Jazz Articles about Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie via Harvey Limburger: Good Spirits: Harvey Limburger Plays New Music from Dizzy Gillespie

by Eric J. Iannelli
April 1, 2005

The posthumous album is nothing new to jazz--indeed, half of Coltrane's colossal discography was released after his death--but this album is, to my recollection, the first to be recorded from beyond the grave. It features eight new tracks, all ostensibly written by Dizzy Gillespie and, in a weirdly metaphysical sense, performed by him too, using previously unknown New York-based trumpeter Harvey Limburger as a medium. The unique choice of preposition in the album title makes clear the difficulty of presenting ...

Dizzy Gillespie: Salt Peanuts

by Terrell Kent Holmes
March 31, 2005

Ted Williams could go one for four. Maria Callas wasn't always in perfect voice. Words sometimes failed Hemingway. Even legends have normal days. Salt Peanuts is a recently discovered recording of a Dizzy Gillespie concert date in Montréal in 1981 and although his playing was still strong, it frankly isn't one of his better moments. Gillespie fires off a few of his trademark lightning riffs on “On Green Dolphin Street, with flutist Sayyd Abdul Al-Khabyyr kicking in a ...

Dizzy Gillespie: The Winter in Lisbon

by Ollie Bivens
December 30, 2004

Recorded in '90, three years before Dizzy Gillespie's death at age 76, this reissued album was a soundtrack for a movie of the same name. Never released in the US, the film shows the jazz legend in the role of a famous jazz musician. The compositions are by Gillespie and executive producer Charles Fishman, along with a then-unknown young Panamanian pianist, Danilo Perez. Arrangements are by Slide Hampton.

As compositions some of the tunes stand on their own, independent of ...

Dizzy Gillespie: Salt Peanuts

by Trevor MacLaren
November 30, 2004

Salt Peanuts is a Dizzy Gillespie show recorded in July 1981 at The Rising Sun Celebrity Jazz Club in Montreal. Though Dizzy's work from the '70s on is patchy at best, this show is a real killer. It seemed Gillespie and his crew were really into a groove while hanging out in Canada's jazz Mecca.

The disc opens on a weak note with “On Green Dolphin Street." The solos have their moments, but nowhere within the track is the melody. ...

Dizzy Gillespie: Salt Peanuts

by Jim Santella
October 13, 2004

Dizzy Gillespie, the remarkable trumpeter who helped pioneer bebop in the 1940s with his magnetic presence, was 64 when these recordings were captured at The Rising Sun Celebrity Jazz Club in Montreal. While not his best work, these intimate July 1981 sessions manage to capture the lovable artist at work, passing the mainstream jazz torch on to like-minded compatriots. He continued to do so for another eleven years, setting the example and working actively with the jazz mainstream until his ...

Dizzy Gillespie: Matrix

by Charlie B. Dahan
October 25, 2002

The name Dizzy Gillespie conjures up the image of the hip trailblazer in the world of bop jazz and later the synthesis between jazz and the sounds and rhythms of Cuba and Africa. However, this period encapsulated his early years--but what happened to him after the 1960’s? The release of Matrix hopes to revive this era in Gillespie’s career. After the '60s had passed, Gillespie, much like his Bop era contemporaries, was not a man to stand ...

Dizzy Gillespie: Odyssey 1945-1952

by Jim Santella
September 6, 2002

Savoy’s 3-CD collection covers a lot of territory. The personnel listing is a who’s who of bebop pioneers. Dizzy Gillespie would play it fierce and brazen one moment, then muted and sweet the next. What you got was the real deal. Trading phrases with Slam Stewart, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, James Moody or Slim Gaillard, the trumpeter would move things right along. He accomplished much and brought along many rising stars. The years 1945 to 1952 were not without controversy. ...