?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
(ENTERTAINMENT--MUSIC.) Archive of Dizzy Gillespie's personal music and arrangements. Several hundred pages of manuscript music in various hands plus other papers (0.6 linear feet); plus 9 books in a separate box; a bit musty, some items with moderate to heavy wear or dampstaining. Various places, 1970s-1980s
This large cache of music was purchased at auction from the estate of the great trumpet player and Ambassador of Jazz, John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (1917-1993). It includes more than 70 pieces of manuscript sheet music from Gillespie's collection. By volume, the bulk are arrangements for songs performed by his band, as copied out for him by professional transcriptionists, with parts for several instruments, or sometimes just trumpet. They include one of his most popular co-compositions, the Cuban jazz classic "Manteca" from 1947, as written out by arranger-copyist Jewell Grant, with the parts for the second alto sax, and a trumpet part stamped simply "Dizzy" (illustrated). Many others are by notable arrangers. Highlights include: the national anthems of Iran, Pakistan, and Yugoslavia as arranged by Quincy Jones for trumpet, presumably in preparation for a world tour; 4 pieces arranged by regular Gillespie composer Benny Golson including "Blues After Dark," "Just by Myself," "Out of the Past," and "Seabreeze"; 3 pieces arranged by Gillespie associate Gigi Gryce, "A Nite at Tony's," "Shabozz," and "Smoke Signal"; a piece titled "C.W.3" with the tune credited to Bill Cosby and Dizzy Gillespie and the arrangement by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson; and an arrangement of W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues." Other pieces range widely on a spectrum from compositions sent by admirers, to formal arrangements created for band use. Compositions sent to Gillespie include works by Niagara Falls jazzman Spider Martin, with 1982 cover letter; "Nigerian Waterfalls" by actor-musician Santiago Gonzalez; pieces by Steve Turre and T.J. Anderson of Tufts University; 3 transcriptions of Gillespie's recorded performances by Don Erjavec; and more. A list of the compositions in this lot is available upon request. Also included in this archive are:
Gillespie's memoir "To Be or Not to Bop," 1984 German edition, signed on the front free endpaper "Dizzy Gillespie '88," plus 4 unsigned copies of the 1981 French edition, and 3 unsigned copies of the 1980 Finnish edition.
Ralph Berton's 1974 biography "Remembering Bix," inscribed warmly "to the best damned horn man in the world, this one about one of your ancestors" (quite warped).
3 portraits of unidentified sitters by Gillespie's wife Lorraine.
Provenance: Dawson & Nye's Dizzy Gillespie estate sale, 14 September 2005 (copy of the catalog included with the lot).
