World Statesman: The Ambassadorial LPs of Dizzy Gillespie
-
Published:March 2024
In 1956 Dizzy Gillespie became the first jazz musician to participate in the State Department’s Cultural Presentations program, a highly public aspect of the US government’s Cold War propaganda efforts abroad. Seeking to capitalize on this historic moment, Gillespie’s record label issued two LPs featuring his ambassadorial ensemble: World Statesman (1956) and Dizzy in Greece (1957). Chapter 4 investigates the ways in which both records sit at the contested intersection of jazz, the struggle for racial equality, and international Cold War politics. This chapter asks: How did record making use the sounds of Black performance to make a political argument? It focuses on the collaboration of Gillespie (the musician), Marshall Stearns (the liner-notes author), and Norman Granz (the label owner) to understand how record makers chose to curate, document, design, and market jazz during this charged political moment.
Bibliography
Columbia Center for Oral History, Columbia University Libraries, New York City
Popular Arts Project, Oral History, 1958–1960
George Avakian Private Archives, Riverdale, NY (GAA)
Institute of Jazz Studies, John Cotton Dana Library, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ (IJS)
Charles Mingus Clippings File
Dizzy Gillespie Clippings File
Marshall Winslow Stearns Collection, MC 030 (MSC)
Newport Jazz Festival Records, MC 038
Record Company Files
Library of Congress, Music Division, Washington, DC
Charles Mingus Collection, 2019 organization (CMC-2019)
Louis Armstrong House Museum, Kupferberg Center for the Arts at Queens College,
City University of New York (LAHM)
Gösta Hägglöf Collection
Satchmo Collection
New York Public Library, Music Division, New York City
George Avakian and Anahid Ajemian papers, JPB 14–28 (AAP)
Teo Macero Collection, JPB 00–8 (TMC)
Southern Folklife Collection, the Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill
Michael Jarrett Collection for the Study of Record Production #20510, https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/20510
George Avakian, interview with the author, July 2012.
Michael Cuscuna, interview with the author, November 2011.
Dan Morgenstern, interview with the author, March 8, 2012.
Dave Usher, telephone interview with the author, July 9, 2015.
Arkansas State Press
Atlanta Daily World
Billboard
Boston Globe
Cash Box
Chicago Daily Tribune
Chicago Defender
Coda
Denver Post
Down Beat
Esquire
Fanfare: The Magazine for Serious Record Collectors
Fortune
Gramophone
High Fidelity Magazine
Huntsville (AL) Times
International Herald Tribune
Jazz Review
JazzTimes
Jazz Today
Jet
Life
Los Angeles Times
Metronome
New York Amsterdam News
New Yorker
New York Journal-American
New York News
New York Times
New York Times Magazine
Pittsburgh Courier
Popular Science
Record Changer
San Francisco Chronicle
Saturday Review
Schwann Long Playing Record Catalog
Time
Variety
Washington Afro-American