Top 35 Quotes & Sayings by Dizzy Gillespie

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Dizzy Gillespie.

Last updated on April 15, 2025.

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer. He was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic and rhythmic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His combination of musicianship, showmanship, and wit made him a leading popularizer of the new music called bebop. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, scat singing, bent horn, pouched cheeks, and light-hearted personality provided one of bebop's most prominent symbols.

American - Musician | October 21, 1917 - January 6, 1993

Source: Wikipedia

They're not particular about whether you're playing a flatted fifth or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance to it.

Dizzy Gillespie

I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician. One of the reasons we're here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

Dizzy Gillespie

I'd like to play for you one of my compositions, my only composition.

Dizzy Gillespie

I don't care much about music. What I like is sounds.

Dizzy Gillespie

How do I know why Miles walks off the stage? Why don't you ask him? And besides, maybe we'd all like to be like Miles, and just haven't got the guts.

Dizzy Gillespie

It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

Dizzy Gillespie

I think the idea is now for blacks to write about the history of our music. It's time for that, because whites have been doing it all the time. It's time for us to do it ourselves and tell it like it is.

Dizzy Gillespie

Men have died for this music. You can't get more serious than that.

Dizzy Gillespie

Mutual respect is so important because as soon as it disappears in relations between you and the next person, there's trouble.

Dizzy Gillespie

I try to play the bare essence, to let everything be just what it's supposed to be.

Dizzy Gillespie

Some days you get up and put the horn to your chops and it sounds pretty good and you win. Some days you try and nothing works and the horn wins. This goes on and on and then you die and the horn wins.

Dizzy Gillespie

The sign of a mature musician is knowing what not to play.

Dizzy Gillespie

I try to play the bare essence, to let everything be just what it's supposed to be in that particular spot...You have many things to pick from when you're playing, so you try to train yourself to pick out the best things that you know.

Dizzy Gillespie

When I grow up I want to be just like Benny Carter!

Dizzy Gillespie

Nothing surpasses my performances with small bands, especially with Charlie Parker. A small band doesn't forestall creativity.

Dizzy Gillespie

I know all the Latin-American rhythms quite well, but I don't play them exactly like they do in their own country - I add my personal touch.

Dizzy Gillespie

Jazz will be the classical music of the future.

Dizzy Gillespie

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your magnificent indifference.

Dizzy Gillespie

There are a lot of great players... a lot of great players around, but Louie Bellson is really something special.

Dizzy Gillespie

Learn to play the piano, man, and then you can figure out crazy solos of your own.

Dizzy Gillespie

Everyone wants to put people on, I think. And get away with it! That's the thing: put people on and get away with it! That's a science in itself.

Dizzy Gillespie

We loved one another, man. I mean all those stories about the rift ... there was no question of a rift between Charlie Parker and me.

Dizzy Gillespie

I used to do a lot of apologizing for what the State Department had done.

Dizzy Gillespie

There have been two great revelations in my life: The first was bepop, the second was homeopathy.

Dizzy Gillespie

Bop is at the end of the road. Now everybody wants dance music.

Dizzy Gillespie

As a musician you have to keep one foot back in the past and have one foot forward into the future.

Dizzy Gillespie

Kenny Burrell is the grand master of jazz guitar.

Dizzy Gillespie

I was blessed that I got married early and had a good wife. That sort of kept me straight. Probably I would have been like Charlie Parker, you know, involved in drugs or alcohol or something like that if I hadn't had this stability.

Dizzy Gillespie

You can't steal a gift. Bird [Charlie Parker] gave the world his music, and if you can hear it you can have it.

Dizzy Gillespie

Miles got a mystique about him-plus he's at the top of his profession. And he's got way, way, way more money.

Dizzy Gillespie

The idea of life is to give and receive.

Dizzy Gillespie

One of the reasons we're here is to be a part of this process of exchange.

Dizzy Gillespie

They're not particular whether you're playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance.

Dizzy Gillespie

Where there's no mutual respect, there's trouble!

Dizzy Gillespie

Many critics always saw and heard that my style comes from Roy Eldridge, which is true. But for many things, not only how to play the trumpet but the way to choose the notes, how to play them and how to phrase all of them, I took that from Sweets [Edison]. He really brought something new to the trumpet.

Dizzy Gillespie

Top 35 Quotes & Sayings by Dizzy Gillespie

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