Dizzy Gillespie won the case, but the jury awarded him only $1000 in view of his high earnings up to that point. In 1951, Gillespie founded his record label, Dee Gee Records; it closed in 1953. On January 6, 1953, he threw a party for his wife Lorraine at Snookie's, a club in Manhattan, where his trumpet's bell got bent upward in an accident, but he liked the sound so much he had a special trumpet made with a 45 degree raised bell, becoming his trademark. In 1956 Gillespie organized a band to go on a State Department tour of the Middle
Dizzy Gillespie Center for the Performing Arts ceremonies celebrating the centennial of American jazz, Gillespie received the Kennedy Center Honors Award and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers "Duke Ellington Award" for 50 years of achievement as a composer, performer, and bandleader. In 1993 he received the Polar Music Prize in Sweden. In 2002, Gillespie was posthumously inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame for his contributions to Afro-Cuban music. He was honored on December 31, 2006 in A Jazz New Year's Eve: Freddy Cole & the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band at The John F. Kennedy Center