Happy Birthday Dizzy Gillespie

What a pleasure it was in 1983 as a college student attending San Francisco State University to see Jazz Legend -- original Bee-Bopper -- trumpeteer Dizzy Gillespie perform. For those un-familiar with Jazz music, there are only a handful of artists that count as International Jazz Legends. Some of the Jazz legends: Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie. These stars are household names mainly because of their many television and  film appearances over the decades, to go along with radio airplay and album success. The one and only Dizzy Gillespie can be added to that list of Jazz giants.

Dizzy Gillespie was credited with creating Bee-Bop, and in fact in both Europe and the United States, Dizzy popularized the persona of Bee-Bop 'Cool Cats' prevalent in the late 1950's/60's. Dizzy's signature "hair under the lip" style -- a goatee with facial hair cut off the chin -- became a fad along with dark lensed sunshades.

I lucked up and saw Dizzy Gillespie perform for free. Dizzy was nice enough to perform in a cameo role at the Stone Jazz Nightclub in San Francisco during the San Francisco Jazz Festival in 1983. The annual city-sponsored Jazz Festival in San Francisco was unique is that the festival was not a one or two day event at one huge venue. The San Francisco Jazz Festival is a week-long celebration of Jazz with concerts throughout the city at dozens of concert venues.

While working as Underwriting Director in college radio at SFSU's radio station KSFS in 1983, one of my few clients was the Stone Jazz Nightclub. It was the McCoy Tyner Quintet that played at the Stone during the SF Jazz Festival week. I was there for all four dates and attended both nightly shows. The McCoy Tyner Quintet then featured Saxophonist Gary Bartz, violonist John Blake (played many albums with Grover Washington Jr.), McCoy Tyner on grand piano, and Shivvone Wright was the female vocalist who sang Phyllis Hyman's three songs from the then-popular McCoy Tyner album titled "Love Surrounds Us Everywhere".  One of Phyllis' songs from McCoy Tyner's album is directly below.



To cut to the chase, Dizzy Gillespie came in the club on one of Tyner's weekend SF Jazz Festival dates. Dizzy was performing down the street at another venue, but made time to visit McCoy and even brought his signature trumpet with the horn facing upward. During Tyner's performance, McCoy Tyner called Dizzy to the stage. Dizzy performed admirably on one of Tyner's tunes and they played one of Dizzy's songs to the delight of the stunned crowd at the Stone Jazz NightClub.

Dizzy finished and hurriedly walked out of the club to make his performance at a club down the street. I happened to follow him to get an autograph and I even asked Dizzy if he could perform at SFSU. He was willing, but unfortunately the folks at the Universitiy's venue did not make it happen that year.

Decades later -- a few years ago -- I ran into Charles Fishman, when I hosted a weekend Smooth Jazz radio program in our nation's capital. Fish attempted successfully to do here in DC, with a city-sponsored Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, what continues to be  a successful Jazz Festival in San Francisco. I wanted to host a few concerts and have the station sponsor the events. We did just that.

Small world though, as it turned out that Charles Fishman happened to be Dizzy Gillespie's manager for years, including in 1983 when I saw Dizzy at the Stone in the City.

Happy Birthday to the late Jazz Legend Dizzy Gillespie.