Dizzy For President - The Album

[Tom 1960]

I've been listening to this on WKCR's Jazz Profiles program and it sounds like a fine release. Very good sound quality with equally fine performances. What do you guys think?

[John Tapscott]

I have it, Tom. Listened to it not long ago, actually. You're hearing right. While I don't think it's an essential Dizzy album, it's a good and entertaining (as always with Dizzy) release. That band with Moody and Barron was very good. Gillespie was still pretty much on top of his game, trumpet wise, in the early to mid 60's.

[king ubu]

Which Dizzy albums would actually be really essential, anyways? Besides the music with Bird and the early Big Bands on Savoy and RCA (and Uptown and other live recordings)?

There's a large number of excellent albums (the Mosaic going OOP right now has plenty of them, for instance, there's the 1956/57 big band, the Granz pairings) ... I'm not sure myself, I might arrive at a list like this:

Gillespie/Rollins/Stitt - Sunny Side Up

Dizzy Gillespie at Newport (1957)

Stuff Smith & Dizzy Gillespie

That's a short list which certainly does not amout to enough 50s/60s Dizzy for sure ... so I might throw in some of the live music like the excellent "Gillespiana/Carnegie Hall Concert" twofer or some of the stuff from Paris ... maybe "Perceptions", or more likely the MPS album from Berlin 1968 ... as good as the band with Moody/Barron was, I'm not sure I'd dub any of it "essential", but I'd really not want to give the music away, still.