Cool Hand Lalo

"'Dizzy Gillespie came to Buenos Aires, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. He played for a week to packed houses with an all-star orchestra, including Quincy Jones. It was a big jazz orchestra and I happened to have the same setup in my group. So Osvaldo Fresedo [the famous Argentine tango conductor] owned a ritzy nightclub and wanted to organize a dinner to celebrate Dizzy and his group. He asked me if I wanted to play two or three numbers after dinner. I asked my musicians and they said yes, so we went and played. At the time, I conducted from the piano. When we finished, Dizzy came right away and asked me, "Did you write these charts?" and I said, "Yeah," and he said, "Would you like to come to the United States?" I thought it was a joke. But it wasn't.'
"Schifrin arrived in the U.S. in 1958, and two years later, his breakthrough came when he composed and arranged a million-selling suite, called Gillespiana, for the bebop legend. 'It came out on Verve,' Schifrin remembers, 'which was ancillary to MGM Records, and the head of MGM Records sat on the board of MGM Inc., the biggest studio in Hollywood. He got me the first commissions for MGM films. It was all like a chain.'"

In LA Weekly, Gustavo Turner visits Lalo Schifrin.