The current subject in Steve Cerra’s Jazz Profiles blog is Jack Tracy, a former editor of Down Beat magazine and producer of important records during a yeasty period of Chicago’s jazz history. His anecdotes about encounters with musicians include disclosure of an aspect of Dizzy Gillespie’s personality that is rarely emphasized. To read it, go here and scroll down to “Jimmy Yancey Memorial.” The piece includes a rare photograph reinforcing an essential point in Tracy’s story — that before he helped evolve bebop, Gillespie developed in an older tradition and never lost his respect for it.
To read a Rifftides post with other remembrance of Dizzy, click here.