Dizzy Gillespie he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician. He won a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina which he attended for two years before accompanying his family when they moved to Philadelphia. Gillespie's first professional job was with the Frank Fairfax Orchestra in 1935, after which he joined the respective orchestras of Edgar Hayes and later Teddy Hill, replacing Frankie Newton as second trumpet in May 1937. Teddy Hill's band was where Gillespie made his first recording, "King Porter Stomp". In August 1937 while gigging with Hayes in Washington D.C., Gillespie met a young dancer named Lorraine Willis
Sarah Gillespie JAZZA Festival for the Free Palestine Movement. Reviewing "In the Current Climate", "The Jazz Breakfast" wrote: "The personal life and the sociopolitical one are blended with references to everything from the Dow Jones and the Hang Index to John the Baptist and Zeus. For "How The West Was Won", Gillespie sings an imaginary first person song of Shaker Aamer, the remaining British prisoner in Camp X-Ray". In 2012 Gillespie released a 16-minute narrative music project, "The War on Trevor." The piece charts the travails of a Londoner (Trevor) suspected of various crimes ranging from public indecency and infidelity to terrorism,