John Birks Gillespie
(October 21, 1917 - January 6, 1993)
Born Cheraw, South Carolina
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was the man who first made Bebop a vogue. Born in Cheraw, South Carolina, in 1917, he began studying the trombone when he was fourteen, and trumpet a year later.
For a number of years he was a free-lance trumpet player with various jazz outfits until 1939, when he joined Cab Calloway orchestra and became one of its shining lights.
With the Earl Hines band, which he joined in 1943, he began developing some of those musical characteristics that were soon to identify Bebop.
Gillespie's devotees affected his eccentric dress -- beret, heavy "spectacals," beard.
Dizzy formed a new jazz group that was heard at the Three Deuces on 52nd St. Some of Dizzy's disciples and colleagues who preached his gospel of Bebop were, Thelonious Monk, Earl "Bud" Powell, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.
The brass family of instruments include the trumpet, trombone, tuba, cornet, flügelhorn, French horn, saxhorn, and sousaphone. While they are usually made of brass today, in the past they were made of wood, horn, and glass.
