He loved the nickname “Dizzy,” and he did everything he could to live up to it. The hyperactive stage antics, the puffed cheeks, the distinctive bent trumpet—it all fed into his persona as a showman.

A trumpet angled skyward, cheeks puffed to impossible proportions, and a burst of rapid-fire notes signaled the arrival of Dizzy Gillespie, one of the architects of modern jazz. Rising to prominence ...

Dizzy Gillespie, the trumpet player whose role as a founding father of modern jazz made him a major figure in 20th-century American music and whose signature moon cheeks and bent trumpet made him one ...