PAST TIMES:DIZZY GILLESPIE

Dizzy Gillespie only ranks behind Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and the Angel Gabriel as the most famous trumpet player of all time. He is credited with inventing the sound of modern jazz – the bebop, so named for the fast, staccato urgency of improvised riffs away from the melody – and for being the prototype hipster. With his soul patch, horn-rimmed spectacles, reefers and Rolex GMT-Master 6542 “Pepsi”, Gillespie was the coolest of the hepcats to play the new improvisational jazz sound with intimate quintets in the nightclubs of Harlem in the 1940s.

Bebop was a revolution in jazz. Instead of the swing played by predominantly white big band orchestra leaders in 1930s ballrooms and concert halls, bebop was born in smoky late-night jazz