Birthday Cheers to the One and Only Dizzy!

Bebop architect, Afro-Cuban jazz pioneer, comedian, virtuoso trumpeter and tongue-in-cheek presidential candidate, John Birks Gillespie was truly a larger-than-life figure

I arrived in New York City from hometown Milwaukee early enough (September 1980) to catch many jazz legends from a previous generation who were still very active on the scene. I was fortunate to have seen Philly Joe Jones a number of times with his group Dameronia (with Walter Davis Jr. on piano, Charles Davis on saxophone, Larry Ridley on bass) at the Jazz Forum, a fifth floor loft on Broadway and Bleecker Street. I feel blessed to have caught Jaki Byard at the Angry Squire, Betty Carter with Strings (conducted by David Amran) at the Bottom Line, piano greats Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris, Jimmy Rowles, Cedar Walton, Ray Bryant and Mulgrew Miller at Bradley’s. I saw Alberta Hunter at The Cookery and Billy Taylor at The Knickerbocker. I saw Stan Getz, Phil Woods, Art Pepper, Johnny Griffin, Joe Pass and Les Paul on separate occasions at Fat Tuesday’s.

I was equally fortunate to have witnessed Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers on several occasions (first with teenaged Branford and Wynton Marsalis at Mikell’s and Seventh Avenue South, later with young charges Brian Lynch on trumpet and Javon Jackson on tenor sax at Sweet Basil). I also caught great guitarists like Tal Farrow and Jim Hall at the Blue Note and Village West, Jimmy Raney and Atilla Zoller playing duets at Bradley’s, Chuck Wayne at Gregory’s on the Upper East Side near the 59th Street Bridge (later renamed the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge).

I saw Jon Hendricks scatting and swinging at Lush Life, Doc Cheatham and Slam Stewart dealing at Sweet Basil, Big Joe Turner hollerin’ the blues at Tramps, Billy Higgins cutting up the beat at Ziino. I saw Mongo Santamaria and Candido at the Village Gate, Sonny Fortune at Greene Street, Dewey Redman at Jazzmania Society, John Bunch at Eddie Condon’s, Al Haig at One Fifth, Roland Hanna at the Star and Garter, Sammy Price at The West End, Bobby Short at the Cafe Carlyle and Woody Allen at Michael’s Pub. And I just happened to be at Sweet Basil seeing four-string guitarist Tiny Grimes (from Art Tatum and Cats & The Fiddle fame) on the night that John Lennon got shot uptown at the Dakota, on Nov. 8, 1980.

All gone now.

And I was extremely privileged to have conducted a one-on-one interview with the larger-than-life John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie for a two-part Down Beat story that appeared in consecutive issues (December 1985 and January 1986) of the magazine. To commemorate the birthday (Oct. 21, 1917) of the virtuoso trumpeter, bebop architect, Afro-Cuban jazz pioneer, comedian and presidential candidate (he ran a tongue-in-cheek campaign in 1964 against incumbent Democrat Lyndon Johnson and Republican challenger Barry Goldwater using the campaign slogan: Your politics ought to be a groovier thing/So get a good president who’s willing to swing), here’s that two-part interview from nearly 40 years ago.

Part I — Down Beat/December 1985 issue

I’m waiting in the Manhattan office of the Sutton Artists Corporation, the agency that has managed the affairs of Dizzy Gillespie for the past 20-plus years. I’m supposed to interview Diz there, but he’s late. Ninety minutes fly by and still no Diz. For anyone else, I would’ve given up and gone home long ago. But I sit patiently and wait. You don’t walk out on a living legend, no matter how late he might be.

To kill time, agent Bennett Morgan regales us with tales of the man he has come to know intimately over the past couple of decades. He explains that Dizzy has one weakness: he can’t say no to people. Like the time he met some guy on a plane who, as it turned out, happened to be the conductor of a symphony orchestra in Connecticut. They exchanged pleasantries and before too long the conductor had invited Dizzy to perform with his symphony orchestra as a featured soloist. It would be the big event of the year in their subscription series, the conductor reckoned. Diz, always an agreeable sort, consented. For all intents and purposes, a deal had been cut right there on the plane.

Little did Dizzy know that Bennett Morgan had already scheduled him to be at a college gig somewhere in Washington state on the very same night he was supposed to be in Connecticut with the symphony orchestra. Slight conflict there. But Diz didn’t back out of either commitment. He played the gig in Connecticut with the symphony orchestra, then flew in a private Lear jet some 3,000 miles across country to make the other gig in the Northwest. The expense of the jet rental alone was enough to eat away any profits from those two lucrative gigs. But what are you gonna do? The guy can’t say no. He likes making folks happy. That’s Dizzy.

He’s never turned his back on any audience. On the contrary, he’s always gone out of the way to put on a good show along with the great music he makes. Muggin’, dancin’, clownin’, whether that meant conducting the band with his butt, scatting on novelty numbers like “Oo-Sho-Be-Do-Be,” pulling pranks on the bandstand, flaunting flamboyant garb — it’s all Diz, man.

Detractors often claimed that the general public was attracted more by all of Dizzy’s accoutrements than by his musicianship. In response, Diz would complain that many poker-faced jazzers lacked showmanship: “If you got enough money to play for yourself, you can play anything you want to. But if you want to make a living at music, you’ve got to sell it,” he once said. Louis Armstrong knew that. Louis “Mr. Personality” Jordan lived by that credo. So does Diz. Sure, he hams it up on the bandstand, but no one can deny that the man blows some of the most brilliant trumpet on the planet. Still.

In Nat Hentoffs book, Jazz Is (Avon Books), Miles Davis is quoted as saying: “I think all the musicians in jazz should get together on one certain day and get down on their knees to thank Duke [Ellington].” I’m proposing that same honor be accorded to Dizzy Gillespie, a bebop pioneer who survived to tell the tale (as he did so colorfully in the Doubleday book, To Be Or Not To Bop, written with Al Frasier). Here’s to Diz. Long may he puff those bullfrog cheeks and spread the bebop gospel.

Finally, after a couple of hours of waiting around Sutton Artists Corp., a familiar silhouette appears on the opaque window of the office door. It swings open and in swaggers a cool dude with salt-and-pepper hair, sporting a black beret. There’s a long, pungent-smelling cigar hanging from the legendary chops.

“Cuban?” I inquire.

“Strictly,” he replies with a jaunty toss of his head, a sly grin creeping up on the famous kisser.

In that brief exchange, I flash on an evocative photo of Diz, taken some 40 years ago by William Gottlieb. It’s a shot of a slick young cat on the make, resplendent in black beret and ascot tie. He’s hanging out on the street corner, one arm wrapped around the foxy young chick he’s eyeing, the other free hand scratching his goatee. His head is tilted back as he gives this girl the once-over with a lascivious glance. He seems to be saying, “My, my, my!” Portrait of the artist as a young stud.

The man I see before me now is a bit slouchier about the pouch, perhaps a bit baggier around the eyes, but no less ebullient than that slim young bopper in the picture. At 68, John Birks Gillespie is still Dizzy after all these years.

He apologizes for being late. “I got in last Monday from Israel. Then I was in D.C. playing at Blues Alley, and while I was there I got a letter at home saying I was supposed to meet the governor of New Jersey. I didn’t know anything about it until I got back home today. I called up and said, ‘Well, man, I can’t do it. I got this interview with Down Beat.’ But I did it anyway. See, it’s for this thing we’re doing — Dizzy Gillespie Day in New Jersey. Got a proclamation and everything. Big event. So I felt obligated to go there.” The man just can’t say no.

He excuses himself and moves to the phone on Bennett Morgan's desk. He checks in with his wife, Lorraine, the girl he met at the Howard Theatre in Washington D.C. back in 1940 and has stayed with ever since. She’s waiting for Dizzy back home in Camden, New Jersey. He’s running late with her too. Lorraine Gillespie has been the rock in Dizzy’s life from the very beginning of their relationship. She’s been through it all — the infamous spitball incident of ’41, which led to Dizzy’s dismissal from Cab Calloway’s orchestra; the historic engagement at The Three Duels with Charle Parker in ’45; the death of Chano Pozo, Cuban percussionist, key collaborator and inspiration to Diz, in ’48 (the victim of a knife fight); and the death of Bird, the other half of his heartbeat, in ’55. She’s rode it all out with Dizzy, the ups and the downs.

Dizzy’s wife figures prominently in his career in one other respect. It was at Lorraine’s birthday celebration that Dizzy discovered the secret of the bent horn, his trademark since 1954. Here’s how that story goes: Diz and Lorraine were partying at a club on West 44th Street. Dizzy’s trumpet was up on the bandstand, leaning against a wall. He had played a bit but then split for awhile. The comedy/dance team of Stump & Stumpy was entertaining the celebrants when suddenly Big Stump tripped over the horn and accidentally fell on it, giving it that distinctive bend. When Dizzy returned to the scene, he found his horn had been trampled. “I was angry at first, of course. It was cracked, which closed up the air current. But when I played it — boy, that sound! I liked it. And I tried to take a patent out on it, but some other dude already had a patent out on it 150 years earlier.”

Dizzy gets off the phone with Lorraine, promising to be home right after the interview. He begins dialing the corner deli to have some food delivered up to the office. “The governor was a very charming man, but he didn’t have any food there, you dig? Not a damn thing. So I’m hungry, man! Haven't had a thing all day.” He orders a fruit salad and coffee. “I’m a diabetic,” he explains as he hangs up the phone and (finally) positions himself for the interview.

John Birks Gillespie was born on October 21, 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina, the last of nine children. Ten years later he was sent on scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute, an industrial school for blacks in North Carolina, where he switched from trombone to trumpet and was introduced to music theory. He moved to Philadelphia in 1935 and soon joined a band led by Frank Fairfax. Dizzy emulated Roy Eldridge at the time, and two years later would end up taking over Roy’s spot in Teddy Hill's band. He cut his first sessions with the band in March of that year— “King Porter Stomp” and “Blue Rhythm Fantasy”—echoing the style of his idol.

In September 1939, he participated in an all-star small band session for Victor organized by Lionel Hampton. His muted opening chorus on “Hot Mallets” suggests the high-speed eighth-note attack that would later become his calling card. Dizzy joined the Cab Calloway Orchestra in November of that year and remained until September of 1941, when Cab fired him after a backstage altercation at the State Theatre in Hartford, Connecticut. As Down Beat reported it back in 1941:

Cab Calloway still has a sore rear end. But his wounds are healing and it isn’t so difficult for him to sit down now. How the Hi-De-Ho man suffered the injuries was revealed last week when Shad Collins moved into Cab’s trumpet section to take the place of youthful Dizzy Gillespie, who is now with Ella Fitzgerald. Gillespie knifed Calloway, his boss, in a Hartford theater several weeks ago following an argument in which Calloway dressed him down for allegedly shooting spitballs at Calloway on stage. After the show was over Calloway in no uncertain terms told Dizzy to ‘lay off the kid stuff.’ Calloway insists he did not strike the trumpet player. But Gillespie found a knife and started to carve the Calloway posterior. So severe were the slashes that Cabell took 10 stitches from a doctor. Gillespie, of course, was fired and later joined Ella’s band, taking Taft Jordan’s place.

That item was under the heading: Cab Calloway Carved By Own Trumpet Man!

A humorous cartoon accompanied the story.

So just who did throw those spitballs?

Both trumpeter Jonah Janes and bassist Milt Hinton later took credit for that prank. Dizzy pleads innocence to this day, though he doesn’t deny slashing his former boss. “Accusations were placed and I vehemently denied the charges,” he says, flashing a mischievous grin. “See, I was the youngest guy in the band and he thought he’d make an example of me. He wanted to make something out of it, so he grabbed me. But I was dangerous in those days, man. You know, I had heard about Cab Calloway punching musicians in the mouth and all that, so I was always ready in Cab’s band.” The two didn’t speak for a few years following that incident, but Cab would years later acknowledge that he had indeed made a mistake.

Dizzy’s smiling now, reminiscing about the fight and the eventual truce. “Then one time in Nice, France, a couple of years ago,” he laughs, “Cab was drinking at the bar, huggin’ me, kissin’ me. Then all of a sudden he says, ‘Wait a minute! Let me show you something!’ And he unloosens his pants and lets ‘em fall down a bit in the back, see. He takes my hand and sticks it down in his pants, in the back. He matches my hand to a spot on his ass. There was an indentation. And he says, ‘See that? That’s what you done to my ass!’ I was so embarrassed, man. All these musicians were hanging out, you know? And here I am with my hand down Cab Calloway’s pants!”

Following his tenure with Cab’s band, Dizzy had brief stints with bands led by Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Carter, and Charlie Barnet. He joined Les Hite’s band in February of 1942 and recorded what was perhaps the first example of bebop on record, a half-chorus on “Jersey Bounce” for the short-lived 78 rpm label Hit Records. It was an extension of his experiments on the “Hot Mallets” session with Lionel Hampton and a natural outgrowth of his early ‘40s jam sessions in Harlem at Minton’s Playhouse at West 118th Street and Clarke Monroe’s Uptown House a little farther north in Manhattan at 198 W. 134th Street, both of which served as incubators for a new vocabulary that was emerging during that period.

Dizzy had already begun experimenting with different harmonies and ways of phrasing during his tenure in Cab Calloway’s band. Back then, between sets, he would get together with bassist Milt Hinton and guitarist Danny Barker and work out ideas, some of which crept into the gig, causing Cab to tell the young trumpeter, “I don’t want you playing that Chinese music in my band!”

Teddy Hill, Dizzy’s former employer, ran Minton’s and organized the jam sessions there. He got some of the best improvisors of the day to stop in regularly. Word got around and Minton’s quickly became the gathering place for the likes of Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, Don Byas, Charlie Christian, Dizzy and a remarkably facile young alto player from Kansas City named Charlie Parker [Gillespie and Bird had met earlier in KC at a jam session on 19th Street at the Ol’ Kentuck Bar B Q]. It was at places like Monroe’s and Minton’s that Parker and Gillespie began forging their chemistry together. They had been experimenting separately with advanced harmonies while Kenny Clarke had been working on his novel approach to drumming since 1937. The stage was set for a musical revolution.

In an interview with jazz critic Nat Hentoff (DB, June 18, 1952), Dizzy explains the method he employed for weeding out mediocre musicians at those Minton sessions: “Cats would show up who couldn’t blow at all but would take six or seven choruses to prove it. So on afternoons before a session, Monk and I began to work out some complex variations on chords, and we’d use them at night to scare away the no-talent guys. After awhile, we got interested in what we were doing as music. And as we began to explore more and more, our music evolved!”

The rest is bebop history.

Part II — Down Beat, January 1986 issue

In 1943, Dizzy joined the Earl Hines band, an aggregation that included such budding stars as Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan, and Charlie Parker. Sadly, due to the Petrillo record ban, no commercial recordings exist of this stellar outfit. Diz left Hines’ band in September of that year to play with Coleman Hawkins. In November of ’43, Gillespie formed a group with bassist Oscar Pettiford, pianist George Wallington, tenor saxophonist Budd Johnson and drummer Max Roach for an extended gig at the Onyx Club. That core outfit, with pianist Clyde Hart replacing Wallington, would later back Hawkins (fronting a 10-piece band that also included Ed Vanderveer and Vic Coulsen on trumpets, Leonard Lowry and Leo Parker on alto saxophones, Don Byas and Ray Abrams on tenor saxes and Budd Johnson on baritone sax) on a Feb. 16, 1944 session for Apollo Records that produced three recordings — Dizzy’s “Woody’n You,” the Budd Johnson-Clyde Hart tune “Bu-Dee-Daht” and a Hawkins swing blues number entitled “Disorder At The Border.”

By April of 1944, Diz hooked up with Billy Eckstine’s big band, which also featured Bird on alto sax. They recorded for Deluxe Records. In January 1945, Gillespie was with Boyd Raeburn’s band when they recorded Dizzy’s “A Night In Tunisia.” The trumpeter’s sizzling runs on that tune simply startled everyone on the session.

1945 was an incredibly productive year for Dizzy and a landmark year for the new music. 52nd Street was humming, with Thelonious Monk performing at the Club Downbeat two nights a week and Diz and Bird riding high at the Three Deuces with Al Haig on piano, Curley Russell on bass and Stan Levey on drums. Their recordings for Guild in February and May of ’45 document some of the sounds they were making at the time. (Sid Catlett would replace Levey on revolutionary recordings of “Shaw ‘Nuff,” “Salt Peanuts” and “Hot House”).

On a historic Savoy date led by Parker in November of ’45, Diz played trumpet on “Ko Ko,” but on the other cuts (“Now’s The Time,” “Billie’s Bounce,” “Thriving From A Riff”) he played piano under the name of Hen Gates. “Yeah, I showed piano players how to comp back then,” says Diz, recalling those sessions. "Comping was different before — that whole stride thing. But that style sometimes would get in the way. You play too much, you just get in the way. So I’d leave space. Basie’s the perfect example of that, man. Whenever there was a need for him to be in there, he was there. That’s how I played piano behind Bird.”

In late 1945, Diz formed a big band that toured the South as part of a unit called The Hepsations of 1945, featuring dancers like the Nicholas Brothers and comedians Patterson & Jackson. “Billy Eckstine gave me all the music I wanted for that big band,” he recalls. “Charts, stands, the whole works. He said, ‘I don't wanna see no big band! Take it away!’ So I did.” (Dizzy’s big band stayed together, off and on, for about four years before he eventually folded up shop. But in 1956 he would put together another 16-piece outfit with Quincy Jones for a tour of the Middle East and Latin America, sponsored by the U.S. State Department. Although he would in later years appear at jazz festivals in Europe and New York with his celebrated Dream Band,  Dizzy today takes a dim view of the big band route. “Now I’m like Billy Eckstine was back then. When you talk about big band, my ears go deaf. I cut off my hearing aid, man. Too hard to keep it together on the road. It’s alright for Lionel Hampton ‘cause he’s a millionaire. But I ain’t gonna do it no more.”).

In December of 1945, Diz and Bird reunited on the West Coast, performing at Billy Berg’s in Hollywood. It turned out to be a less than stellar gig. Not only were the audiences downright hostile to this aggressive new music, but the gig was further marred by a backstage altercation with funnyman Slim Gaillard. Opening for the Diz & Bird band (with Milt Jackson, Ray Brown, Al Haig and Stan Levey) on that engagement, Slim won over the audiences with his swinging upbeat jive music and hilarious lyrics and between songs patter. By contrast, Bird and Diz must’ve scared those Billy Berg audiences half to death with their flurries of 16th notes executed at breakneck tempos. As if the conditions weren’t bad enough, tempers flared backstage. “We had a terrible, terrible fight,” says Diz, half-smiling. “Slim attacked me. And his wife was gonna cut me with a knife. She was standing back and I saw this knife coming — a big, long butcher knife. I picked up one of them bar stools that was laying around backstage. I was gonna crown her with it, man. I mean, she was gonna cut me!”

Dizzy also had his share of turmoil with Charlie Parker during that ill-fated West Coast stay. Sometimes Bird failed to show up for gigs and would be replaced at the last minute by Lucky Thompson. During this period on the West Coast, Dizzy recorded (sans Bird) some sides for Dial, the label established by Ross Russell. By January of 1946, he was back in New York, appearing at Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts. Bird would remain on the West Coast. The two partners were separated until September of 1947, when they appeared together at Carnegie Hall in a special reunion concert. Granz recorded the two together for his Mercury label in June of 1950, with Thelonious Monk, Buddy Rich and Curley Russell. The famed reunion concert at Toronto’s Massey Hall in 1953 teamed the dynamic duo with Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach. But two years later, Bird would check out.

Their partnership was uncanny. Their rapport was spellbinding. So much in sync were these soulmates that one would often finish a phrase that the other had begun. Diz called Bird “the other half of my heartbeat!”

In a touching passage of a story that appeared in the April 20, 1978 issue of Down Beat, Dizzy related his feelings about his doomed partner: “He was my main man. More than anybody else, he established the identity of the music. The last time I saw him, I was playing a concert at Carnegie Hall. Bird walked on stage and gave me a yellow rose. He’d probably spent his last quarter to buy it. He kissed me on each cheek and said, ‘Goodbye.’ The next thing I knew, he was dead.”

When I mention to Diz that Richard Pryor has been toying with the notion of directing and starring in a movie based on the life of Charlie Parker, he seems thrilled. “Yeah, I think that’s good casting," he beams. “And I know who could play me — Bill Cosby! We're very good friends and he watches me very closely. He knows all of my mannerisms. Yeah, Pryor and Cosby. That’d be good!”

So many scenes, so many landmarks along the way: the premiere of “Cubana Be, Cubana Bop” with Chano Polo at the famed 1947 Carnegie Hall concert; the formation of his own DeeGee label in 1951 and ensuing collaborations with comical scat singer Joe Carroll; his 1964 campaign for the presidency of the United States (on a platform of total withdrawal from Vietnam, establishment of a national lottery, and the abolishment of segregation); his 1977 visit to Cuba, where he posed for pictures with Fidel Castro; the 1978 White House performance, in which he sang “Salt Peanuts” with President and former peanut farmer Jimmy Carter; his 1982 appearance on Sesame Street, along with various appearances on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show:

That brings us to the present. On his latest album for GRP Records, New Faces, Dizzy is featured with a stellar cast of young bloods. Tenor sax star Branford Marsalis reprises the role of John Coltrane on “Tin Tin Deo” and “Birk’s Works,” originally recorded by Diz in 1951 on his DeeGee label. Versatile pianist Kenny Kirkland adds color to the breezy “Tenor Song” and paints a haunting mood for Diz to play over on “Ballad.” Bassist Lonnie Plaxico plays forcefully throughout the album’s seven cuts, while drummer Robert Ameen drives the group with crisp, powerful drumming. Lincoln Goines adds electric bass on the soulful “Every Morning,” harkening back to Dizzy’s early experiments with that instrument. And percussionist Steve Thornton adds fire and spice on the lively samba, “Fiesta Mojo,” and the Afro-Cuban workout, “Tin Tin Deo.”

It’s a potent recording, hailed as Dizzy’s best in years. And he seems not only pleased with the album but thrilled by the prospect that his legacy will live on through these new keepers of the flame. “These guys are very knowledgeable about mu-sic and about my contributions to the music,” he says. “I had played with Wynton and Branford before. See, they know my music through their father, Ellis. So they know all about my contributions. And they’ll not only carry on the tradition, they’ll be taking it further and further as they go along. Yesiree! They’re alright, man.”

Within the next few weeks, I would see Dizzy perform here and there around New York, fronting a five-piece unit that includes electric bassist Jon Lee, pianist Walter Davis Jr. and reedman Sayyd Abdul Al-Khabyrr and his drummer son Nasyr. On a boat cruising up the Hudson River as part of the ’85 Kool Jazz Festival he cuts the break on “Night In Tunisia” with power and precision, and the crowd goes wild. At the Village Gate, putting in a guest appearance with the Machito Orchestra as part of the club’s Monday night “Salsa Meets Jazz” series, he lays down some heavy conga playing before picking up his upswept horn and billowing the famous cheeks. During a week at The Blue Note, he engages the intimate crowd with chitchat and charm before dazzling them with muted 16th notes. And at Grant’s Tomb up near Harlem, he performs a free Jazzmobile concert for a teeming crowd gathered on the steps of this historic monument, breaking up the audience up with a version of “Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac.” The man is definitely putting it out there, taking it to the people.

“Jazz is growing,” he maintains. “It’s going on and on. It’s not gonna stop. It’s like God’s plan for mankind. They can slow it down with unbelievers, but His work is gonna be done. With jazz, it’s the same thing.”

Then he adds, “I hope the day will come during my lifetime that the United States government puts more effort into the promulgation of our native American art form, which is jazz. I’d love to see the government get behind it like the European countries get behind classical music. That would give us a new incentive, a new reason for playing jazz. But whether the government helps it or not, it’s gonna go on. I have faith in that.”