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More than just one of the best jazz trumpeters of all time.
The great John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (1917-1993)w as more than just one of the best jazz trumpeters of all time. A superlative musician of dazzling, astonishing technique, Gillespie was one of the key founders of the BeBop movement of the forties, to the point that his goatee, beret and "bop glasses" came to epitomize the new, revolutionary style. One of the masters of the Bop idiom, Gillespie also was the first jazzman to seriously experiment with Afro-Cuban rhythms, the leader of two of the most exciting big bands in history, a composer of note, a masterful showman onstage, and an enthusiastic, quick-witted personality off it. In many respects, Diz - as he was universally known - showed the way to every post-war trumpeter in the jazz field.
Recorded at a time when Diz was fronting his fabled post-war big band featuring jazz greats such as pianist John Lewis, vibraphonist Milt Jackson or bassist Ray Brown, this concert film catches the irrepressible trumpeter in top artistic form. In a format that was typical of the day, dancing acts and singers such as Helen Humes or Kenny "Pancho" Hagood were featured alongside the headlining Gillespie orchestra. More than fifty years have passed but watching Diz and his men enthusiastically attack Bop classics such as "Salt Peanuts", "Shaw 'Nuff" or "Things to Come" still makes for wonderful viewing. All clips have been selected from the 1947 long feature Jivin' in Be-Bop, from which the somewhat dated MC presentations have been excluded.
- Salt Peanuts
- Be Bab A Leeb'a
- Oop Bop Sh'bam
- Shaw 'Nuff
- I Waited for You
- Hubba-Hubba Blues
- Night in Tunisia
- Crazy About a Man
- One Bass Hit
- Boogie in C
- Dynamo A
- Ornithology
- He Beeped He Should Have Bopped
- Grosvenor's Square
- Things to Come
- Ray's Idea
- Bag's Boogie
- Hubba-Hubba Blues
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