There is not one person around who knows jazz music that did not hear the name Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy Gillespie was a composer, singer, jazz trumpet player and bandleader.

He along with Charlie Parker was the creator of modern jazz music and bebop. Dizzy Gillespie also started Afro-Cuban jazz. He had the gift of making new harmonies that were layered and complex. At the time, it was not done in jazz before.

He was most remembered for the trumpet he played that was bent. It was accidentally ruined when he was on a job in 1953. Surprisingly, Dizzy Gillespie liked it because of the way it changed the tone of the instrument.

Dizzy Gillespie was born John Birks on October 21, 1917 in South Carolina. He was the youngest in the family of nine children. His father was a horrible man who beat his children all the time, and died when Dizzy Gillespie was 10 years old.

He taught himself how to play trumpet when he was twelve years old. He won a scholarship to Laurinburg Institute but, dropped out of school and went to Philadelphia to pursue music full-time. He played with Frankie Fairfax and recorded for the very first time in 1937.

Diana Krall is an accomplished singer, and jazz pianist. Diana Krall was born in British Columbia Canada in 1964.

She learned to play piano when she was just four-years-old. Everyone is her family are musicians.

When she was in high school she played in a jazz group, and at just fifteen played in many restaurants in Nanaimo.

She won a scholarship from Vancouver International Jazz Festival at 17 years old to go to Berklee College of Music. She stayed for one and a half years.

Diana Krall played with famous bass players:

When she played in Nanaimo, Ray Brown, a famous bass player and ex-husband of Ella Fitzgerald told her to move to Los Angeles, California and improve her talents with Jimmy Rowles, a pianist.

She did, and began to sing with him. This move led her to into a circle of producers and teachers who could further her career. In 1990 she went to New York and married the British musician Elvis Costello, on musician Elton John’s estate in 2003. Diana Krall and Elvis had twins Dexter Henry Lorcan and Frank Harlan James in 2006.

All over the world people have invented their own interpretation of Jazz by creating new music from their soul, yet branching out to expand the capabilities of the music of their culture.

Jazz around the world must always begin with examples of various music’s. The main traits of the styles of music that stands out consistently should be reviewed.

One must think about the aesthetic nature of the songs, and the general sound of that style. The next action to make is to add a trait or two to the traditional music of your culture. In all music there are notes that sound horrible when played together or just plain uninteresting.

Experimentation of jazz music:

With research and experimentation one can find traits from many styles of music that could fit together perfectly. There you will have invented a new style of music by expanding your cultural music, or adding the ethnic trait to another style of music.

One can always balance each trait evenly to make it difficult for anyone to point out anyone style to create a new style of mongrel music. Nevertheless, creating Jazz music is taking what is known and expanding it without abandoning the main core of the style.

Billie Holiday was one of the most famous jazz music singers in America. Her real name was Eleanora Fagan.

Like most lives of musicians, she had a very bad time growing up which damaged her career. Her life is written about in the autobiography Lady Sings The Blues, but there are many things in there that are not really valid.

Her stage name is from an actress, Billie Dove and her father Clarence Holiday.

Billie Holiday life journey:

Billie Holiday grew up in the poorest area of Baltimore. Her parents married when she was three years old, but it did not last. They divorced and she was raised by her mother and various relatives. She had been raped when she was eleven years old, and skipped school a lot, so she was placed in The House of the Good Shepherd in 1925.

The House of the Good Shepherd was a reform school for Catholics. A friend of the family helped her out of there a couple of years later. She then went to New York to live with her mother. A year later, her mother discovered a neighbor was raping Billie Holiday, the man spent three months in jail.

The beginning career of jazz music legend Art Blakey was amazing. He took piano lessons at school. When he was in the seventh grade he played music full-time and was leading a popular band.

Not too long after, he started playing drums in the style of such players as Ray Bauduc, Chick Webb and Sid Catlett. He taught himself how to play.

He played with Mary Lou Williams at Kelly’s Stable in 1942. Next, with Fletcher Henderson for the next two years, and he toured with. Art Blankey then went to Boston to lead a big band, then joined Billy Eckstine’s band in St. Louis. Art Blankey stayed with that band from 1944-1947.

Famous Art Blakey:

Art Blankey was considered to be among jazz music’s finest musicians such as Fats Navarro, Miles Davis and Dexter Gordon. In 1947 when Eckstine’s band broke up, Art Blankey started the Seventeen Messengers.

He would go on to have several other groups with this same name. He then went to Africa to learn all about Islamic people for over a year. By the 1950’s he performed with Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Horace Silver.