To Be or Not to Bop

This biography of Dizzy Gillespie combines the jazz legend’s own story with the testimonies of those who knew him. From his days in South Carolina through his later years as a venerated elder statesman, his role in the development of bebop, his time as a bandleader, and his involvement in the Afro-Cuban music movement are discussed. Al Fraser interviews contemporaries of Gillespie’s including Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, and Thelonious Monk, and Gillespie himself examines his relationships with other jazz heavyweights such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker. This is the self-portrait of a man who gave himself over completely to his work and who approached life with a persistent and irreverent sense of humor, as well as a history of African American music during an incendiary time.