People

By Guy D. Garcia

"I retire every night," says Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, who turns 70 in October. "Then I wake up the next day and go to work." Diz has no intention of curtailing his brilliant 50-year career. "Jazz is a hundredfold more popular now than it was when I was younger," he says, "and I know more than I did earlier." Last week the bebopping hornman kicked off a two-week engagement at Michael's Pub in Manhattan for an appreciative SRO crowd. Later this year PBS will air a tribute to him staged at the Wolf Trap music festival and featuring Vocalist Carmen McRae and Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. The jazz legend still wails on his trademark bent-up horn, because, he says, "you hear the sound quicker. I never blow straight at anybody unless it's an angel up in the heavens."

With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York, with other bureaus