Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 19, 1992 TAG: 9201170418
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PETER WATROUS NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
YEARLONG CELEBRATION HONORS JAZZMAN DIZZY GILLESPIE
Over the next month, Dizzy Gillespie will probably wade through "A Night in Tunisia" 50 more times. Considering that he's been playing the tune twice a night, 300 nights a year for the last 50 or so years, another 50 times won't mean a thing. The idea doesn't seem to bother him."Even `Night in Tunisia,' doesn't bore me; I'm never bored," Gillespie said on a recent Sunday afternoon before rushing off to perform "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Knicks game at Madison Square Garden. "There's always a new way to play anything."
What makes these last 50 so unusual is that Gillespie, one of the fathers of be-bop and an icon of jazz, will be playing them in the same place for a month. He is booked at the Blue Note, where 30 to 40 musicians both perform with him and pay tribute to him.
It's part of a yearlong celebration of Gillespie's 75th birthday, which will be on Oct. 21. He will also appear in Latin America, Europe and South Africa (in an appearance approved by Nelson Mandela), and this month he will release "The Winter in Lisbon," in which he stars.
So the Blue Note performances are a good time to see and hear the country's best-known trumpet player amid rare musical splendor. Gillepsie, who flies over 300,000 miles a year, doesn't stay in one place too long.
The performances bring together an extraordinary group of musicans: Jimmy Heath on saxophone, Slide Hampton on trombone, Kenny Barron on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. They have all with the exception of Jones, put in their time under Gillespie's leadership.
Gillespie's pleasure in the group makes him grope for words. "Owww, that group is good," he said over lunch in a midtown restaurant. "I've been playing with Kenny since he was a little kid, and he and Jimmy know how I think better than I do. Cranshaw has a beat like a gorilla. And I want Elvin to play like he usually does, hard."
For Heath, who first joined Gillespie's big band in the early 1940s, the show will be a homecoming.
"Diz is my guru, my teacher," Heath said. "When I joined his band, after being in love with his and Charlie Parker's music, it was a dream come true. My brother Percy and I had followed the band around. We were even wearing his costume, berets and thin artist ties. It was a school in arranging and composing and true improvisation because Dizzy never played the same thing in the same place."
Heath said he and John Coltrane, who was also in the band, would note the way the trumpeter introduced his solo in "I Can't Get Started."
"He'd play it differently each time and we'd look at each other in amazement," Heath recalled. "In that period he was far superior to anybody that played trumpet, anybody. Dizzy was the master."
The second week at the Blue Note will feature Gillespie's 13-piece Afro-Cuban jazz band, the United Nation Orchestra, which includes the saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, the trumpeter Claudio Roditi, the percussionist Giovanni Hidalgo, the saxophonist Mario Rivera, the drummer Charli Persip and the pianist Danilo Perez, Latin musicians who, Gillespie says, "love our music more than the original be-boppers."
"These guys play be-bop better than be-bop guys play Latin," he said, "but it's the mixture that I like. I love playing it. I'm not an authority, but I know it pretty well. I love the rhythm."
The third week has a slew of saxophonists, including a handful of younger players: Tim Warfield, David Sanchez, Vincent Herring, Antonio Hart - to balance out the older masters. Benny Golson will appear, as will Jackie McLean, Clifford Jordan, David (Fathead) Newman, Hank Crawford and more.
For Jackie McLean, a member of one of the first groups of young musicians to absorb the lessons of Gillespie and Parker, the show is a way of getting closer to the source.
"I first heard Dizzy and Bird on a tune called `Sorta Kinda' on a record by Trummy Young, and then two days later I heard them on `Koko,"' recalled McLean, who has begun to play occasionally with Gillespie at festivals and concerts. "I had heard all sorts of great music as a kid, but when I heard them I locked in and I knew what I wanted to say.
"Dizzy's one of my greatest heros and idols. I've hungered to play with him and I couldn't be more motivated by the chance."
For his final week, Gillespie will be joined by trumpeters, including one of his first disciples, Red Rodney, his protege Jon Faddis and the be-bop trumpeter Donald Byrd. Doc Cheatham, who played alongside Gillespie in Cab Calloway's orchestra, will be there, too, along with some of the better young trumpeters now on the jazz scene, Wynton Marsalis, Wallace Roney, Roy Hargrove and Terence Blanchard.