Catlett was one of the few drummers to successively transition into bebop, appearing on Dizzy Gillespie's progressive recordings in 1945. Catlett is heard on two tracks of the Gillespie-Charlie Parker segment of a New Jazz Foundation concert at New York's Town Hall, recorded in June 1945. In 1950 he performed with Hoagy Carmichael at the Copley Plaza Hotel. In early 1951, he began to suffer from pneumonia. In that same year, he died of a heart attack while visiting friends backstage at a Hot Lips Page benefit concert in Chicago, Illinois.