about as uplifting as gravity

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(October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993)
Dizzy was born John Birks Gillespie in Cheraw, South Carolina in 1917 to a family of ten.  His father, a local bandleader, encouraged Gillespie's musical progress and made instruments available to the child early on.  At four years old, John was already playing the piano.  He then taught himself to play the trombone but switched to the trumpet before the age of twelve.  He received a music scholarship to the small agricultural school, the Laurinburg Institute, Laurinburg, North Carolina.  

            He left the school in 1935 to pursue a career as a musician, following his idol, Roy "Little Jazz" Eldridge, the great early bop trumpeter who pioneered black musicianship in a white band.  He joined the Frankie Fairfax Band in Philadelphia and soon earned the nickname "Dizzy" for his comical stage antics.  In 1937, he took Roy Eldridge's old position in the Teddy Hill Band and made his first recording in Hill's rendition of "King Porter Stomp."  After a short stay with the band including a tour through Europe, Dizzy freelanced for a year and found his way to Cab Calloway in 1939.  It was with this premier band that Dizzy began to develop a style more his own and less like Roy Eldridge, as you can hear in "Pickin' the Cabbage."  Calloway, annoyed by Dizzy's risky style,  was not particularly fond of Dizzy and called his solos "Chinese music."  Despite this, Dizzy stayed with the band until 1941, when there was an on-stage occurrence that, although resolved, prompted Dizzy to leave the band.

            During a concert, a band member shot spitballs at Cab's back when he faced the audience.  Cab accused Dizzy of being the culprit and upon Dizzy's vehement denial, the two began to fight.  Dizzy grabbed a knife and actually cut Cab.  Although the two made up after Jonah Jones and Milt Hinton came forward as the perpetrators, Dizzy was fired.   The real legacy of his time in the band would only be realized decades later for, having roomed the whole time with Mario Bauza, Dizzy had begun to take an interest in Afro-Cuban music...  

            Passing from band to band for the next few years, among which were those led by Ella Fitgerald, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Charlie Barnet, Fess Williams, Les Hite, Claude Hopkins, Lucky Millinder and even the great Duke Ellington for a short while, Dizzy met and began a long friendship with Charlie Parker.

            During this transient period, Dizzy began appearing at Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House where he could try out his new ideas and styles.  Often joining him was Thelonious Monk, another fine native of the Carolinas, and the two began to experiment with the complex chord changes that would soon characterize the Bebop Era...not to mention familiarizing jazz with the black horn-rimmed glasses, beret and goatee that would be just as much a part of the era.

            Late in 1942, Dizzy joined the Earl Hines's band with Charlie Parker joined on tenor and the band was the first to explore the bebop style.  From this band was born "Night In Tunisia," Dizzy's famous piece that ushered in the Bebop Era.

Unlike his contemporary Miles Davis, Gillespie essentially remained true to the bebop style for the rest of his career.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzy_Gillespie
In 1960, he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.

In 1964 the artist put himself forward as a presidential candidate. He promised that if he were elected, the White House would be renamed "The Blues House," and a cabinet composed of Duke Elington (Secretary of State), Miles Davis (Director of the CIA), Max Roach (Secretary of Defense), Charles Mingus (Secretary of Peace), Ray Charles (Librarian of Congress), Louis Armstrong (Secretary of Agriculture), Mary Lou Williams (Ambassador to the Vatican), Thelonius Monk (Travelling Ambassador) and Malcolm X (Attorney General).[5][6] He also said his running mate would be Phyllis Diller.

Gillespie published his autobiography, To Be or Not to Bop in 1979.

In the 1980s, Dizzy Gillespie led the United Nation Orchestra. For three years Flora Purim toured with the Orchestra and she credits Gillespie with evolving her understanding of jazz after being in the field for over two decades.[7] David Sánchez also toured with the group and was also greatly affected by Gillespie. Both artists later were nominated for Grammy awards. Gillespie also had a guest appearance on The Cosby Show as well as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.

In 1982, Dizzy Gillespie had a cameo on Stevie Wonder's hit Do I Do. Gillespie's tone gradually faded in the last years in life, and his performances often focused more on his proteges such as Arturo Sandoval and Jon Faddis; his good-humoured comedic routines became more and more a part of his live act.
Dizzy Gillespie with drummer Bill Stewart at 1984 Stanford Jazz Workshop

In 1988, Gillespie had worked with Canadian flautist and saxophonist Moe Koffman on their prestigious album Oop Pop a Da. He did fast scat vocals on the title track and a couple of the other tracks were played only on trumpet.

In 1989 Gillespie gave 300 performances in 27 countries, appeared in 100 U.S. cities in 31 states and the District of Columbia, headlined three television specials, performed with two symphonies, and recorded four albums. He was also crowned a traditional chief in Nigeria, received the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres -- France's most prestigious cultural award -- was named regent professor by the University of California, and received his fourteenth honorary doctoral degree, this one from the Berklee College of Music. In addition, he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award the same year. The next year, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts ceremonies celebrating the centennial of American jazz, Gillespie received the Kennedy Center Honors Award and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers Duke Ellington Award for 50 years of achievement as a composer, performer, and bandleader.[8][9]
Dizzy Gillespie with the Italian singer Sergio Caputo.

November 26, 1992 at Carnegie Hall in New York, following the Second Bahá'í World Congress was Dizzy's 75th birthday concert and his offering to the celebration of the centenary of the passing of Bahá'u'lláh. Gillespie was to appear at Carnegie Hall for the 33rd time. The line-up included: Jon Faddis, Marvin "Doc" Holladay, James Moody, Paquito D'Rivera, and the Mike Longo Trio with Ben Brown on bass and Mickey Roker on drums. But Gillespie didn't make it because he was in bed suffering from cancer of the pancreas. "But the musicians played their real hearts out for him, no doubt suspecting that he would not play again. Each musician gave tribute to their friend, this great soul and innovator in the world of jazz."[10]

Gillespie also starred in a film called "The Winter in Lisbon" released in 2004.[11] He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7057 Hollywood Boulevard in the Hollywood section of the City of Los Angeles. He is honored by the Dec 31, 2006 - A Jazz New Year's Eve: Freddy Cole & the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.[12]

He died of pancreatic cancer January 6, 1993, aged 75, and was buried in the Flushing Cemetery, Queens, New York. Mike Longo delivered a eulogy at his funeral. He was also with Gillespie on the night he died, along with Jon Faddis and a select few others.

At the time of his death, Dizzy was survived by his widow, Lorraine Willis Gillespie; a daughter, jazz singer Jeanie Bryson; and a grandson, Radji Birks Bryson-Barrett. Gillespie had two funerals. One was a Bahá´í funeral at his request, at which his closest friends and colleagues attended. The second was at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York open to the public.[13]

Dizzy Gillespie, a Bahá'í since 1970, was one of the most famous adherents of the Bahá'í Faith which helped him make sense of his position in a succession of trumpeters as well as turning his life from knife-carrying roughneck to global citizen, and from alcohol to soul force, in the words of author Nat Hentoff, who knew Gillespie for forty years.[14][15][16] He is often called the Bahá'í Jazz Ambassador.[17] He is honored with weekly jazz sessions at the New York Bahá'í Center.[18]

Gillespie's image is almost inseparable from his trademark trumpet whose bell was bent at a 45 degree angle rather than a traditional straight trumpet. In honor of this trademark, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History has collected Gillespie's B-flat trumpet.[19] According to Gillespie's autobiography, this was originally the result of accidental damage caused during a job on January 6, 1953, but the constriction caused by the bending altered the tone of the instrument, and Gillespie liked the effect. Gillespie's biographer Alyn Shipton writes that Gillespie likely got the idea when he saw a similar instrument in 1937 in Manchester, England while on tour with the Teddy Hill Orchestra. Gillespie came across an English trumpeter who was using such an instrument because his vision was poor and the horn made reading music easier. According to this account (from British journalist Pat Brand) Gillespie was able to try out the horn and the experience led him, much later, to commission a similar horn for himself.

Whatever the origins of Gillespie's upswept trumpet, by June, 1954, Gillespie was using a professionally manufactured horn of this design, and it was to become a visual trademark for him for the rest of his life.[20]