Gil Fuller & the Monterey Jazz Festival Orchestra featuring Dizzy Gillespie Gil Fuller & the Monterey Jazz Festival Orchestra featuring Dizzy Gillespie Gil Fuller & the Monterey Jazz Festival Orchestra featuring Dizzy Gillespie is an album by composer, arranger and conductor Gil Fuller featuring trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie recorded in 1965 and originally released on the Pacific Jazz label. The album was rereleased on CD combined with Fuller's "Night Flight" (Pacific Jazz, 1965) on the Blue Note label as "Gil Fuller & the Monterey Jazz Festival Orchestra featuring Dizzy Gillespie & James Moody" in 2008. The Allmusic review called the album "A bit of a disappointment... the big band is mostly heard
Dizzy Gillespie time in Calloway's band, Gillespie started writing big band music for Woody Herman and Jimmy Dorsey. He then freelanced with a few bands, most notably Ella Fitzgerald's orchestra, composed of members of the Chick Webb's band. Gillespie did not serve in World War II. At his Selective Service interview, he told the local board, "in this stage of my life here in the United States whose foot has been in my ass?" He was classified 4-F. In 1943, he joined the Earl Hines band. Composer Gunther Schuller said, Gillespie said of the Hines band, "[p]eople talk about the Hines band