Dizzy Gillespie
(1917-1993)
The afternoon of his memorial it seemed like every musician in New York was assembled inside The Cathedral Church of St John the Divine on 112 Street and Amsterdam. The honorary pallbearers included James Moody, Max Roach, Wynton Marsalis, Milt Hinton, Jackie McLean, Phil Woods, J.J. Johnson, Jimmy Heath, Hank Jones, Ray Brown, Doc Cheatham, Norman Granz, Cab Calloway, Mario Bauza, Milt Jackson, Jimmy Owens, Paquito de Rivera Clark Terry and George Shering.
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John Birks Dizzy Gillespie. The trickster/hipster afro-american theoretician of bop who appeared out of Cheraw, South Carolina to change the course of jazz. He defined world music before there was world music. His meeting with Charlie Parker in 1945 in Kansas City and their subsequent collaborations with Mario Bauza and Chano Pozo would lead to the development of the Afro-Cuban sound.
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His biography co-written with Al Fraser: To Be or Not to Bop (Plenum 1979) is a thorough and informative document of a man who lived joyously through his music and his times.