Dizzy Gillespie, born John Birks Gillespie in Cheraw, South Carolina, in 1917, became one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 1940s. After playing trumpet in the big bands of Cab Calloway and Earl "Fatha" Hines, he ushered in a radically new style of music called bebop that revolutionized the jazz world. Known for his extraordinary speed and range and daring sense of harmony, Gillespie performed internationally through the 1980s. He died in 1993.