Dizzy Gillespie Quotes

17 quotes from 16 authors

If you want a glimpse of the bebop era’s most flamboyant trumpeter, his own words and the reflections of peers paint a vivid picture. This selection gathers 16 quotations that reveal Dizzy Gillespie’s humor, creative philosophy and relentless drive, offering a compact yet resonant portrait of a jazz legend.

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I had a cat called Dizz, after Dizzy Gillespie.

Andy Serkis

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The first records I heard were from Dizzy Gillespie and people like that.

Bill Wyman

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“I love the juxtaposition of these words. I love the incongruity, the oddity, the very strangeness of their nearness. Dizzy Gillespie. Pakistan.…

Maliha Masood

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I just really liked those trumpets and horns - Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie - and I honed in on that. I always…

GRiZ

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I once saw Dizzy Gillespie at a live show, and it made me want to go home immediately and start writing.

Elmore Leonard

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Ornette Coleman is doing the only really new thing in jazz since the innovations in the mid-forties of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker,…

John Lewis

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I remember the first time hearing a recording from Minton's Playhouse; it was Charlie Christian and a young Dizzy Gillespie, and he…

Derek Trucks

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Dizzy Gillespie would come by, eating gumbo. It was crazy. My grandparents were friends with all of them. Dee Dee Bridgewater, all…

Madlib

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I believe, from reading biographies, that the great musicians have also been great cooks: Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach.…

Jamie Cullum

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I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic…

Charles Mingus

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The Metropole Orchestra is like Count Basie or Duke Ellington with strings... it's strings that swing. Strings that swing like Dizzy Gillespie...…

Al Jarreau

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I skipped school one day to see Dizzy Gillespie, and that's where I met Coltrane. Coltrane and Jimmy Heath just joined the…

Donald Byrd

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I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began…

John Coltrane

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There's a famous story about Dizzy [Gillespie] and Art Blakey taking him aside, and spending a whole night-long talk with [Phil Wood],…

Jon Gordon

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I went up to his [Hank Jones'] house and there were four guys there: Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Max…

Ray Brown

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I grew up listening to Ravel, Debussy, Bartok and jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart.…

Allan Holdsworth

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Bop began with Jazz but one afternoon somewhere on a sidewalk maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk…

Jack Kerouac

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