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I stumbled upon a recent Rifftides post in which Doug Ramsey reprinted an obituary he wrote for Dizzy Gillespie in the Los Angeles Times in 1993. Doug had some beautiful things to say about Diz, and I encourage you to read the full piece. In the comments, Mark Stryker of the Detroit Free Press passed a great tidbit about Diz:

I have heard lots of personal stories from Dave Usher, one of Dizzy's closest friends whom I have gotten to know well here in Detroit. You know Dave? Dizzy's partner in Dee Gee, produced records for Argo (Moody, Jamal, etc) before entering the family oil reclamation business and then transforming it into Marine Pollution Control, one of the world's leading oil spil/disaster clean-up companies. They did the Exxon Valdez clean-up among others. Dave put Dizzy on his board and he took the responsibility seriously -- coming to Detroit to for all the annual meetings. The idea of Dizzy in that board room is such a fabulous image.

Indeed.


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