Dizzy Gillespie Dizzy Gillespie John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and singer. Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic and rhythmic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His combination of musicianship, showmanship, and wit made him a leading popularizer of the new music called bebop. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks, and his light-hearted personality provided some of bebop's most prominent symbols. In the 1940s Gillespie, with Charlie Parker, became
Jazz guitar who had absorbed the language of bebop, the guitar began to be seen as a “serious” jazz instrument. Improved electric guitars such as Gibson’s ES-175 (released in 1949), gave players a larger variety of tonal options. In the 1940s through the 1960s, players such as Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, and Jim Hall laid the foundation of what is now known as "jazz guitar" playing. As jazz-rock fusion emerged in the early 1970s, many players switched to the more rock-oriented solid body guitars. Other jazz guitarists, like Grant Green and Wes Montgomery, turned to applying their skills to pop-oriented styles that