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 1947. He and his big bands, with arrangements provided by Tadd Dameron, Gil Fuller, and George Russell, popularized bebop and made him a symbol of the new music. His big bands of the late 1940s also featured Cuban "rumberos" Chano Pozo and Sabu Martinez, sparking interest in Afro-Cuban jazz. He appeared frequently as a soloist with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic. In 1948, Gillespie was involved in a traffic accident when the bicycle he was riding was bumped by an automobile. He was slightly injured and found that he could no longer hit the B-flat above high C. He