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Article: Bebop takes a hard shot: Dizzy Gillespie. (jazz trumpet player) (Obituary)
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- February 12, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Dizzy Gillespie died on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1993.
Now you're going to read, or most likely have already read, a lot of testimonials to Dizzy that will tell you that, in the mid-1940s, he and Charlie Parker virtually reinvented jazz--which is to say, virtually reinvented American music--which is to say, no kidding, changed the world as we hear it. And if you believe, as I do, that jazz--not literature, not dance, not drama, but jazz-- is the American Sublime, then I needn't try to convince you that the passing of John Birks Gillespie, born 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina, is a moment of high solemnity in the secret, psychic history of the republic. ...