Dizzy for President

Dizzy Gillespie | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 7, 1997)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Douglas Records
• ASIN: B0000019BQ
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #787,246 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Dizzy Atmosphere

2. Morning of the Carnival

3. The Cup Bearers

4. I'm in the Mood for Love

5. Desafinado

6. Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You

7. No More Blues (Chega de Saudade)

8. Vote Dizzy (Salt Peanuts)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars I'd vote Diz all my life, December 25, 2005

By 

Jazzcat "stef" (Genoa, Italy Italy) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dizzy for President (Audio CD)

Ehy guys wouldn't you vote Diz for president when he was with us? I'd did for real! The first time we could be sure a true genius would seat on a political chair. VOTE DIZZY! Anyway! Amazon lacks a lot of informations about this Dizzy's album, in this Christmas morning I'll fill this gap. I did buy in these days a lot of cds to keep me well entertained in these lazy holydays and this is among them. What a better Christmas than one spent on your sofà in front of your hiend system with a bunch of good Jazz cds? To begin this review I'd say it's a live album (really LIVE, a lot of words between Diz and the audience) recorded at the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival. My rating is four stars. Diz is great and the combo is very good. The material interesting enough, the recording not the best (too much live yeowling and clapping). You can find better Diz date, but this is anyway very good. Four stars, not the best but high quality. My cd sports a different cover. It has Dizzy's on his back blowing the trumpet, the main colour of the cover is black (but it's absolutly the same album). Dizzy played in Monterey that year with a small combo composed by James Moody at tenor (presented by an ilarious Diz "an alto saxophone virtuoso"), alto and flute, Kenny Barron at the piano, Chris White double bass, Rudy Collins drums. The program is pure gillespie-o-rama from the sixties (serious bebop, classic Diz compositions, some bossa novas, some curios uncommon tunes taken with the usual Diz sense of humor). Tunes are not that long, a lot of them falls around the 3 or 4 minutes each, which for a live date are not that much (the only exceptions are Jobim's No more blues and the closing number Vote Dizzy, a Salt Peanuts contrafact both around 13 minutes). The progam opens with a short, fast version of Dizzy Atmosphere (there are some technical audio problems on this first tune, but after that the music continues very well recorded). Then follows a very nice rendition of Manha de Carnaval, then Cup bearers a swinger by Tom McIntosh. Here you can hear James Moody blowing his ass off. Then will come "I'm in the mood for love" the wonderful solo from Moody that has become a vehicle for Jazz vocalese singers like George Benson, Moody himself, Manhattan Transfer etc. The program continues with a Jobim standard, Desafinado taken up tempo. I point out that Diz is in splendid shape as he has always been by the way especially in the sixties. Gee baby is taken as a ballad. The seventh tune is another one by Jobim, No more blues precedeed by a lot of laughters from the band and the audience. The last tune is the most curious here. It is a tune based on Salt Peanuts changes. It is sung by Jon Hendricks (who wrote the lyrics too) the title is simply VOTE DIZZY. Hendricks and Diz did some very good bebop scatting here and the tune is highly entertaining! It was written for the presidential campaign on which Diz was more or less candidated by popular acclaim. It was a sad and confused period that one. Kennedy was shot two months after this recording. So ... you know how history went on.