Lorraine Gillespie dies

[brownie]

From AP:

Lorraine Willis Gillespie

HACKENSACK, N.J. (AP) _ Lorraine Willis Gillespie, widow of jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie, died Saturday. She was 84.

Dizzy Gillespie, a trumpeter who helped create the bebop and Afro-Cuban schools of jazz in the 1940s, died in 1993.

The couple met in 1937 when Gillespie was playing with the Teddy Hill Orchestra in Washington, and they married three years later in Boston, Marion "Boo" Frazier, Dizzy's cousin, told The Record of Bergen County.

Lorraine Gillespie was born in Long Branch and grew up in New York City. She worked in a chorus line at the Apollo Theater in Harlem as a teen, and had a tap-dance school in Queens, where the couple first lived.

[mikeweil]

Jazz musicians' wives rarely get credit for their support. Thanks, Lorraine! and R.I.P.!

As I understand from Dizzy's autobiography, she did quite a few things to help get it together in difficult times.

[Hardbopjazz]

RIP.

[JSngry]

As I understand from Dizzy's autobiography, she did quite a few things to help get it together in difficult times.

Yeah, Dizzy always gave her credit for keeping him in line and making sure that the B got TC of. No way it could have been easy for her, but she did it.

R.I.P., and much thanks.

[brownie]

If I were the Pope, Lorraine Gillespie and Nellie Monk would be saints!

[couw]

If you were pope, I'd probably go to church and hear you preach.

now Lorraine can look after her man again, he's probably been naughty up there.

[catesta]

She must have been a good woman, Dizzy always seemed to be happy.

R.I.P, Mrs. Gillespie.