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
Leo Parker Leo Parker Leo Parker (April 18, 1925, Washington, D.C. - February 11, 1962, New York City) was an American jazz musician who played baritone saxophone. Parker studied alto saxophone in high school, and played this instrument on a recording with Coleman Hawkins in 1944. He switched to baritone saxophone later that year when he joined Billy Eckstine's bebop band, playing there until 1946. In 1945 he was a member of the so-called "Unholy Four" of saxophonists, with Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons. He played on 52nd Street in New York with Dizzy Gillespie in 1946 and Illinois Jacquet