Jazz Legend, Hospital Hit a High Note; Fund AIDS Ailing Musicians
By BOB GROVES, STAFF WRITER
The photo of Dizzy Gillespie in the hospital lobby is small, but his music and his heart are still larger than life.
In the 15 years since his death, the Dizzy Gillespie Cancer Institute and Memorial Fund at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center has provided millions of dollars of free treatment to hundreds of jazz musicians who otherwise couldn’t have afforded care.
"What we have is the spirit of Dizzy Gillespie," said Dr. Frank Forte, an Englewood oncologist who treated the great bebop trumpeter and Englewood resident during the last months of his life. Gillespie, 75, died of pancreatic cancer at the hospital in 1993.
"What you’ve got is 50 doctors treating people for free just because they need it, and a hospital that doesn’t send them a bill for tests or drugs."
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie famous for his puffed-out cheeks and "up-do" trumpet with the tilted horn bell revolutionized jazz with alto saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker, pianist Bud Powell and other giants.
"He wasn’t rich," Forte said of Gillespie, but he was at least lucky enough to have health insurance.
"Dizzy said, ‘I can’t give you any money, but I can let you use my name,’ " Forte said. "’Promise you’ll help musicians less fortunate than I am.’ "
The jazz life is not an easy one, even for great artists. It usually means decades of touring dank venues and dealing with not- always-scrupulous agents, managers, club owners and recording companies and the temptations of the road.
$5 million in free care
The Dizzy Gillespie Cancer Institute has provided more than $5 million in free medical care for more than 500 jazz musicians since the program’s inception in 1994, according to the hospital. The costs are underwritten by donations to the memorial fund.
Forte, director of the institute and a jazz guitarist himself, treats at least one cancer patient each week through the Gillespie Memorial Fund. Orthopedists, ophthalmologists and dozens of other specialists at Englewood have provided their services pro bono since the fund began in 1994.
The fund has benefited the gamut of jazz performers, from singers and saxophonists to violinists. It is affiliated with the Jazz Foundation of America, a non-profit organization in Manhattan that helps musicians through hard times.
Veteran jazz bassist Dennis Irwin was sidelined in December with back pains from what he thought was a herniated disk after playing concert tours of Brazil and Europe. Irwin does not have health insurance and was referred by the foundation to Englewood. Six days of tests found a tumor on the nerve canal of one of his vertebrae, he said.
"I was very lucky with the care I got from the Jazz Foundation and Englewood and a consortium of cancer doctors there," said Irwin, who lives in Washington Heights.
Though he spent six nights in the hospital, Irwin, 56, said he actually enjoyed it.
"I met all these cats nurses and MRI techs people who had known Dizzy" from the time Gillespie spent there as a patient, Irwin said.
From Englewood, Irwin went to University Hospital in Newark for surgery, and he has been undergoing radiation treatment at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
Irwin played two jobs with Gillespie in the mid-1980s, in Amsterdam and Washington, D.C. When Gillespie realized the latter performance was a benefit for juvenile diabetes, he gave up the spotlight in front of the band and sat in with the other musicians.
"He just joined the background, just one of the guys," Irwin recalled.
Forte has personally seen hundreds of musicians for free, said Wendy Oxenhorn, director of the Jazz Foundation of America in New York.
The entire Hot 8 Brass Band of New Orleans came to Englewood shortly after playing a benefit in New York for Hurricane Katrina victims, Oxenhorn said. One of the musicians had an untreated gash on his leg from carrying his child through the floodwater, she said.
"They checked all of them for free, and gave them lunch," she said.
Thanks to the Gillespie Fund and Englewood Hospital, "It’s all pro bono," she said. "They’ve never turned down a musician in need. There is no place that I know of in this country that has ever done this for such a population of people that spent their lives making this world beautiful."
Musicians who have not needed medical help, but whose friends have benefited from the fund, also admire Gillespie.
"He’s such a giant for me," said Santi Debriano, a bassist who accompanies jazz guitarist Roni Ben-Hur in noon concerts at Englewood.
Debriano, 52, once performed at a jazz festival in Italy with Gillespie. "I’m always thrilled and a little intimidated to be around giants, particularly people in music," Debriano said recently during a concert break at Englewood.
"I was a little tongue-tied" meeting Gillespie, Debriano said. "I don’t remember what he talked about, but it was so easy and cool. He wasn’t trying to come off as big-time. He wanted me to feel at ease. I loved that about him."
Roni Ben-Hur, who performs three days a week at Englewood, is producing a jazz CD whose proceeds will go to the Gillespie program. The idea came from Earl May, a longtime bassist and sideman for Gillespie who died in January at age 80.
"It is sad, but true, there are many musicians who have no safety net," Ben-Hur said.
The Gillespie program has literally saved musicians’ lives, without making them feel like paupers, Ben-Hur said.
"They can walk into the emergency room and be treated with a lot of respect and dignity by doctors and administrators who appreciate their music," he said. "I think it’s wonderful."
***
E-mail: groves@northjersey.com
***
(c) 2008 Record, The; Bergen County, N.J.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.