Dizzy Gillespie par Dany Gignoux

Photographs by Dany Gignoux
Text by Luca Sabbatini

In the aristocracy of the blue note, whose long lineage includes «King» Oliver, «Duke» Ellington or «Count» Basie, Dizzy occupies the role of the madman, the mischievous court jester who does not hesitate to overthrow the established order with his irreverence.

A dazzling trumpeter, a brilliant and whimsical musician, Dizzy Gillespie has gone down in jazz history as much for his musical qualities as for his extraordinary showmanship.

Born in South Carolina, John Birks Gillespie (1917-1993) learns to play the trumpet with his father, a bricklayer by day and amateur bandleader by night. When his father dies in 1927, the young boy pursues his studies at all costs, first as a self-taught student, then in a music school for two years. Barely a teenager, he is already on the road, in search of professional status as a musician. By the end of the 1930s, his reputation makes the rounds of the clubs and he’s hired for important gigs, playing in the orchestras of Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Eckstine…

With his stage pranks, his cheeks puffed up like balloons when he blows his trumpet, he is quite naturally nicknamed by his peers... Dizzy: someone whose silliness makes your head spin like a vertigo. Rarely in the history of jazz has a nickname seemed so appropriate. For musical vertigo becomes his signature in the early 1940s, when he takes part in the legendary jam sessions at the Minton's Playhouse in New York. There, his unbridled trumpet competes with Charlie Parker's alto saxophone until the very end of the night. Angular riffs, feverish intensity, frenzied tempi: the two musicians shatter the harmonic field of jazz, inventing a new language with dazzling creativity. Bebop was born.

Several of his compositions - A Night in Tunisia, Salt Peanuts, Woody' n' You... - instantly become jazz standards. A major aesthetic shift takes place at the end of the 1940s when Dizzy leads his own big band, which combines the unrestrained virtuosity of bebop with the irresistible poly-rhythmic drive of Afro-Cuban jazz, using congas and other Latin American percussion instruments to great effect.
This is the era of "Cubop", as Dizzy called it.

He also introduces his famous "look" - beret, goatee, scaled glasses - which influenced a whole generation of artists, right up to the beatniks.

And he swaps his straight trumpet for an instrument with a 45-degree bent bell.

Dany Gignoux took her first photos of the trumpeter in 1975, at the Montreux Jazz Festival. The photographer was at the beginning of her career, while Dizzy was at the peak of his own, covered with medals and honorary titles, official ambassador of jazz and American culture throughout the world.

MONTREUX JAZZ FESTIVAL

Until the 1980s, Dany Gignoux regularly photographed him in Montreux, where the trumpeter led meetings of mythical stars (Ella Fitzgerald, Milt Jackson) as well as encounters between rising jazz talents (Wynton Marsalis, Randy Brecker), two types of events that the festival was particularly fond of.

Dizzy likes the photos of this woman who shares the same initials as him: a friendship develops, trust is established, and Dany Gignoux is free to follow the trumpet player on his travels.

From New York to Washington D.C., from Paris to Antibes or Nice, during a tour in Spain, Dany Gignoux's lens captures the musician from every angle: trying on an African-style stage outfit, visiting a trumpet repair shop, making a daily phone call to his wife from his hotel room, having a birthday party, meeting his old friends Benny Carter and Hank Jones, having an impromptu picnic, and even taking a pee break on the roadside!

From the dressing room to the stage, Dany Gignoux's photos reveal a musical giant of infectious joy, as in her iconic portrait of Dizzy laughing, used by Nikon in a famous advertising poster.

The trumpeter dies in 1993; the same year, Dany Gignoux seals their friendship in a magnificent book of photographs that includes most of the shots available on Photo123.ch.