Learning the Language
Dizzy Gillespie, Howard McGhee, and Fats Navarro—the first three bebop trumpeters out of the gate—once crossed paths in Chicago. Navarro’s biographers Leif Bo Petersen and Theo Rehak think the summit occurred in August 1944. McGhee was subbing in Billy Eckstine’s band, which included Gillespie. Navarro was likely in town with Andy Kirk. After their gigs, the threesome would jam in a park around 4 a.m.
“We’d play trio—one guy playing lead, the other second, the other third,” McGhee recalled in an unfinished autobiography that his son, Howard
