Groovin' High The Life of Dizzy Gillespie

"Shipton makes exemplary use of secondary sources, including Gillespie's own previously published reminiscences, to draw vivid pictures of Gillespie's hardscrabble childhood in Cheraw, S.C., his school days at the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina and his brash efforts to crack the inner circles of musicians in Philadelphia and New York in the mid-1930's. Shipton also delights in debunking conventional wisdom, even that handed down by Gillespie himself, who steadfastly claimed over the years that his approach to trumpet was an extension of that of Roy Eldridge, his predecessor in Teddy Hill's band and supposedly his single role model. Shipton's educated guess is that Gillespie's unacknowledged influences included Charlie Shavers, Henry (Red) Allen and Louis Armstrong--the last a figure the young Gillespie may have been reluctant to cite as an influence because of Armstrong's stated antipathy toward bebop."Shipton, Alyn is the author of 'Groovin' High The Life of Dizzy Gillespie' with ISBN 9780195144109 and ISBN 0195144104.