Cohen, H. G., 2011. ‘Visions of Freedom: Duke Ellington in the Soviet Union’, Popular Music 30/3: 297-318.  

Visions of Freedom: Duke Ellington in the Soviet Union Dr Harvey G Cohen  Lecturer in Cultural and Creative Industries  Email harvey.cohen@kcl.ac.uk Tel +44 (0)20 7848 1358  Culture, Media and Creative Industries King’s College London  2C Chesham Building Strand Campus London WC2R 2LS  This pre-print paper is copyright of the author, but it is free to be used for research purposes as long as it is properly attributed. Permissions for multiple reproductions should be addressed to the author. This paper is intended to circulate work that readers might not otherwise be able to access. If your institution does subscribe to the journal, please access it via that link.

Please cite as Cohen, H. G., 2011. ‘Visions of Freedom: Duke Ellington in the Soviet Union’, Popular Music 30/3: 297-318.

IMPORTANT: When referring to this paper, please check the page numbers in the journal published version and cite these

1

VISIONS OF FREEDOM:

DUKE ELLINGTON IN THE SOVIET UNION

An article by Dr. Harvey G. Cohen

Lecturer in Cultural and Creative Industries King's College London

Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries Room 2C, Chesham Building

Strand London WC2R 2LS

UNITED KINGDOM -------------------------------------------------

harvey.cohen@kcl.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 1358

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/depts/cci/ http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/cmci/people/academic/cohen/index.aspx

Please cite as:

Cohen, H. G., 2011. ‘Visions of Freedom: Duke Ellington in the Soviet Union’, Popular Music 30/3: 297-318.

ABSTRACT

The Duke Ellington orchestra’s 1971 visit to the Soviet Union (USSR) marked their most important and publicized State Department tour, following acclaimed 1960s State tours they made to the Middle East, Near East, Asia and Africa. The Soviet tour occurred during the efforts of President Richard Nixon to establish détente at the height of the Cold War between the United States, the Soviet Union and China. Ellington found not just acceptance in Communist and satellite countries, but rabid enthusiasm that belied official Soviet government disdain or censorship of American jazz. While he was magnanimous as usual to Soviet fans and engaged in no political grandstanding, Ellington wanted his performances and presence to embody the differences between what he viewed as the freedom and democracy of his home country, and the current situation in the Soviet Union. Ellington’s multi-layered vision of freedom, and the various struggles that he, the band, and State Department officials encountered during the tour provided a sharp contrast to the domineering official Soviet presence. The tour exposed the limits of what the closed society of the Soviet government could shield from their own people. Ellington made a strong impact, the strongest that any American artist had yet made in the Soviet Union.

BIO

Harvey G. Cohen is a cultural historian at the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London.

2

The Duke Ellington orchestra’s visit to the Soviet Union (USSR) during September

and October 1971 marked their most important and publicized State Department tour ever,

following acclaimed and successful State tours they made during the 1960s to the Middle

East, Near East, Asia and Africa. The Soviet tour occurred during the efforts of President

Richard Nixon to establish détente at the height of the Cold War between the United States,

the Soviet Union and China. The announcement of the tour made the front page of the New

York Times, and the Washington D.C. Star linked the Soviets’ acceptance of Ellington (who

they ruled out for a tour in 1962) to Soviet counter-strategy in response to Nixon’s recent

friendly overtures, including the announcement of a visit to Communist China. Before

Ellington’s tour began, Nixon also announced his own upcoming trip to the Soviet Union.

The Chicago Tribune’s Moscow correspondent reported that Ellington’s arrival was being

‘seen as a big shot in the arm for the [cultural] exchange program…[which] serve[s] as one

barometer of the overall state of Soviet-American relations. The current situation, on that

standard, has not been good’. A six-month American freeze after the Soviet-led invasion of

Czechslovakia in 1968, a cancellation of a 1970 Bolshoi Ballet American tour because of

Jewish Defense League protests, and a currently unfulfilled exchange contract between the

U.S. and USSR were cited as evidence for this observation. Before he left the country,

Ellington’s unprecedented touring success would completely turn around the recent history

of stymied cultural exchanges between the two countries.

Other jazz figures preceded Ellington to the USSR, including Benny Goodman

(1962), Earl Hines (1966) and Charles Lloyd (1967), but Ellington was the most famous

single American cultural figure to tour the country yet. The Fresno Bee voiced ‘one

misgiving’ about the tour. They characterized Goodman as a ‘notably taciturn fellow whose

stage talk, if any, was brief’. Ellington, on the other hand, ‘has a penchant for wry, elaborate,

3

ornamental, mock-pretentious, multi-syllabic patter between numbers’. They warned the

Russians to ‘start prepping their most facile and sophisticated interpreter’. Ellington, as

usual, experienced no trouble communicating: his Soviet audience, prepared for his

appearance by years of Voice Of America (VOA) jazz radio broadcasts and expensive illegal

bootleg recordings, gave him a reception of Beatlemania proportions wherever he went.1

During the 1970s, the State Department greatly increased Ellington and the

orchestra’s diplomatic appearances around the world, probably inspired by the immense

amount of positive international publicity resulting from Ellington’s appearance at the Nixon

White House in April 1969, where he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the

highest civilian award given by the United States. As demonstrated on numerous previous

State-sponsored tours, Ellington could be counted on to represent the United States with

grace and the consistent support of the idea of ‘freedom’. Ellington found not just

acceptance in Communist and satellite countries, but often rabid enthusiasm that belied

official Soviet government disdain or censorship of American jazz.

Yet, Ellington was no propaganda-spouting mouthpiece for the American

government. He had his own ideas to communicate as well, ideas expressed for decades that

would now receive an unprecedented international airing. As seen in publicity for his 1963

State tour, and in international press clippings distributed by the Government in the years

following the tour, Ellington and his music were portrayed abroad as the pinnacle of

American culture. In the 1950s, numerous controversies erupted within the U.S.

1 “Duke Takes Jazz to Reds in September,” Boston Herald Traveler (8 May 1971); “Duke In The USSR,” Fresno

[CA] Bee (11 May 1971); (Astrachan, 1971); (Lairet, 1971); (Sherman, 1971); (Smith, 13 September 1971); (Yuenger,

1971). Clippings from the Duke Ellington Scrapbooks [DES] 14:69, 71, National Museum of American History,

Smithsonian Institution [NMAH/SI].

4

government establishment when Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie were sent abroad by

the State Department in the mid-1950s, and jazz tours were discontinued for years

afterward; in the 1960s and 1970s, the United States government depicted jazz as high

culture, the best America had to offer. Times were changing.2

With the placing of Ellington on a State-sponsored Soviet tour, music served again as

an instrument signifying change in the portrayal and treatment of blacks in America and

around the world, and as evidence of what blacks could achieve in the United States. For

years, Ellington had represented black achievement and artistry like no one else in the jazz

and black communities. Starting in the 1960s, the U.S. government appropriated that image

to sell a positive vision of American character and respectability to the world. Once again, as

occurred many times during his illustrious half-century career, Ellington was seen as existing

in a realm beyond entertainment, as signifying something important about America and the

world. In this period, his influence moved beyond the U.S. and western Europe and would

continue to do so for the rest of his career.

It took several months to nail down logistics for the Soviet tour. Originally, the

vocalists Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan were penciled in to accompany Ellington and the

orchestra, but the idea was quickly dropped. In early negotiations during January 1971,

Cress Courtney, Ellington’s personal manager, told State Department personnel that

Ellington initially felt hesitant to tour the Soviet Union ‘because he’s such an anti-

communist’. Once again, Ellington’s birthday appearance at the White House lent additional

status to his presence. When Alla A. Butrova, head of the Western European and American

section of the USSR Ministry of Culture, voiced skepticism about bringing Ellington to her

2 (Robertson, 1965); (Taubman, 1965). These front-page clippings from DES 7:38, NMAH/SI.

5

country, the State Department’s director of Cultural Presentations in Europe noted that

‘Duke Ellington was held in particularly high esteem by the President’.3

For their services, the band received a rate of $19,000 per week (almost $100,000

in today’s dollars), for four 140-minute concerts and one guaranteed non-travel, non-

performing day per week. The State Department also paid $10,856 in pre-tour expenses.

Two extra shows booked during the tour in Moscow earned the band another $18,000.

Altogether, the Ellington orchestra played 22 sold-out shows in 5 locales over 33 days for a

combined audience of 126,000, more shows per week than the original contract called for.

Ellington’s booking agency informed the State Department that, on his last European tour,

Ellington earned $26,500 per week, which they felt showed ‘he is sincere in his desire to

serve’. With the added shows, the orchestra actually pulled in a little more than $25,000 per

week. Actually, they would have made that much if the Internal Revenue Service did not

insist on taking the contract’s final payment of $16,000 to help defray over $100,000 in

back taxes they claimed Duke Ellington Inc. owed them. It seemed particularly crass to

garnish Ellington’s wages when he was working on behalf of his country.

Perhaps Ellington’s ‘desire to serve’ was best demonstrated by the fact that he and

the orchestra consistently played much longer shows than contracted for, of anywhere

between 180-210 minutes, some of the longest concerts the band ever performed. The

USSR state-run promoter Goskontsert paid most tour expenses, including airfare and hotels,

as well as fees of $1,000 per show to the United States, and $2,000 to the Soviet Union.

3 Frances Church to Irene Carstones, 12 January 1970; Memo, [unknown State Department employee] to Mark B.

Lewis, 18 January 1971; Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation, “US/USSR Cultural Presentations,” 10

February 70. All documents in this paragraph from: MC-468, Box 61, Folder 14, Bureau of Educational and Cultural

Affairs Historical Collections (CU), Special Collections Division, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville, AK

[BECAHC/SCD/UAL].

6

Such conditions did not keep Goskonsert from making ‘a great deal of money out of the

tour,’ according to the tour’s State Department escort officer Joseph A. Presel. The State

Department’s share of money from the concerts came to $73,111, including the fees from

Goskontsert, reducing the net cost of the Ellington tour for the U.S. Government to just

$58,812; an absolute bargain considering the wealth of positive international publicity

garnered.4

It represented no accident that the Ellington tour was announced as an era of détente

between the two Cold War superpowers was beginning.5 Nixon had promised a tougher

attitude toward the United States during his 1968 presidential campaign, but behind the

scenes, along with his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, they attempted to open up

a wider dialogue with Soviet leaders, particularly on issues of nuclear missile disarmament,

4 “Contract,” Folder 14; Cultural Presentations List of Attractions Touring Fiscal Year: Duke Ellington

Orchestra, USSR, [2 different undated copies of this document exist in this folder – most of the information in this

paragraph is from the 2nd, seemingly later, version], Folder 15; John B. Mann to Duke Ellington, Inc., 5 October 1971,

Folder 14; (Presel, report, 1971), Folder 15. All documents in this paragraph from: MC-468, Box 61,

BECAHC/SCD/UAL.

Grant Agreement Between The Government of the United States of America and Duke Ellington, Inc., 15 June

1971, Collection 301, Series 3A, Box 15, Folder 23, Archives Center, National Museum of American History,

Smithsonian Institution [AC/NMAH/SI].

According to Klaus Stratemann’s reckoning, the band played 27 shows in 31 days: (Stratemann, 632).

5 Sources for this section on the Cold War political climate in the early 1970s between the United States and

Soviet Union: Keefer, E., ed. Soviet-American Relations: The Détente Years 1969-1972 (Washington, D.C.): Ch. 4.

Larson, D. 1997. Anatomy of Mistrust: U.S.-Soviet Relations During The Cold War (Ithaca): Ch. 5; Powaski, R. 1998. The

Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917-1991(New York): 173-174, 180-181

7

India-Pakistan relations, the status of Cold War Germany and ending the Vietnam War,

among other concerns. Not all of these discussions bore political or diplomatic fruit, but the

fact that the two countries were communicating more frequently was viewed as positive,

particularly in light of former McCarthyite Nixon’s surprising visits to the Soviet Union and

Communist China in 1972; State Department dispatch traffic during the Ellington tour

mentions both of these future trips. According to Cold War historian Deborah Welch

Larson, the “mistrust” and “deadlock” between the two countries “did not begin to break

until spring 1971,” exactly when the Ellington tour was announced.

The Ellington Soviet tour can be viewed as part of the Nixon administration efforts

toward establishing détente, and the Soviet acceptance of Ellington can also be seen in this

light. During the early 1960s, the Soviets refused to allow Ellington tour their country.

George Avakian, recording executive and producer, spoke with Madame Ekatarina Furtseva,

head of the Soviet Ministry of Culture, while trying to set up a separate jazz event in the

Soviet Union during the early 1960s. She asked for Avakian’s recommendations on

American jazz performers for a State Department tour of the Soviet Union. Avakian

mentioned three artists that he had produced in the past. First, he forwarded Armstrong.

“Too popular,” Furtseva quickly replied. His next suggestion was Ellington, which she

rejected as “too intellectual.” Avakian argued that Ellington represented “our classical jazz

artist” and that this would help Russians relate to him and his work. “Our people wouldn’t

like him,” she stated. Next, Avakian mentioned Goodman, who Furtseva liked best,

particularly after he mentioned that Goodman’s family emigrated from Russia and that his

wife was Georgian. Avakian diplomatically did not mention that Goodman’s Jewish family

fled Russia to avoid pogroms.

8

“The State Department could not dictate to the Soviet government,” Avakian said

decades later. “It was either Benny or nobody. I don’t think they would have invited anybody

else” from the jazz world. Avakian understood why Armstrong met with such resistance from

Soviet officials. “Armstrong would have caused riots in the streets,” he argued, just as he had

in other, less policed areas of the world during international tours. Frank Siscoe, the State

Department’s director of Soviet and Eastern European Cultural Exchanges, told Jet that

Soviet officials expressed the fear that “their youth would get too excited if they saw the more

established jazz groups [such as Ellington and Armstrong] in person and it would look like

they [the youth] had completely accepted Western ideas,” an outcome unacceptable to the

Soviets. A State Department source told the New York Times that Ellington’s name never

emerged in negotiations, but Armstrong and Goodman did, with the Soviets stating their

preference for the latter. As scholar Penny Von Eschen has noted, a successful Soviet tour by

Ellington or another black jazz performer would also have contradicted the Soviets’

assertions of American racism.6

Before the tour, minor complications surfaced. On 2 August 1971, a Soviet

delegation attended the opening for a four-week Ellington stand at New York City’s Rainbow

Grill. According to a local paper, they recognized Ellington’s biggest hits, but, perhaps

because of Nixon’s upcoming trip to Communist China, ‘they showed no emotion when the

Duke introduced his [composition] “Afro-Eurasian Eclipse” by quoting Marshall McLuhan’s

recent conclusion that “the whole world is going Oriental”’. Something else bothered the

delegation even more. Soon thereafter, Vladimir Golovin, Goskontsert’s Deputy Director, 6 George Avakian interview, conducted by the author, 16 April 2001; Bracker, Milton, “Goodman Signs 12 For Russian Tour: Band Will Include At Least Four More Musicians,” New York Times (10 April 1962); Von Eschen, P, 2004. Satchmo Blows Up The World: Jazz Ambassadors Play The Cold War (Boston), 102-103, 111. Avakian produced and recorded a live album of Goodman concert performances from Russia.

9

contacted the State Department to object to ‘the body gyrations of [Ellington] vocalist Tony

Watkins’. The Department informed Courtney that ‘Mr. Golovin has no objections to

Watkins performing as long as his body movements are controlled…[his] major concern is

that if the body gyrations are not markedly reduced, Soviet audiences will respond

unfavorably and the Soviet press will be critical, thus jeopardizing the success of the whole

tour’.7

During the summer of 1971, Ellington also made personal dietary requests. In the

last years of his life, he drank 6-7 glasses of Coca Cola per day, with several spoonfuls of

sugar and fresh lime or lemon juice added, and he felt it necessary to continue this energy-

enhancing regimen on his Soviet tour. He was 72 years old, yet still extraordinarily active

physically and artistically at the time of the Soviet tour. Coca Cola had not yet arrived in the

Soviet Union, but the U.S. embassy in Moscow offered to supply 15 cases of it for his

exclusive use (not the orchestra’s). They warned him that the embassy commissary

frequently ran out of sugar, and that limes were impossible to procure in the USSR, but

lemons were commonly available. Ellington would have to reimburse the embassy’s expenses

for these items ‘upon arrival,’ since such beverage requests stretched ‘diplomatic customs

regulations’. Ellington also demanded a daily steak on tour, the central item in his main daily

meal. Golovin worried that steak might not be available in all five of the cities the band

performed in, and the U.S. embassy informed Ellington that ‘steak in the Soviet Union does

not taste like steak in the United States. And that is one thing the Embassy cannot provide

7 (Lewis, 1971). Clipping from DES14:70, NMAH/SI.

Mark B. Lewis to Cress Courtney, 3 September 1971, MC-468, Box 61, Folder 14, BECAHC/SCD/UAL.

10

the Duke. Cokes and lemon, yes; American steak, no’. The steak issue would return to

haunt the State Department during the tour.8

For their initial descent into the Soviet Union, every member of the Duke Ellington

orchestra flew first-class for the first time, on Ellington’s orders. Ellington had Courtney

communicate to the State Department his insistence that he ‘does not want to arrive in

Moscow in a segregated group’. ‘He said he didn’t want any distinction between himself in

first-class and the band in a different class’, recalled band aide Robert L. Jones. ‘They were

all first-class [when they flew into the Soviet Union on behalf of their country]…it was the

only time he ever mentioned something like that, and he himself flew first-class all the time

and nobody cares. Actually, to the guys, he was first-class, that was their kind of attitude’.

The gesture demonstrated that, for Ellington, this represented a different State Department

tour than previous trips. He had long communicated his antipathy towards communism.

While he was magnanimous as usual to Soviet fans and engaged in no political grandstanding

on the tour, he wanted his performances and presence to embody the differences between

what he viewed as the freedom and democracy of his home country, and the current situation

in the Soviet Union. As he had many times throughout his career, Ellington communicated

by example, rather than more confrontational methods.9

8 Marlin W. Remick to Irene Carstones, 21 June 1971; Marlin W. Remick to Irene Carstones, 4 August 1971;

“Duke Ellington and his Orchestra: Staging and Other Requirements” [undated]. All documents in this paragraph from:

MC-468, Box 61, Folder 16, BECAHC/SCD/UAL. The last document is in Folder 14.

In the last document, it is noted that Mercer Ellington injected his father with Vitamin B12 every day, another

energy-enhancing regimen.

9 Robert L. Jones interview, conducted by Dr. Marcia Greenlee, 31 January 1992, Smithsonian Institution

Ellington Oral History Project [SIEOHP], Tape 3, AC/NMAH/SI; Memo, Irene Carstones, “Duke Ellington and his

11

Escort officer Joseph A. Presel, in his tour report, touched upon some of the reasons

why the Ellington orchestra proved so popular and why Soviet leaders had been resistant to

and threatened by jazz for decades:

The US could send performing seals and get away with it, so great is the desire of the

Soviet population to experience things American. The Ellington orchestra operated

within the atmosphere that those considerations create. It had two other attributes,

though, that set it still further apart from other, similar ventures. First, it was jazz,

and second it was historic. Those who govern the Soviet Union have always had an

ambivalent attitude towards jazz, one that mostly treated it as a phenomenon, and an

undesirable one at that, of the bourgeois world, rather than as an expression of the

oppressed working class in capitalist society. It has always been hard for jazz to be

performed in the USSR.

Life magazine noted that Stalin banned the music during most of his reign, though a couple

of American jazz bands, including one featuring Sidney Bechet, performed in the Soviet

Union during the mid-1920s.10 The principal reason the power of jazz loomed

threateningly to the leadership of a Communist country went beyond the ideological and

political explanations offered by Presel: the music promoted avid freedom of expression, not

just musical, but also sexual, racial, and social. It radiated individual, unpredictable non-

Orchestra: Staging and Other Requirements,” [undated, c. summer 1971], MC-468, Box 61, Folder 14,

BECAHC/SCD/UAL.

10 (Chelminski, 1971); (Presel, report, 2, 4-5).

12

quantifiable creativity, on the bandstand and on the dance floor. Its foundation lay partly in

the religious roots of the spiritual and of gospel music. These were all forbidden properties

in a totalitarian state. These qualities also marked the reasons jazz was so threatening to

many whites and blacks in the United States during the first decades of the twentieth-century,

as Ellington well knew from experience.

Upon arrival in Moscow, the orchestra was greeted by Alexei Batushev, a physicist

and the head of the Moscow Jazz Club who gave Ellington a bear-hug, and ‘40 other diehard

jazz fans eager for a glimpse of one of their long-time favorites of the American music world’.

One of those fans yelled at Ellington: ‘We’ve been waiting for you for centuries!’ Ellington

told the assembled fans and press at the airport that “these are guys who’ve been listening to

what we’ve been doing for a long time, so you feel like it’s all the same family, the same tribe’.

Though almost no Western recordings were officially available in the Soviet Union, VOA had

made Soviet audiences familiar with the Ellington repertoire. One fan at the Moscow airport

said he had taped 500 Ellington songs over a twenty year period. A relatively small number

of fans gathered for Ellington’s initial arrival, but the Soviet press, controlled by the cautious

government, had provided ‘almost no publicity’ of the Ellington tour yet. The jazz grapevine

in the Soviet Union, however, had spread the word and ‘tickets to the concerts [were] already

much sought by Russians with foreign friends and tastes’. In Leningrad, the tour’s first

official stop, as Ellington recalled in his autobiography, ‘we are met by a big band that

marches across the airfield toward us playing Dixieland jazz, with trombones sliding,

clarinets smearing off, and all the musicians blowing in the traditional manner.’11

11 (Chelminski, 1971); (Kaiser,1971); (H. Smith, 1971A. Clippings from DES 14:71, NMAH/SI.

Ellington, D. 1973. Music Is My Mistress (New York), pp. 364-374.

13

Audience reaction to Ellington started ecstatically, and stayed that way. Leningrad

audiences packed a 4,200-seat venue for five nights straight. Tickets were priced at 5 rubles

($5.50 – almost $30 in today’s dollars) for orchestra seats, and about $4 for balcony seats,

with black market prices reaching $50 or more per ticket since demand greatly exceeded

quantity. Every night, hundreds surrounded the venue hoping to scalp tickets. This ticket

situation stayed constant during Ellington’s run in the Soviet Union. In Kiev, tickets proved

so hard to procure that members of the local police band wore their uniforms in order to

sneak into a show. At first, an ‘American official’ expressed alarm about the heightened

police presence, until one of them explained the situation. The audience, ‘predominantly a

young crowd and, by Soviet standards, quite fashionably dressed [with] a few midiskirts,

turtleneck sweaters, wide ties, and bright colors sprinkled through[out]’, demanded 45-60

minutes of encores nightly and stood and applauded for 10 minutes or more after the band

finally left the stage. Even Communist party officials were witnessed smiling and clapping

along. This kind of behavior became common on the tour, but reached a height on the last

night in Leningrad, when Ellington and the band played an hour and a half of encores.

Circumstances like these formed the main reason why Ellington played at least three, and

sometimes close to four hours per show.

When asked by United Press International if the Leningrad audience ‘was one of the

more enthusiastic’ he’d ever seen, Ellington replied, ‘Absolutely. Only more so.’ Trumpeter

Harold (Money) Jackson, who later in the tour sang and played ‘Hello Dolly’ when USSR fans

asked for something by Louis Armstrong, agreed with his boss: ‘It’s great to play for Soviet

audiences. They go wild’. Ellington also found himself impressed by the fact that ‘an awful

lot of young people’ were requesting his autograph. Although Ellington performed esoteric

material on the tour, such as ‘Fife’, ‘Happy Reunion’, ‘La Belle Plus Africaine’ and the full

14

15-minute version of his musical tribute to ‘Harlem’ (dedicated on the first night to the U.S.

Ambassador), Soviet audiences were most excited about the band’s old hits, and to the

orchestra’s chagrin, the repertoire changed little from night to night. Russian crowds also

appreciated tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves’ improvisations on Russian songs entitled

‘Moscow Nights’ and ‘Dark Eyes’. Escort officer Presel felt that Ellington should have

showcased more of his newer, more challenging pieces in order to inspire Russian jazz

composers, as he felt Alvin Ailey did in the recent tour of his ballet company. After Presel

pointed this out, Ellington included ‘more modern pieces’.12

The State Department seemed particularly excited about after-hours jam sessions,

some official and some not, between Soviet musicians and the Ellington orchestra.13 On the

afternoon of 16 September, an official jam session sponsored by the Leningrad Union of

Composers occurred at the Dom Druzhby (the ‘Friendship House’ of the Institute of Soviet-

American Relations). This represented the kind of ‘generally stiff and structured “warm

12 “Enthusiasm of Russian fans thrills Ellington,” Toronto Telegram (15 September 1971); Stephen Broening,

“Jazz heats ‘em up: Ellington wow Soviets,” Chicago Sun-Times (14 September 1971); (Ellington, 1973); (Smith, 1971B).

Clippings from DES 14:71, NMAH/SI.

Telegram, American Embassy Moscow to USIA Washington D.C., 19 September 1971; (Klosson, report,

1971); Memo, Mark B. Lewis to Alan A. Reich, “Duke Ellington Phones From Leningrad,” 17 September 1971. MC-468,

Box 61, Folders 14, 15 and 16 respectively, BECAHC/SCD/UAL.

(Kaiser, 1971); (Presel, report, 3-4).

13 This section on jam sessions between the Soviets and the Ellington orchestra is based on the following sources:

Telegram, Klosson / American Embassy Moscow to Secretary of State, 20 September 1971; Telegram, Beam / American

Embassy Moscow to Secretary of State, 9 October 1971. Both documents: MC-468, Box 61, Folders 13 and 15

respectively, BECAHC/SCD/UAL. Jacob Beam was the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union. (Presel, 9, 12).

Story of Vladimir Khavkin: (Von Eschen, 211).

A photo of Ellington on balalaika at the Moscow jam session is included in (Ellington, 1973).

15

meetings” which the Soviet officialdom has become so adept at staging over the years’,

according to the embassy’s report.

But, as a State Department telegram noted in detail, ‘a more important informal

session’ transpired that same night after Ellington’s show at the Kamerton (‘Tuning Fork’)

Jazz Club. Unlike the other session, permission for this show was sought through U.S.

embassy, not Soviet, channels. When Presel brought up the idea to road manager Mercer

Ellington, Ellington’s son ‘enthusiastically’ agreed to it. The event was held in ‘strict

secrecy’ with supposedly only club members attending, and Ellington’s musicians were only

told the location ten minutes before their arrival. Despite such measures, 150 people

packed the club, including ‘several prominent Soviet jazz musicians…the head of the

Leningrad Composers Union…Life and AP photographers….and watch dogs from the Dom

Druzhby and Gostkontsert’. They saw a impromptu 17-piece jazz band, almost evenly

comprised of Soviet jazzers and Ellington band members, perform. Presel found the show

‘remarkable because…the Ellington band members and Soviet jazz musicians [were joined]

as equals, because of the sophistication of the Soviet musicians and the depth of their

knowledge of jazz…and because the [Ellington] band found it fun’. Over a hundred people

waited outside, watching the proceedings for hours through sidewalk level windows. When

Ellington arrived, he was promptly ‘caught in [the] press of [the] enthusiastic crowd, and left

almost immediately. Kamerton members said later they were “mortified” by the incident and

hoped Duke was not offended’. The next day, U.S. embassy officials were informed that the

club ‘would be made inactive for at least a year’ for scheduling the jam session sans official

permission. The man who headed the Dixieland band that greeted the Ellingtonians at the

airport ‘is also scheduled for at least an oral dressing down for not requesting prior

permission’. The main organizer of the Kamerton jam session, Vladimir Khavkin, ‘twenty-

16

six, Jewish…[with] a full beard and rather wild bushy hair,’ was assigned the task of

submitting himself to Soviet officials because he was the organization’s ‘expendable man’.

‘The police all know me, because I am a suspicious person,’ he told State Department

officials. ‘I have friends in Europe, America, and Israel and have therefore been

photographed, bugged, and taken in for questioning many times’. Such was the price of

dissent in the USSR; these incidents during the Ellington tour demonstrated that Soviet

government officials were prepared to allow only so much freedom without sanction.

State Department files document an additional official session at the Dom Druzhby

in Moscow near the end of the tour. A big band composed of both American and Soviet

musicians, including electric guitar and flugelhorn, offered several impromptu numbers.

Ellington performed a new song on piano, announcing it by saying: ‘I have composed a new

song for you called “My Love”’. He later joined the group on balalaika, a present from the

Soviet musicians.

Soviet authorities tended to discourage, or at least insist on closely scrutinizing any

contacts between Soviet and American citizens, especially musicians. When Mercer

Ellington planned to accept an invitation for him and other Ellington band members to

witness a rehearsal of the Minsk Philharmonic, a Goskonsert representative told him ‘that

they had checked with the appropriate parties and that Mercer was mistaken’. According to

the embassy report, the representative claimed that Mercer had been ‘led…down the garden

path. Mercer, a man of the world if ever there was one, somewhat heatedly let Goskonsert

know in no uncertain terms that if anyone was trying to fool anyone else, it was Goskonsert,

not the Minsk musician’ who invited the band. Mercer, his father, and other band members

ended up viewing and enjoying the rehearsal. As B. H. Klosson of the U.S. embassy recalled,

guards, police, or Goskonsert interpreters and employees were ubiquitous at Ellington

17

shows, particularly at theatre doors after performances, to keep social and musical

fraternization between Soviets and Americans to a minimum. ‘In Minsk, the lobby of the

stage entrance was almost wall-to-wall with “goons”’, Klosson reported. While Goskonsert

officials assured U.S. officials that security personnel were just ‘simple employees of the

theater’, embassy employees and some Russian civilians present felt that some of the ‘goons’

were KGB officers. However, as Klosson noted, such attempts at intimidation and isolation

did not curtail Ellington and the band’s efforts to establish contacts with Soviets ‘in every

city’ they visited. Ellington ‘talked and met and jammed with Soviets’. More importantly, the

State Department encouraged such activity, which served as a counterpoint to the Ellington

orchestra’s extensive 1963 State tour through the middle and near east, when the band

complained that they only encountered elites. In the Soviet case, and in the band’s

subsequent dates in Eastern Europe, ‘it was the Communist elite that that U.S. officials were

hoping to bypass’ in order to reach the ‘man in the street’, according to historian Penny Von

Eschen (2004, p.191).14

Presel found that ‘the Soviets were scared of Ellington, both personally and

because…of his relationship with the President, and because of the Duke’s importance in the

United States.’ He felt that the announcement of Nixon’s upcoming visit to the USSR

exacerbated this fear, and the accompanying desire to do nothing to offend Ellington in his

travels. Presel also felt that such circumstances ensured a smoother tour for the

Ellingtonians, resulting in far fewer inconveniences, such as the lost luggage, stolen

costumes, last-minute scheduling and bad pianos that plagued Earl Hines’ 1966 Soviet tour.

But Presel kept the true identity of the Soviets’ object of fear a secret: ‘I saw no need to

14 (Klosson, report, 1, 5-9); (Von Eschen, 191).

18

enlighten the Soviets who accompanied us as to Ellington’s true nature: that he is a very

thoughtful 72-year-old gentleman who wants basically to be left alone to compose and play

music and have someone – me in this case – to whom he could bitch for an hour or so every

few days’. Presel also remarked that ‘Ellington was very happy to get mad at the Soviets when

I asked him to; it was very effective’. Ellington seemed to have no trouble occasionally

venting frustration at the Soviets for his own reasons as well, without government

intervention.15

Tensions of a different kind arose from the introduction of the issues of race on the

tour. Many articles in the Soviet press dwelled on the subject of Ellington as a black

composer, as if to stress his status as an oppressed minority, and cast aspersions on American

treatment of minorities while praising one of them. ‘The interviewers were by no means

knowledgeable about jazz and were much more interested in getting Ellington to admit that

he was a black composer than they were in his musical accomplishments,’ recalled Presel. At

such times, Ellington pointed out the fact that he had received the Presidential Medal of

Freedom ‘and that he was an “American” composer. He was uninterested, he said, in

people’s color and assumed they were indifferent to his. The Soviet journalists normally

found this a baffling line of thought’. The Embassy reported what occurred when the

Ukrainian Composers Union in Kiev explored the same tack with Ellington present:

It was a fascinating mixture of proclamations of brotherhood and slinging of words.

Here was a self-styled rugged individualist of the American music world meeting with

composers who had made their careers rocking no boats in the sea of socialist

realism. Sparks were inevitable, and when one of the Ukrainians suggested that the

Duke as a “successful Negro musician and composer” really represented the product 15 (Presel, report, 1971); (Von Eschen, 2004, 198-199).

19

of his environment, Ellington flared. Every man must play his own music, he said,

and if he tries to imitate others he is a failure. He, Ellington, had succeeded by

creating his own distinct music, and he owed his success to no one and nothing but

his own hard work and creativity. And furthermore, to say that there is such a thing

as Negro jazz is simply ignorant. There is only jazz, and every musician plays it in his

own style, if he is genuine, regardless of skin color. Neatly mouse-trapped, the

Ukrainians all nodded in pious acknowledgement of the truth in this, and the

meeting ended soon after with words of brotherhood and an exchange of gifts.16

Ellington’s difference of opinion with these observers represented a declaration of

the musical and racial freedom he had fought for and won in the United States over the

previous half-century, a freedom that clearly did not exist in the Soviet Union. It also

signified his broad rejection of any kind of categorization. As was true on his previous State

Department-sponsored tours, especially in 1963 and 1966, Ellington was not about to allow

others, particularly Communists, use his race to bash his country and its way of life, or call

into question why he had achieved so much success. At home, Ellington had represented

what he referred to as “Negro music” since the 1920s, had been called a “race leader” in the

black press since the early 1930s, authored dozens of compositions programmatically

celebrating African American history and personages, played hundreds of benefits for black

organisations, postulated at length about black history in interviews in national newspapers,

and even participated in a sit-in in Baltimore in 1960. But overseas, while representing his

country, in the tradition of American diplomats, he refused to badmouth his country,

preferring to dwell on the progress that had been made in the area of race relations and the 16 (Klosson, report, 6); (Presel, report, 4).

20

advantages of American democracy. In 1966, Ellington recalled that when encountering

foreigners on State Department tours, “the big question when they meet an American negro

[sic] is always the race problem.” They would ask if “it was true that a Negro had been beaten

up in Alabama a few days back. ‘It’s true,’ I said, ‘but where else in the world could that

happen and you’d know about it the next day way over here?’ We have all the problems of a

free country.”17

The Soviet press gave the Ellington tour unprecedented coverage. While the Soviet

media often interviewed foreign artists, ‘published results are generally woefully small’,

according to the embassy’s report. ‘If an article does result, it is generally well after the

performing arts group has left town – the Soviets don’t believe in free advertising for foreign

groups’. This established model didn’t apply on the Ellington tour. The embassy counted

nine ‘favorable’ reviews printed while Ellington remained in the country, with some of them

classified as ‘raves’. Most impressive was a large 1/3rd page spread entitled ‘Orchestra of

Virtuosos’ in Pravda, the largest circulation newspaper in the Soviet Union. Jacob Beam,

the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, wrote in a telegram to Secretary of State William

P. Rogers that this marked the first time ‘Pravda has even acknowledged the existence in the

country of a U.S. performing arts group’. Lavish compliments were offered by the review, as

well as this comment about Ellington’s ‘Harlem’: ‘full of melancholy, sadness and the

rebelliousness of the Negro ghetto’. This article was followed by a piece called ‘Duke

Ellington: I Love You!’ in Sovetskaya Rossiya, one of Russia’s most conservative papers.

17 Sister Mary Felice, W.S., “An Interview with the Duke,” Africa (July 1969)

21

‘This, from the organ of the Party Central Committee, was heady stuff indeed!,’ exulted the

embassy’s report.18

North American press reaction also proved voluminous and telling. Aside from

syndicated reviews of the concerts, the Ellington tour also inspired many pieces on editorial

pages that linked him to the hopes and anxieties of the Cold War. A Canadian paper noted

the ‘delirious reaction’ to Ellington in the Soviet Union, and viewed it as ‘a further reminder

that not all Russians are cast in the same mould as the bureaucratic and diplomatic zealots

who speak and act for them’. The editorial page of the Topeka [Kansas] State Journal

commented that ‘the international language of music – especially lighthearted jazz – is a good

way to take minds off sober world problems. We might even dare hope it is a “disarming”

exchange of pleasantries’. In an editorial called ‘ “Da” for the Duke’, the Hartford

[Connecticut] Times remarked that ‘it is the good fortune of the United States that it has other

things to export besides computers, office machines and automobiles…we can safely say the

Duke is one of our superior exports’. A Schenectady Gazette editorial on ‘Duke Power’

18 Telegram, Beam / American Embassy to Secretary of State, 13 October 1971, MC-468, Box 61, Folder 13,

BECAHC/SCD/UAL. When the U.S. Ambassador writes the telegram himself, one can assume the importance of the

message.

(Klosson, report, 7); (Presel, report, 4).

The State Department gave Ellington a full translation of the Pravda article, and he quoted parts of it within the

“Russian Journal” in his autobiography, praising its “perceptive comments.” No notice was made of Pravda’s comments on

Harlem: (Ellington, 368).

22

pointed out how many of the concerts were sold out early, ‘attesting to the popularity of

American jazz in a country whose officialdom frowns on it’.19

To the chagrin of Ellington, the State Department and the Soviets, the story that

dominated American media coverage of the tour centered on the steak controversy.20 ‘Duke

Can’t Cut It On Russian Steaks’, ran a typical headline in the 20 September edition of the

Los Angeles Times. The article claimed Ellington ‘was unable to eat Russian steak and was

losing five pounds a day’, and that the tour was in possible jeopardy.

The truth proved less dramatic, but underreported. As the U.S. embassy and

Goskonsert warned, Soviet steaks were far from Ellington’s usual standard. Just a few days

into the tour, he requested steaks from Reuben’s, one of his favourite restaurants in New

York, shipped at his own expense. Pan Am Airlines flew them from New York to Moscow

19 “Curtain-Raiser,” Brantford, Ontario Canada Expositor (15 September 1971); “’Da’ for the Duke,” Hartford

[CT] Times (16 September 1971); “Duke Power,” Schnectady [NY] Gazette (16 September 1971); “Ellington has the reds

jumping,” Topeka [KS] State Journal (18 September 1971). Clippings from DES 14:71, NMAH/SI.

20 This section on the steak controversy is based on the following sources: “12 steaks catch up with Duke in

Minsk,” Chicago Sun-Times (21 September 1971); “Steak And Potatoes: Duke to Eat Royally in Soviet-U.S. Style,”

Philadelphia Inquirer (21 September 1971); (Morris Jr., 1971). Clippings from DES 14:71, NMAH/SI.

Mark B. Lewis to Alan A. Reich, 17 September 1971; Telegram, Secretary of State to American Embassy

Moscow, 20 September 1971; Telex to Joseph A. Presel {sender unknown, probably State Department, Washington D.C.],

21 September 1971; B. H. Klosson / American Embassy Moscow to Secretary of State, 22 September 1971; Telegram,

Secretary of State to American Embassy Moscow, 23 September 1971. All documents in this paragraph from: MC-468,

Box 61, Folder 16, BECAHC/SCD/UAL.

(Klosson, report, 9); (Presel, report, 5-6).

Ellington in his autobiography and Robert G. Kaiser, in his previously referenced Washington Post article,

claimed that Ellington actually gained ten pounds on the tour: Ellington, 373.

The steaks actually came from Gristede’s, the New York supplier of the steaks for Reuben’s restaurant.

23

gratis. Russian customs officials held up and ruined the first shipment for lack of an

international certificate of origin. A second batch caught up with Ellington in Minsk, the

second stop on the tour. While State Department personnel noticed that the steaks helped

the ‘Ellington morale’, they also reported that his health was never in ‘jeopardy’. When Dr.

Logan, Ellington’s personal physician and close friend, visited the tour in Rostov, he found

that Ellington had actually gained five pounds. Even before the steak controversy, Ellington

had voiced his enjoyment of Russian food on the tour, especially borscht and caviar. But

steak represented his staple food, and he missed it, though he also told the Associated Press

that ‘there is nothing like a cheeseburger’. ‘While admiring Duke’s patriotism and taste’,

Secretary of State Rogers, in a priority telegram, let the U.S. embassy in Moscow know that

the international publicity resulting from such remarks inspired McDonalds and Gallagher

Steak Houses to contact the State Department with offers to ship cheeseburgers and steak to

Ellington, supposedly in hopes of gaining publicity. Rogers instructed the embassy to ask

Ellington to avoid making food-related comments. Later, Ellington’s friend H. Robert

Udkoff visited the tour, and to Ellington’s delight, taught Russian chefs how to make

American cheeseburgers.

The State Department attempted to find out who leaked the incorrect information

about Ellington’s health. The news stories referenced ‘U.S. officials’, but the Department

determined that it must have been one of the American ‘hangers-on’ in Ellington’s

entourage. While the State Department, including the Secretary of State, were clearly

unhappy about the publicity over the steak controversy, it is also true that a memo written by

the Director of Cultural Presentations before the story was leaked to the American press

explored the possibilities of exploiting Ellington’s culinary displeasure:

24

Jokingly, if we wanted to embarrass the Soviets a little it would have been tempting to

suggest to Reuben’s that they advertise Reuben’s steaks going to Duke Ellington in

Russia. It was not suggested. But Reuben’s is the eatery of a lot of New York

columnists, and Reuben’s would not be concerned about foreign relations or

diplomatic delicacies – only Reuben’s delicacies. Headline: Duke Only Likes

American Steaks.

Ellington, in keeping with his beliefs about communist conspiracies, blamed the rumours on

‘someone in Washington working for the opposition’. He also believed that his rooms were

bugged and photographically surveillanced while in the Soviet Union. Musician/arranger

Aaron Bridgers recalled Ellington telling him that he bowed out of politeness to potential

eavesdroppers whenever entering his Soviet hotel rooms.21

Luckily, the press either did not pick up on or chose not to report on various

alcoholic and sexual shenanigans engaged in by band members. In a handwritten note

composed during the tour, Presel reported that ‘I circle on the black edge of catastrophe all

the time but we’ve avoided it so far…both alcoholic and sexual frustrations appear to be

overcome sufficiently often that none of the band has gone round the bend…in fact morale is

better than I feared’. In his more formal tour report, Presel marvelled at the band’s

‘remarkable ingenuity in contriving to supply themselves with both [sexual and alcoholic]

commodities despite all of the difficult conditions that obtain in the USSR. I am in awe of the

band’s abilities in these areas’. The band particularly objected to the ‘ubiquitous little old

21 Ellington felt he was being bugged by the Soviets: Aaron Bridgers interview, conducted by Patricia Willard, 27

September 1989, SIEOHP, Tape 2, AC/NMAH/SI; Robert and Evelyn Udkoff interview, conducted by Dr. Marcia

Greenlee, 11 March 1991, SIEOHP, Tape 2, AC/NMAH/SI.

25

ladies’ that handled room keys on each floor of their hotels, thereby making it difficult to

sneak guests into their rooms. An English businessman living in the band’s Moscow hotel

complained to the Washington Post of ‘a lot of parties’ late at night. Somehow the tour

avoided ‘scandal’, sometimes by a small margin, according to Presel. One of his favorite

memories in this regard featured a Goskonsert official objecting to two local girls riding the

band’s bus in Leningrad. The official objected ‘bitterly’ to their presence, and said: ‘I don’t

mind people who aren’t in the band on the bus, but why do they have to pick the two people

who are well known as local prostitutes? It’s very uncultured!’22

Living conditions for Ellington and the band were actually quite rough much of the

time in the Soviet Union. They frequently complained of being cold in their hotel rooms.

Udkoff remembered Ellington composing in the bathroom with a hot shower constantly

running so the steam would keep him warm while he finished a commission for a post-USSR

concert piece in Jacksonville, FL. As usual on Soviet tours, everyday staples in America like

soap, hair conditioner, pens, film, and razors were difficult to procure. Aside from the steak

controversy, food often presented problems for the band. Presel felt the problems may have

been purposeful. Not only did food usually arrive ‘cold, delayed and unattractive’, but often

the senior Goskonsert representative failed to guarantee ‘that restaurants stayed open late

enough to ensure that the group got a hot meal after the show’. While he could never prove

it, Presel believed that the head Goskonsert contact ‘was spending less than the budgeted

[five rubles] per day per man and was pocketing the difference. It would not surprise me

either to be told that he had a good sideline going in selling Ellington buttons and records

22 Joseph A. Presel to Mark B. Lewis, handwritten letter, 5 October 1971, MC-468, Box 61, Folder 15,

BECAHC/SCD/UAL.

(Presel, report, 6-8, 12); (Kaiser, 1971).

26

and the jazz brochures’, which were supplied by the State Department for Soviet fans. The

band’s hotels generally had no room service. Food problems were not made easier for the

State Department by the fact that no one had told them until arrival that the Ellington

orchestra had two vegetarians and two diabetics controlling their insulin through diet. These

four band members endured a particularly difficult culinary experience during the tour. A

Washington Post reporter concluded that ‘Ellington and his men seem to have survived the

Soviet Union rather than thrived’. When he went to see the band at breakfast in Moscow one

morning, ‘he found that almost half the men had gone to the American embassy to see the

doctor there’.23

Ticket problems also surfaced in Moscow, the tour’s last stop.24 The State

Department discovered that only 800 of the 4400 seats for the band’s 4 shows went on sale

to the public. The majority of seats were assigned to middle and lower level party

functionaries’ by orders of the Fourth Department of the Party Central Committee. Music

editors at Soviet newspapers received no tickets, and the Moscow Composers Union only got

two. Such were the perils of Goskonsert’s direct connection to the Soviet government. As a

result, long all-night lines of Muscovites gathered at the Teatr Estrady hoping to score

tickets, and the militia was called out to break up the lines. The State Department felt this

approach emanated from the Soviets’ long-term unwillingness to permit ‘good exposure for

American performing arts groups’ in Moscow, ‘the seat of government’. The Soviet

government wanted to control the audience, and perhaps dampen enthusiasm at the shows

23 (Kaiser, ibid); (Presel, report, 5-6); (Udkoff interview, 1991)

24 This section on ticket problems and extra shows in Moscow is based on the following sources: (Ellington, 368-

370); (Klosson, report, 2-3); (Presel, report, 2, 11).

27

for Ellington. With many members of the international press present in Moscow, they did

not wish to provide a ready platform that demonstrated how hugely popular an American

artist could be in the Soviet Union.

Ultimately, because of the ‘general scandal’ and uproar over the lack of Moscow

tickets, Goskonsert ‘made a late and unprecedented request’ to the American Embassy for

extra Ellington shows in Moscow. The U.S. Cultural Affairs Officer in Moscow agreed, but

stipulated that the shows take place in a much larger venue than the Estrady, such as the

Lushniki Sports Palace, which seated nearly 10,000 and had never hosted an American act.

Golovin, deputy director of Goskonsert, replied: ‘Impossible’. He told the embassy that the

Sports Palace was currently laying down ice for future hockey matches. The embassy

responded: ‘Melt the ice’. Golovin again claimed this was ‘impossible’, but, as the State

Department crowed in the official tour report, ‘Goskonsert blinked’ and ‘the ice melted’.

Presel, in his tour report, wrote about what he viewed as the significance of the

Sports Palace shows:

Despite the total lack of advertisement, the hall was sold out for both concerts.

While it meant much more work for the band, it was worth a great deal to experience

the Soviets coming to us to ask us to perform more, to expose still larger numbers to

Ellington’s art. It made up for a lot of no-saying that is a constant feature of Soviet

officialdom on these tours. Obviously they had so badly miscalculated the pressure

for tickets that they had to give in. It was extremely good for our morale.

But not for the band’s morale. They registered their ‘intense disgust’ at the arrangement,

which took away days they would have had off. Even Ellington, usually a tireless workhorse

on the road, had to be ‘worked on’ by Presel and Mercer Ellington before he acceded. The

28

$9,000 fee per show, one of the band’s biggest ever paydays, must have helped convince

him, especially after the IRS had garnished $16,000 of the band’s salary. Another extra

show in Moscow occurred when the Protestant chaplain of the U.S. embassy asked Ellington

to perform a Sacred Concert before a private audience of about 200 international diplomats

at Spaso House. The choir consisted of hastily assembled embassy employees and their

families, rehearsed by Tony Watkins, the band vocalist whose body movements had so upset

Soviet officials in New York City.

Most involved viewed Ellington’s Soviet tour as an unprecedented success. Within a

month following it, he had received letters of thanks and congratulation from both President

Nixon (‘a job well done’), and his Democratic rival in the 1968 election, Senator Hubert H.

Humphrey (‘America is even more in your debt’). Ellington’s influence in the Soviet Union

outlasted his presence. After he left, a leading radio and TV figure in the Soviet Union

devoted two of his programs to American jazz, particularly Ellington, a rare and probably

unprecedented occurrence in the Soviet media. Eight months after the Ellington tour, the

Soviet Union welcomed the Jones-Lewis orchestra, ‘the first…strictly contemporary,

innovative [American] jazz’ group allowed to tour the country. For Ellington personally, he

told many interviewers that his time in the Soviet Union had inspired his writing. ‘Anybody

who writes music, plays music, has a sincere interest in music wants to come to Russia,

particularly the people who write music I’m sure, they all want to come here to see if

breathing the same air that those great composers breathed might help them a little bit,’ he

told an interviewer for Radio Moscow during the tour. ‘This is really the plateau of music.’

During the broadcast, he mentioned Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Shostakovich, and

29

Rachmaninoff. During shows in 1972, he played a new original piece called ‘Moscow

Metro’.25

Ellington’s multi-layered vision of freedom, and the various struggles that he, the

band, and State Department officials encountered during the tour had provided a sharp

contrast to the domineering presence of the Soviet government. The tour helped expose the

limits of what the closed society of the Soviet government could shield from their own

people. Ellington had made a strong impact, the strongest that any American artist had yet

made in the Soviet Union. In a 1972 interview with the New York Times, Ellington

reminisced about meeting audience members who had traveled to see the band from as far as

Mongolia and the Baltics, and how he had brought back ‘three truckloads’ of presents from

Soviet citizens. ‘The concerts ran [for] hours but not a person moved out of a chair the whole

time’, he told them. ‘How often in a lifetime do you get 24 audiences like that?’26

In the month after their last Moscow concert, the Ellington orchestra toured 17

European countries under the billing of ‘American Jazz Week in Eastern Europe’, including

the Soviet satellite states of Poland (where Dizzy Gillespie guested with the band),

25 President Richard Nixon to Duke Ellington, 2 November 1971; Senator Hubert Humphrey to Duke Ellington,

14 October 1971. Both letters from Collection 301, Series 2A, Box 6, Folder 17, AC/NMAH/SI.

Duke Ellington Interview on Radio Moscow, 10 October 1971, RGA 1181, Jerry Valburn Collection, Library of

Congress [JVC/LOC].

“Cultural Presentations List of Attractions,” ibid.

(Beltaire, 1972); (Salkowski, 1972). Clippings from DES 15:74, NMAH/SI.

26 (Wilson, 1972). Clipping from DES 15:72, NMAH/SI. Actually, it was probably 22 or 23 audiences that

Ellington faced in the Soviet Union, not 24 – it’s unclear whether the State Department counted the Spaso House Sacred

Concert as one of their officially credited 22 Ellington performances in the Soviet Union.

30

Yugoslavia and Hungary. Two days after their last European date in Barcelona, the band

began a 24-day nine-country Latin American tour with a show in Rio de Janeiro on 16

November 1971. Once again, the 72-year-old Ellington embarked upon a schedule that

would have exhausted most people, but seemed renewing for him.

By the time Ellington returned from an extensive Asian tour in February 1972, he

had visited over 40 countries during the preceding five months, many under State

Department auspices, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of satisfied ticket holders and

dozens of adulatory State Department embassy reports. He had earned acceptance as an

important, though unofficial, American diplomat from both major American political parties.

The letters from American citizens and representatives during the 1950s and 1960s

protesting the idea of the U.S. government sponsoring jazz musicians abroad formed a

distant and non-recurring memory. No one questioned the idea of jazz as a worthy

ambassador of the United States, even when the State Department began sponsoring shows

by more controversial maverick musicians such as Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus

later in the 1970s. If anything, State Department officials hoped that Coleman and Mingus’

Eastern European audiences would pick up on the sense of rebellion these performers

radiated. Ellington had opened the door with his vision of artistic and political freedom, as

expressed in his music and his diplomatic manner. He had asserted a powerful and lasting

message on behalf of his country, transmitted around the world, without having to stand

upon a soapbox.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

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31

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Musicians,” New York Times

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