Ken Burns Jazz

1	Pickin' the Cabbage 2:47
2	Disorder at the Border 2:58
3	Salt Peanuts 3:01
4	I Can't Get Started 3:07
5	A Night in Tunisia 3:12
6	Dizzy Atmosphere 2:49
7	Groovin' High 2:43
8	Things to Come 2:47
9	One Bass Hit No. 2 2:55
10	Manteca 3:08
11	Bloomdido 3:27
12	Tin Tin Deo 2:41
13	Birk's Works 4:56
14	The Eternal Triangle 14:13
15	No More Blues (Chega de Saudade) 10:22
16	Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac 7:23

Barnes & Noble

John Birks Gillespie came from South Carolina with an impressive trumpet technique and a mischievous personality. It wasn't long before he found his way into the top big bands of the late Thirties - and got tagged with the nickname Dizzy. But by 1940, Gillespie had begun to influence, and be influenced by, a coterie of experimenting musicians in Harlem. Whether he meant to call the music they were creating bebop will never be known - but the term stuck, and it stuck to him. After that, he developed first small-combo and then big-band bebop concepts. And from there he continued to pioneer, in the use of rhythms from Latin America and Africa. In his years of gray eminence, he led what was called the United Nation Orchestra and became spiritual father to musicians throughout the world.

All Music Guide

It's impossible to grasp the complete scope of trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and showman Dizzy Gillespie's influence on jazz. However, this companion release to Ken Burns' PBS documentary Jazz is an admirable attempt, providing a brief glimpse of Dizzy's pioneering bebop and Afro-Cuban jazz brilliance on a single 16-track disc. The disc captures his early sideman career with Cab Calloway's orchestra in 1940 and four years later with Coleman Hawkins' orchestra. The remaining tracks showcase Dizzy coming into his own on classic bebop compositions "Salt Peanuts," "A Night in Tunisia," "Dizzy Atmosphere," "Groovin' High," "Manteca," and "Bloomdido." Also included is "The Eternal Triangle," a 1957 blowing date with Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt on Verve. The disc concludes in 1967 with Dizzy hamming it up on "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac," the humorous take on "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." While Dizzy Gillespie's history can't be summed up on a single disc, the highlights on Ken Burns Jazz should make the novice listener interested enough to continue searching out more material. But this series includes nothing that the aficionado doesn't already have. Les Campbell