Trumpet icon Dizzy Gillespie has been accused of not having a “definitive” album by which to introduce people to. Part of this problem is because his career started during the days of single 78 albums, and by the time that long playing albums came out in the 1950s, Gillespie’s paradigm shifting sounds had become mainstream. However, you could make an argument that his handful of albums with Lalo Schifrin as either sideman or arranger serve as the perfect sample of what Gillespie could do.
If you didn’t know, the Argentine Schifrin was “discovered” by Gillespie as a pianist, but later found his forte in composing and arranging, best known for his soundtracks such as “Mission Impossible” or “Mannix”. The 1961 Gillespiana is a big band collection of Gillespie trying to enter in what was then called “Third Stream Music” trying to marry classical and jazz. With jazzers like Art Davis/b, Urbie Green/tb. Britt Woodman/tb and Clark Terry/tp (among others) support Gillespie on the dramatic “Toccata” and exotic “Africana” melding Afro Cuban with high brown jazz.
More successful is the 1962 concert at the French Riviera with a smaller unit that includes saxmeister Charlie Ventura, and Schifrin at the piano, and the band sounds right at home on samba classics such as “No More Blues” and “Desifinado” while Schifrin’s own tunes like “Long, Long Summer” and “Pau de Arara” are rich and effervescent vehicles for Dizzy’s horn. Best of all, and probably definitive for Gillespie, is the small group format with Schifrin/p, Leo Wright/as, Bob Cunningham/b and Chuck Lampkin/dr for a 1961 concert that is electrifying in the readings of bop standards “A Night In Tunisia” and “Salt Peanuts” while Gillsespie and company reaching back into right field for a fascinating take of Duke Ellington’s “The Mooche”. This is Gillespie at his apotheosis-the definition of bebop being spoken here.