortunately, he was also often involved in star-studded groups convened for the sole purpose of a studio session, including the 1950 reunion with Parker and pianist Thelonious Monk (the only time the three recorded together) or the 1957 date with saxophonists Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins.
Twice, however, Gillespie defied economic constraints and assembled new big bands. The first, active from 1956 to 1958, was put together so Gillespie could act as a musical ambassador in the Middle East and South America: Funded by the US State Department, it contained both black and white musicians, to prove how well integrated American society was suddenly becoming. He continued to find bookings back home for this band as long as he could, and to record such splendid tracks as "Birks' Works.” In the last years of life (he died in 1993) he formed a semi-regular big band called the United Nation Orchestra, whose personnel included several of his younger proteges, among them trumpeters Jon Faddis and Arturo Sandoval, pianist Danilo Perez, and saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera. Significantly, these last three and some of the other members had all emigrated to the US from those same Latin American countries whose music was already intriguing Gillespie back in the 1930s.
That the jazz scene gradually caught up with him in the second half of his long career was first proved in the 1960s when, fifteen years after he created "Manteca,” the Brazilian bossa nova became internationally successful. Gillespie welcomed such songs as "Chega de Saudade" by Antonio Carlos Jobim as additions to his repertoire, and also as proof that his influence was becoming worldwide. Similarly, the melodic and rhythmic language of bebop, which he had been instrumental in creating in the early 1940s, was by the 1970s no longer a minority pursuit. Instead it had become universally acknowledged as the classic way to play jazz, and the most artistically demanding form of the music so far.
Brian Priestley
MAY 2000
Brian Priestley, a pianist and arranger, has written books about Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Charles Mingus. He is a co-author of Jazz: The Rough Guide (Penguin, 2000).
_____________________________________________________________________
Compilation Produced by Ben Young
A&R: Steve Berkowitz, Sarah Botstein, Michael Brooks, Ken Burns, Michael Cuscuna, Peter Miller, Seth Rothstein, Lynn Novick, Richard Seidel, and Ben Young
Mastered by Kevin "Queen 039" Reeves at Universal Mastering-East
Discographical information: Didier Deutsch, Carlos Kase, and Ben Young
Liner notes edited by Peter Keepnews
Photo credits: William P. Gottlieb from the Library of Congress Collection: outside tray card, p.6; Herman Leonard: front and back covers of booklet. Inside traycard, p.8
Courtesy credits: "Pickin' the Cabbage:' "Salt Peanuts" courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment Inc.; "Disorder at the Border" courtesy of Delmark Records; "I Can't Get Started" courtesy of GNP Crescendo Records: "A Night in Tunisia", "Dizzy Atmosphere", "Groovin' High", "Things to Come", "One Bass Hit, No. 2" produced under license from London-Sire Records Inc.; "Manteca" courtesy of BMG Entertainment; "Tin Tin Deo" courtesy of Savoy Entertainment Group, Inc. on behalf of Savoy Records, owned by Denon Corporation (USA)
