Dizzy Gillespie

"Dizzy Gillespie’s old friend, bassist Milt Hinton, used to say, ‘Chords are our love, but rhythm is our business,’ and that might have been Diz’s lifelong motto as well. Whether the group was large or small, the groove headlong swing or sizzling Afro-Cuban, a Gillespie band lifted you out of your seat with its sheer musical energy. And the crest of that wave was the leader’s fiery trumpet, which had revolutionised jazz brass in the ’40s. The young Gillespie could play higher and faster for longer than anybody before him, and his passionate, coruscating solos define the brave new world of bebop. Just as radical were his harmonies and rhythms – fusillades of notes tumbling over bar-lines, defying conventional chord structures. And this was not mere ‘subversion’, but a well-conceived creative strategy. Despite his madcap reputation, Dizzy Gillespie was one of the prime theoreticians of bop and a tireless teacher, demonstrating, encouraging, inspiring."