To Be, Or Not…To Bop (University of Minnesota), by Dizzy Gillespie with Al Fraser

Dizzy Gillespie did more than revolutionize jazz as a bebop pioneer in the 1940s. He also crafted a new way of being African American-cool, intellectual and willfully inscrutable, an influence on everyone from Miles Davis to Spike Lee. The reissue of his autobiography is an opportunity to see his accomplishments through his own bespectacled eyes and gain an additional sense of his style. He wrote like he played, earthy, humorous, fast and motivated by the fierce self-respect of a man who endured little respect early in life. Diz breaks away repeatedly for interviews with notables from his era, including such esteemed musicians as Max Roach, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and Thelonious Monk.