Birth of Gillespie Began With Be-Bop

In terms of impact, 1945 was the definitive year in Dizzy Gillespie’s career, which began in 1935 in Philadelphia and ended, at the end of a grueling world tour, with his surgery last March.

In the mid-’40s, a new style that had slowly been evolving came into full flower during the trumpeter’s partnership with alto saxophone giant Charlie Parker. For a while, the musicians influenced each other, bringing out the other’s genius while simultaneously avoiding the cliches of the swing era.

Gillespie, who died Jan. 6, called this music be-bop (and wrote a tune by that name, spelling it without a hyphen).

What were the elements of be-bop? Certainly, at times, it required phenomenal technique, for the tunes were often fast and frantic, with long and convoluted melodies. Be-bop necessitated an ear for melodic and harmonic nuances--these were sometimes totally fresh--and replaced the chunky four-beat essence of the swing music of the 1930s with pulsing rhythmic subtleties.

Those of us who, for the first time, heard Gillespie and Parker play the unbelievably fast melody to “Shaw Nuff” in unison could hardly believe our ears. It was as if we were being introduced to a course in neologisms after having heard only basic English.

The negative reaction, from almost every jazz critic and many of the more conservative musicians, would have cowed a lesser artist, but Gillespie, buoyed by the courage of his convictions, struggled onward and upward.

The solos by Gillespie and Parker on “Shaw Nuff” were marvels of up tempo, spontaneous creativity. But during that time the trumpeter showed, in his version of “All the Things You Are,” a muted lyricism of surpassing beauty.

Both tunes are available on a Musicraft CD, “Shaw Nuff,” that also includes Gillespie’s flair for scat-based comedy (“Oop Bop Sh’Bam”) and an early big band date that produced “Things to Come.” The latter, a wildly complex work as its title suggests, portended the musical wave of the future.

The incorporation of Afro-Cuban, Afro-American and other Latin elements became, after be-bop, Gillespie’s most memorable musical contribution. Mario Bauza, a Cuban trumpeter who had persuaded Cab Calloway to hire Gillespie for his band, later joined Machito’s orchestra and became a key figure in the development of Latin-jazz. Gillespie was intrigued by this fusion (there was a hint of it in his early composition “A Night in Tunisia”).

Before his first Carnegie Hall concert in 1947, Gillespie commissioned George Russell, one of many great composers whose careers the trumpeter would bring to the forefront, to write a two-part suite: “Cubano Be” and “Cubano Bop.” By then, Gillespie had added the Cuban conga master Chano Pozo to his band. Pozo helped indoctrinate the musicians into the art of polyrhythmic playing, the simultaneous employment of more than one basic rhythm that is a key element of Latin-jazz.

The Russell piece is heard in “The Bebop Revolution” on RCA/Bluebird Records, a reissue that also contains Gillespie’s own “Guarachi Guaro” and his classic tune “Manteca,” on which he collaborated with composer-arranger Gil Fuller and Pozo.

Fats Navarro, one of Gillespie’s most promising followers, is also heard on this CD in a small group setting. After Navarro, who died in 1950 at 26, the most admired Gillespie disciple was Clifford Brown, killed in a car accident at 25 and memorialized by Gillespie with his version of “I Remember Clifford,” available on the “Dizzy Gillespie Big Band” reissue on Verve Records. Benny Golson, who composed the tune, was a saxophonist in this band, which made history in the mid-’50s by becoming the first group to be sent overseas under U.S. State Department auspices.

By this time, many of Gillespie’s compositions were becoming a permanent part of the jazz repertoire. On the Mercury Records CD, “Gillespie Compact Jazz,” listeners will find his most eloquent melodic statement, “Con Alma,” along with “Lorraine” (named for his wife), a new version of “Manteca,” and a heavily percussionist update of “A Night in Tunisia.”

His international outlook ever broadening, Gillespie in 1960 hired a young pianist he had heard in Argentina. Lalo Schifrin, a member of the Gillespie quintet for three years, is represented in the “Compact” CD by his own “Long Long Summer” and on “No More Blues,” a Jobim tune that reflected Dizzy’s early interest in the Brazilian bossa nova movement.

Gillespie’s philosophy was well expressed in his statement, heard during a “60 Minutes” tribute: “I’m very serious about my music, but I also don’t see why I shouldn’t have a little fun.” Both sides are well represented in “Dizzy’s Diamonds,” a three-CD Verve records set divided into three segments: Big Band, Small Groups and Guests and Afro-Cuban-Bossa Nova-Calypso.

The comedy of “Ool-Ya-Koo” and “The Umbrella Man,” the satire of “Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac,” the guest shot with Ella Fitzgerald and the Duke Ellington band on “Take the A Train” were as much a part of his ethos as the hot combo groove of his be-bop standard, “Dizzy Atmosphere,” and the relentless intensity of Schifrin’s “Africana.” Recorded everywhere from Los Angeles to Paris to Stockholm, “Dizzy’s Diamonds” mirrors the extent to which he had become, by the late 1950s and early ‘60s, a world statesman of jazz.

Gillespie’s continued efforts to present significant young writers was well reflected in “Gillespie Y Machito,” made in 1975 for Pablo Records. This is a reunion with trumpeter Bauza that employs the brilliant Havana-born Chico O’Farrill as composer and conductor in a 1975 reaffirmation of Dizzy’s concern for the polyphonics and polyrhythms of Cuban music.

By the late ‘70s, the Gillespie influence was all-encompassing. Nobody captured his spirit better than trumpeter Jon Faddis, who was just 22 when he teamed with his mentor for “Gillespie Jam Montreux ‘77,” recorded at the Montreux, Swiss. jazz festival and released on Pablo Live Records. Faddis went on to tour with Gillespie, who, having now passed his creative and technical peak, often deferred to the younger man, who was capable of duplicating classic Gillespie solos, only an octave higher.

The challenge of dealing with a new generation never fazed Gillespie; in “New Faces” on GRP Records, he faces off against Branford Marsalis and Kenny Kirkland in new treatments of such originals as “Birks Works,” “Tin Tin Deo” and “Lorraine,” using the small group setting that had served him well in the historic 1945 sessions.

There was something of value in every Gillespie album, even on those made in the late 1980s, such as “Live at the Festival Hall” on Enja Records. Here the trumpeter played with his “United Nation Orchestra” that included musicians from Brazil, Cuban, Panama, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the United States. There was an epic feel to this ensemble, which he led off and on during his last four years.

Though his most durable compositions were all written before the 1960s, he could always rise to the occasion when commissioned to produce new works. His original tunes for the not-widely-distributed 1990 film, “The Winter in Lisbon,” in which he had a major acting role, were orchestrated by Slide Hampton.

Possibly “The Winter in Lisbon” album, on BMG-Milan Records, may lead to the film’s posthumous release here. It offers a final glimpse of an artist who overcame the contumely and hostility of the early be-bop years to become a Kennedy Center honors winner, a commander of Arts and Letters, France’s most prestigious cultural award, and countless other salutations for what was rightly called a lifetime achievement.