This Smithsonian Snapshot celebrates Jazz Appreciation Month with American jazz legend John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie’s trumpet. In the 1940s, Gillespie, renowned for his harmonic complexity and scat ...
Flashback to the early ’40s: A voluptuous Ella Fitzgerald strolls up to the mike and lays down a scat track in three octaves, accompanied by the legendary Dizzy Gillespie on horn. If the power pair ...
In 1946, Dizzy Gillespie figured out how to get an elephant to dance on an overturned shot glass. As one of bebop's creators, Gillespie was at heart a big-band man and yearned to lead one. While he ...
Saturday, June 6, 2026 marks the date when Jazz Royalty comes to Hamilton Stage with Dizzy Gillespie alumni and Grammy ...
His trumpet was bent, his on-stage antics were quirky and unpredictable, but Dizzy Gillespie’s impact on jazz was straight-laced and undeniable. One of the fathers of the bebop movement, Gillespie ...
Rebellious jazz took flight in Harlem at Minton’s Playhouse, but it was nurtured on the tree-lined streets that gave pioneering Black musicians a home. Dizzy Gillespie during a photo session in ...