John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie [/gɪˈlɛspi/] (October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, singer, and composer. He was born in Cheraw, South Carolina, the youngest of nine children. Dizzy's father, James, was a local bandleader, so instruments were made available to Dizzy. John Birks Gillespie's mother went by the name Lottie Gillespie. He started to play the piano at the age of 4. His father had already died when Gillespie was only ten years old. Gillespie taught himself how to play the trombone as well as the trumpet all at the age of twelve. He would play his friend's trumpet, and from the night that he heard his idol, Roy Eldridge, play on the radio, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician from that day on. . Dizzy Gillespie received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in Laurinburg, North Carolina. However, he turned it down in order to start his music career. . Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. Throughout the 1940s, Dizzy created new pitches of sound, tone, and demonstrated strong virtuosity with his trumpet. He also had great range and a large amount of control of his trumpet. His suppleness of rhythm, unevenly spaced phrases and complex, chromatically augmented runs played at breathtaking speed also described his playing style. Numerous people, from all generations, consider him the greatest trumpeter of them all. He along with other jazz musicians established bebop as a style of jazz for both small combos and big bands. He taught and influenced many other musicians including trumpeters Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, and John Faddis. .
In addition to featuring in these epochal moments in bebop, he was instrumental in founding Afro-Cuban jazz, the modern jazz version of what early-jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton referred to as the "Spanish Tinge". Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. In addition to his instrumental skills, Dizzy's beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop. He had an enormous impact on subsequent trumpeters, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians.
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