Back in the late 1960s, Solid State put out four LPs in their series Jazz for a Sunday Afternoon. The five titles with Dizzy Gillespie have been more recently reissued on a two-CD Blue Note set titled Live at the Village Vanguard. Laserlight improves upon the packaging by including two additional titles (from Vol. 3) on their first two CDs; unfortunately, the two lengthy songs ("Satin Doll" and "Straight No Chaser") from a Harry "Sweets" Edison date that comprised Vol. 4 remain out of print. The first disc of this three-CD set has a very interesting, if sometimes erratic date matching Gillespie with violinist Ray Nance (sometimes replaced by trombonist Garnett Brown), baritonist Pepper Adams, pianist Chick Corea, bassist Richard Davis, and either Mel Lewis or Elvin Jones on drums. Nance's violin playing is adventurous and eccentric, and there are some loose moments, but Dizzy holds the music together and Pepper Adams is in top form.

The music marks a distinct departure from the busy bebop style Gillespie is more closely associated with, as he turns his attention to laid-back music with a funk/smooth jazz feel.

Here we have a summit meeting late in the careers of the pioneering titans of Afro-Cuban jazz: Dizzy Gillespie fronting the Machito orchestra on trumpet, with Mario Bauza as music director, alto saxophonist/clarinetist, and organizing force, and Chico O'Farrill contributing the compositions and arrangements. This could have been just a nostalgic retro gathering 25 years after the fact, but instead, these guys put forth an ambitious effort to push the boundaries of the idiom. The centerpiece is a 15-minute trumpet concerto for Gillespie called "Oro, Incienso y Mirra," where O'Farrill melts dissonant clusters, electric piano comping, and synthesizer decorations together with hot Afro-Cuban rhythms into a coherent, multi-sectioned tour de force…

Finally available again after a 30-plus year absence from American shelves is the soundtrack to Shirley Clarke's gritty but brilliant 1964 film, Cool World, about young people growing up in Harlem. The score was written and arranged by pianist Mal Waldron but was performed and recorded by Dizzy Gillespie's quintet of the time. This set is one of Diz's best records of the 1960s (which is saying something), and one of the best jazz film scores period. Diz's band at the time included James Moody on tenor and flute, a young Kenny Barron on piano, bassist Chris White, and Rudy Collins on drums. The 11 cues that range between two and five minutes are deeply rooted in the language of hard bop and blues with some excellent, if brief, modal touches by Waldron…

This 10 CD set offers an exciting overview of some of the most important recordings made by American jazz stars in Paris in the Fifties. They are milestones of Modern Jazz, Bebop and Hard Bop recorded by some of the most important players of the time, including Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Lionel Hampton, Chet Baker, Sarah Vaughan, Mary Lou Williams, Lester Young and Donald Byrd. Treated like second class citizens at home, many American jazz stars not only got more recognition and respect in the French capital, but found much better playing conditions as well. From concert-halls like "L'Olympia" to the clubs of the "Latin Quarter" they were appreciated and celebrated, and their music met with a glowing enthusiasm.

One amazing night in 1972, the greats of swing - Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Bennie Goodman - came together at New York's Philharmonic Hall for a jazz blowout. Joined by Dizzy Gillespie, hosted by Doc Severinson (then in his glory years at the helm of NBC's 'Tonight Show' band), these jazz pioneers reveled in the numbers with which they had changed the face of popular music more than thirty years before.

A good but not great set from the 1975 Montreux Jazz Festival, this set of four extended standards is nonetheless impressive for its complete rejection of all innovations in jazz after around 1955, even those that Dizzy Gillespie had himself spearheaded. This is a straight-up bop jam session. The tunes are standards almost to the point of being clichés - "Lover, Come Back to Me," "I'll Remember April," "What's New?," and the obligatory run-through of Charlie Parker's signature tune, "Cherokee" - but Gillespie and his all-star group do an impressive job of finding new avenues of exploration. The 17-minute take on "Lover Come Back to Me" is particularly impressive, with meaty solos from both Gillespie and tenor Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. The ballad "What's New?" is primarily a showcase for Milt Jackson's vibes and Tommy Flanagan's piano, though Johnny Griffin also serves up a lovely tenor solo.

On Nov 24th, 1980, Dizzy Gillespie invited 5 jazz legends - Milt Jackson, James Moody, Hank Jones, Ray Brown & Philly Joe Jones - to join him onstage in Montreal to play tribute to the legendary Charlie Parker. A limited quantity bootleg LP of the concert soon appeared and then disappeared from the marketplace and the tapes lay dormant for over 30 years. The pristinely restored “Concert of the Century” is now available on audiophile 180 gram 2LP vinyl and CD via the Justin Time Essentials Collection.

This release presents all existing live recordings by the legendary mid-fifties Dizzy Gillespie big Band made during their 1956 South American tour. The short-lived group featured such talents as Quincy Jones, Lee Morgan, Joe Gordon, Melba Liston, Al Grey, Phil Woods, Benny Golson and Wynton Kelly. Also included here are two sambas recorded in Rio de Janeiro by the trumpeter with a Brazilian orchestra, as well as four amazing tracks featuring Diz in Buenos Aires with the tango orchestra of Osvaldo Fresedo.

The Winter in Lisbon is a soundtrack album for the European film of the same name directed by José A. Zorrilla composed and performed by trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. Originally released in 1991, Milan Records is proud to reissue the Dizzy Gillespie jazz classic, The Winter in Lisbon, with all new artwork for a new generation of true jazz fans. Co-writing many of the selections with Dizzy are Panamanian pianist and composer Danilo Pérez and producer Charles Fishman. In retrospect, after his death in 1993, critics hailed The Winter in Lisbon as the best work of Dizzy Gillespie's long and prolific career.

Afro (1954). Pairing Dizzy Gillespie with Cuban arranger/composer Chico O'Farrill produced a stunning session which originally made up the first half of a Norgran LP. O'Farrill conducts an expanded orchestra which combines a jazz band with a Latin rhythm section; among the participants in the four-part "Manteca Suite" are trumpeters Quincy Jones and Ernie Royal, trombonist J.J. Johnson, tenor saxophonists Hank Mobley and Lucky Thompson, and conga player Mongo Santamaria. "Manteca," written during the previous decade, serves as an exciting opening movement, while the next two segments build upon this famous theme, though they are jointly credited to O'Farrill as well. "Rhumba-Finale" is straight-ahead jazz with some delicious solo work by Gillespie…

Jazz collectors can be an obsessive, detail-minded bunch, so when they acquire Vol. 2 of CAP's Dizzy in South America series, they're bound to be frustrated by the fact that the credits don't give any exact recording dates or let you know exactly where in South America each 1956 performance was recorded. As frustrating as that is, however, Vol. 2 is a CD that collectors and Dizzy Gillespie fans will be glad to get their hands on. No serious Gillespie aficionado could resist hearing previously unreleased live performances of "Tin Tin Deo," "The Champ," and "Groovin' High," especially when the sound quality is decent (by 1956 standards) and the band boasts such heavyweights as Phil Woods (alto sax), Benny Golson (tenor sax), Jimmy Powell (alto sax), Walter Davis, Jr. (piano), and the tour's musical director Quincy Jones (trumpet). Gillespie has many inspired moments on trumpet, and featured vocalist Austin Cromer provides some memorable crooning on "Because of You" and "Wonder Why".