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 on the Ave Music Festival the North Philadelphia community. This avenue has a musical history, having hosted John Coltrane, Ethel Waters, Billie Holiday and Dizzie Gillespie. Then named Columbia Avenue, and called the Golden Trip, the avenue was a famed destination for jazz entertainment during Philadelphia's golden era of jazz from the 1940s through the early 1960s. Jazz on the Ave is a part of Beech Community Services' way of giving back to the Cecil B. Moore community and continuing its role of revitalizing the area by providing social, educational and community services to its tenants – both residential and commercial. “For ten years now,