Gillespie, Dizzy (John Birks) (1917–1993)

US jazz trumpeter and composer. With Charlie Parker, he was the chief creator and representative of the bebop style. Gillespie influenced many modern jazz trumpeters, including Miles Davis.

Although associated mainly with small combos, Gillespie formed his first big band in 1945 and toured with a big band in the late 1980s, as well as in the intervening decades; a big band can be heard on Dizzy Gillespie at Newport (1957). His hit singles ‘Groovin' High’, ‘Night in Tunisia’, ‘Manteca’, and ‘Con Alma’ became jazz standards.

Gillespie was born in South Carolina. He moved to Philadelphia and then, in 1937, to New York, where he made his first recordings as a soloist. He was a member of popular bandleader Cab Calloway's orchestra in 1939–41, with shorter spells in other bands, and formed his own quartet 1942. The following year he made his first recording with Parker.

The hipster image that Gillespie invented, with goatee, black beret, and sunglasses, was adopted by beboppers everywhere. Though his candidacy for US president in 1964 was tongue in cheek (he promised to rename the White House the Blues House), Gillespie was a serious musician and internationalist. He toured widely on a cultural mission for the State Department in 1956, the first jazz musician to be so honoured. In 1968 he joined the Baha'i faith, which expects members to work for world peace. His formation of the United Nations Orchestra in the late 1980s, incorporating a strong Latin element, amounted almost to a summary of his life and work.

He published a memoir, To Be or Not to Bop, in 1979.