February 17, 1959

February 17, 2019

February 17, 1959

“Dizzy, as Quincy Jones has noted, ‘in the last three or four years has been playing better than he ever has before,’” wrote Nat Hentoff in the liner notes for Have Trumpet, Will Excite!, which Gillespie began recording on this day in 1959. “Yet it sometimes appears that Dizzy, once a controversial ‘rebel,’ is now somewhat taken for granted. One wonders whether all his followers realize to what extent he has mastered his horn and how commanding a player he has become.”

Hentoff’s citation of Quincy Jones came from a review Jones had written of Sonny Side Up that appeared in the September 1959 issue of the Jazz Review, a magazine he edited in the late 1950s. Gillespie had been one of Jones’ first mentors and employers; to get his perspective on the legendary trumpet player, then and now, is really special. The review is reproduced in full below, as is a birthday tribute to Diz from Quincy that he put on Facebook (how times have changed…).

The album, which Gillespie recorded with his working quintet at the time (Junior Mance, Les Spann, Sam Jones and Lex Humphries), is deceptively simple. The collection of flawless standards spotlights Diz at the height of his powers, still searching and playing things that remain incomprehensible to this day. “We’d been playing these tunes for a while in clubs,” he told Hentoff. “None of them were learned just for a record date. And so, there was none of the tension involved with new material.”

Here’s a review of album from Billboard: