How Dizzy Gillespie helped forge a new jazz era in America
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The signing of the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago launched an enduring quest for life, liberty and happiness. To mark the anniversary, NPR is bringing you a series we call America in Pursuit, exploring culture, history and special objects representing American life. Here's NPR's Jennifer Ludden.
JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE: In a glass case at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History sits Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet.
(SOUNDBITE OF DIZZY GILLESPIE'S "SHAW 'NUFF")
KRYSTAL KLINGENBERG: Notable for so many reasons, not least of which is its angled bell, which was kind of the trademark.
LUDDEN: We'll get back to why the bell points up. Music curator Krystal Klingenberg says the man and his instrument were an American original.
KLINGENBERG: And it's one of many examples of where American entertainment has just burst forth with something new and special and reached the whole world.
LUDDEN: In the 1940s, Gillespie, with his signature puffed-out cheeks, helped forge a new jazz era - edgier, faster, complex rhythms called bebop.
(SOUNDBITE OF DIZZY GILLESPIE'S "SHAW 'NUFF")
LUDDEN: The State Department enlisted Gillespie and others as Cold War jazz ambassadors to win hearts and minds abroad, even as they faced racism at home. In 1955, after Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald played to an integrated audience in Houston, they were arrested on trumped-up charges of gambling. Klingenberg says the photos of them in jail are incredible.
KLINGENBERG: Dizzy's kind of hanging out, being Dizzy. You see Ella Fitzgerald in the most beautiful, elegant gown. Like, she's not meant to be there in the lockup. Why is she there?
LUDDEN: Despite such pressures on stage, Gillespie was charming, playful, funny. That sense of fun came through when, in 1953, his trumpet first got bent.
KLINGENBERG: Accidents happen on stage. And it fell.
LUDDEN: He picked it up to play and decided he liked the strange new sound, so he had his trumpets custom-made that way. As testament to his nearly six-decade career, Klingenberg first saw Gillespie as a child watching "Sesame Street."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KLINGENBERG: He was that warm, kind of jazz grandpa.
LUDDEN: A circle of kids bop and sway, entranced by the gray-haired man with a funny-looking trumpet.
Jennifer Ludden, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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