Groovin' High by Alyn Shipton
Dizzy Gillespie was one of the most important and best loved musicians in jazz history. With his dark glasses, goatee, jive talk, and upraised trumpet bell, he was the hipster who most personified bebop. The musical heir to Louis Armstrong, he created the basic jazz trumpet-playing style and dazzled aficionados and popular audiences alike for over 50 years. In this first full biography, Alyn Shipton covers all aspects of Dizzy's remarkable life and career, taking us through his days as a flashy trumpet player in the swing bands of the 1930s, his innovative bebop work in the 1940s, the worldwide fame and adoration he earned through his big band tours in the 1950s, and the many recordings and performances which defined a career that extended into the early 1990s. Along the way, Shipton convincingly argues that Gillespie--rather than Charlie Parker as is widely believed--had the greatest role in creating bebop, playing in key jazz groups, teaching the music to others, and helping to develop the first original bebop repertory. Shipton traces the Gillespie-Parker relationship, starting in the bands of Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine in the early 1940s, to their famous 1944-46 group that set the form for bebop, and culminating in their extraordinary concert at Massey Hall in Toronto in 1953. Shipton also explores the dark side of Dizzy's mostly sunny personal life, his womanizing, the illegitimate daughter he fathered and supported--now a respected jazz singer in her own right--and his sometimes needless cruelty to others. For anyone interested in jazz and one of its most innovative and appealing figures, Groovin' High is essential reading.
Alyn Shipton is an award-winning author and broadcaster, who has written about jazz for over twenty years for the Times in London and is a presenter/producer of jazz programs for BBC Radio. As well as being on the editorial board for the original The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, and on the executive selection committee for the acclaimed revised edition, Jazz: The Smithsonian Collection, Shipton was consultant editor of the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. He has a lifelong interest in oral history, including editing the memoirs of Danny Barker, Doc Cheatham, and George Shearing. His monumental New History of Jazz was the Jazz Journalists' Association book of the year, and won Alyn the coveted Jazz Writer of the Year title at the British Jazz Awards. In 2003 he won the Willis Conover/Marian McPartland Award for lifetime achievement in jazz broadcasting. In 2010 he was named Jazz Broadcaster of the Year in the UK Parliamentary Jazz Awards. He lives in Oxford, UK, and rural France.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780195091328 |
| ISBN 10 | 0195091329 |
| Title | Groovin' High |
| Author | Alyn Shipton |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press Inc |
| Year published | 1999-06-03 |
| Number of pages | 464 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |