The Real Ambassadors
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Author | : Keith Hatschek |
Publisher | : Univ. Press of Mississippi |
Total Pages | : 221 |
Release | : 2022-02-04 |
Genre | : Music |
ISBN | : 1496837789 |
Recipient of a 2023 Certificate of Merit for Best Historical Research in Recorded Jazz from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Keith Hatschek tells the story of three determined artists: Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Iola Brubeck and the stand they took against segregation by writing and performing a jazz musical titled The Real Ambassadors. First conceived by the Brubecks in 1956, the musical’s journey to the stage for its 1962 premiere tracks extraordinary twists and turns across the backdrop of the civil rights movement. A variety of colorful characters, from Broadway impresarios to gang-connected managers, surface in the compelling storyline. During the Cold War, the US State Department enlisted some of America’s greatest musicians to serve as jazz ambassadors, touring the world to trumpet a so-called “free society.” Honored as celebrities abroad, the jazz ambassadors, who were overwhelmingly African Americans, returned home to racial discrimination and deferred dreams. The Brubecks used this double standard as the central message for the musical, deploying humor and pathos to share perspectives on American values. On September 23, 1962, The Real Ambassadors’s stunning debut moved a packed arena at the Monterey Jazz Festival to laughter, joy, and tears. Although critics unanimously hailed the performance, it sadly became a footnote in cast members’ bios. The enormous cost of reassembling the star-studded cast made the creation impossible to stage and tour. However, The Real Ambassadors: Dave and Iola Brubeck and Louis Armstrong Challenge Segregation caps this jazz story by detailing how the show was triumphantly revived in 2013 by the Detroit Jazz Festival and in 2014 by Jazz at Lincoln Center. This reaffirmed the musical’s place as an integral part of America’s jazz history and served as an important reminder of how artists’ voices are a powerful force for social change.
Author | : Keith Hatschek |
Publisher | : Univ. Press of Mississippi |
Total Pages | : 288 |
Release | : 2022-02-04 |
Genre | : Music |
ISBN | : 1496837800 |
Keith Hatschek tells the story of three determined artists: Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Iola Brubeck and the stand they took against segregation by writing and performing a jazz musical titled The Real Ambassadors. First conceived by the Brubecks in 1956, the musical’s journey to the stage for its 1962 premiere tracks extraordinary twists and turns across the backdrop of the civil rights movement. A variety of colorful characters, from Broadway impresarios to gang-connected managers, surface in the compelling storyline. During the Cold War, the US State Department enlisted some of America’s greatest musicians to serve as jazz ambassadors, touring the world to trumpet a so-called “free society.” Honored as celebrities abroad, the jazz ambassadors, who were overwhelmingly African Americans, returned home to racial discrimination and deferred dreams. The Brubecks used this double standard as the central message for the musical, deploying humor and pathos to share perspectives on American values. On September 23, 1962, The Real Ambassadors’s stunning debut moved a packed arena at the Monterey Jazz Festival to laughter, joy, and tears. Although critics unanimously hailed the performance, it sadly became a footnote in cast members’ bios. The enormous cost of reassembling the star-studded cast made the creation impossible to stage and tour. However, The Real Ambassadors: Dave and Iola Brubeck and Louis Armstrong Challenge Segregation caps this jazz story by detailing how the show was triumphantly revived in 2013 by the Detroit Jazz Festival and in 2014 by Jazz at Lincoln Center. This reaffirmed the musical’s place as an integral part of America’s jazz history and served as an important reminder of how artists’ voices are a powerful force for social change.
Author | : Penny VON ESCHEN |
Publisher | : Harvard University Press |
Total Pages | : 342 |
Release | : 2009-06-30 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0674044711 |
At the height of the ideological antagonism of the Cold War, the U.S. State Department unleashed an unexpected tool in its battle against Communism: jazz. From 1956 through the late 1970s, America dispatched its finest jazz musicians to the far corners of the earth, from Iraq to India, from the Congo to the Soviet Union, in order to win the hearts and minds of the Third World and to counter perceptions of American racism. Penny Von Eschen escorts us across the globe, backstage and onstage, as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and other jazz luminaries spread their music and their ideas further than the State Department anticipated. Both in concert and after hours, through political statements and romantic liaisons, these musicians broke through the government's official narrative and gave their audiences an unprecedented vision of the black American experience. In the process, new collaborations developed between Americans and the formerly colonized peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East--collaborations that fostered greater racial pride and solidarity. Though intended as a color-blind promotion of democracy, this unique Cold War strategy unintentionally demonstrated the essential role of African Americans in U.S. national culture. Through the tales of these tours, Von Eschen captures the fascinating interplay between the efforts of the State Department and the progressive agendas of the artists themselves, as all struggled to redefine a more inclusive and integrated American nation on the world stage.
Author | : Ricky Riccardi |
Publisher | : Vintage |
Total Pages | : 417 |
Release | : 2011-06-21 |
Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | : 030737923X |
In this richly detailed and prodigiously researched book, jazz scholar and musician Ricky Riccardi reveals for the first time the genius and remarkable achievements of the last 25 years of Louis Armstrong’s life, providing along the way a comprehensive study of one of the best-known and most accomplished jazz stars of our time. Much has been written about Armstrong, but the majority of it focuses on the early and middle stages of his career. During the last third of his career, Armstrong was often dismissed as a buffoonish if popular entertainer. Riccardi shows us instead the inventiveness and depth of his music during this time. These are the years of his highest-charting hits, including “Mack the Knife” and “Hello, Dolly"; the famed collaborations with Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington; and his legendary recordings with the All Stars. An eminently readable and insightful book, What a Wonderful World completes and enlarges our understanding of one of America’s greatest and most beloved musical icons.
Author | : Robert G. O'Meally |
Publisher | : Columbia University Press |
Total Pages | : 460 |
Release | : 2004 |
Genre | : Education |
ISBN | : 9780231123518 |
'Uptown Conversation' asserts that jazz is not only a music to define, it is a culture. The essays illustrate how for more than a century jazz has initiated a call and response across art forms, geographies, and cultures, inspiring musicians, filmmakers,painters and poets.
Author | : Philip Clark |
Publisher | : Da Capo Press |
Total Pages | : 764 |
Release | : 2020-02-18 |
Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | : 0306921650 |
THE DEFINITIVE, INVESTIGATIVE BIOGRAPHY OFJAZZ LEGENDDAVE BRUBECK("TAKE FIVE") In 2003, music journalist Philip Clark was granted unparalleled access to jazz legend Dave Brubeck. Over the course of ten days, he shadowed the Dave Brubeck Quartet during their extended British tour, recording an epic interview with the bandleader. Brubeck opened up as never before, disclosing his unique approach to jazz; the heady days of his "classic" quartet in the 1950s-60s; hanging out with Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, and Miles Davis; and the many controversies that had dogged his 66-yearlong career. Alongside beloved figures like Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, Brubeck has achieved name recognition beyond jazz. But finding a convincing fit for Brubeck's legacy, one that reconciles his mass popularity with his advanced musical technique, has proved largely elusive. In Dave Brubeck: A Life inTime, Clark provides us with a thoughtful, thorough, and long-overdue biography of an extraordinary man whose influence continues to inform and inspire musicians today. Structured around Clark's extended interview and intensive new research, this book recounts one of the last untold stories of jazz, unearthing the secret history of "Take Five" and many hitherto unknown aspects of Brubeck's early career-and sharing details about his creative relationship with his star saxophonist, Paul Desmond. Woven throughout are cameo appearances from a host of unlikely figures, from Sting, Ray Manzarek of The Doors, and Keith Emerson to John Cage, Leonard Bernstein, Harry Partch, and Edgard Varèse. Each chapter explores a different theme or aspect of Brubeck's life and music, illuminating the core of his artistry and genius. To quote President Obama, as he awarded the musician with a Kennedy Center Honor: "You can't understand America without understanding jazz, and you can't understand jazz without understanding Dave Brubeck."
Author | : Ricky Riccardi |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | : 352 |
Release | : 2020-08-05 |
Genre | : Music |
ISBN | : 0190914122 |
Nearly 50 years after his death, Louis Armstrong remains one of the 20th century's most iconic figures. Popular fans still appreciate his later hits such as "Hello, Dolly!" and "What a Wonderful World," while in the jazz community, he remains venerated for his groundbreaking innovations in the 1920s. The achievements of Armstrong's middle years, however, possess some of the trumpeter's most scintillating and career-defining stories. But the story of this crucial time has never been told in depth until now. Between 1929 and 1947, Armstrong transformed himself from a little-known trumpeter in Chicago to an internationally renowned pop star, setting in motion the innovations of the Swing Era and Bebop. He had a similar effect on the art of American pop singing, waxing some of his most identifiable hits such as "Jeepers Creepers" and "When You're Smiling." However as author Ricky Riccardi shows, this transformative era wasn't without its problems, from racist performance reviews and being held up at gunpoint by gangsters to struggling with an overworked embouchure and getting arrested for marijuana possession. Utilizing a prodigious amount of new research, Riccardi traces Armstrong's mid-career fall from grace and dramatic resurgence. Featuring never-before-published photographs and stories culled from Armstrong's personal archives, Heart Full of Rhythm tells the story of how the man called "Pops" became the first "King of Pop."
Author | : Lisa E. Davenport |
Publisher | : Univ. Press of Mississippi |
Total Pages | : 226 |
Release | : 2010-06-30 |
Genre | : Music |
ISBN | : 1604733446 |
Jazz as an instrument of global diplomacy transformed superpower relations in the Cold War era and reshaped democracy's image worldwide. Lisa E. Davenport tells the story of America's program of jazz diplomacy practiced in the Soviet Union and other regions of the world from 1954 to 1968. Jazz music and jazz musicians seemed an ideal card to play in diminishing the credibility and appeal of Soviet communism in the Eastern bloc and beyond. Government-funded musical junkets by such jazz masters as Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and Benny Goodman dramatically influenced perceptions of the U.S. and its capitalist brand of democracy while easing political tensions in the midst of critical Cold War crises. This book shows how, when coping with foreign questions about desegregation, the dispute over the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, jazz players and their handlers wrestled with the inequalities of race and the emergence of class conflict while promoting America in a global context. And, as jazz musicians are wont to do, many of these ambassadors riffed off script when the opportunity arose. Jazz Diplomacy argues that this musical method of winning hearts and minds often transcended economic and strategic priorities. Even so, the goal of containing communism remained paramount, and it prevailed over America's policy of redefining relations with emerging new nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Author | : Susan Foister |
Publisher | : National Gallery Publications Limited |
Total Pages | : 112 |
Release | : 1997 |
Genre | : Art |
ISBN | : 9780300073263 |
Holbein's famous life-size double portrait 'The Ambassadors' is one of the best known of his surviving works. Yet the subject matter has always presented intriguing problems. Who precisely were the two ambassadors of the title? Why did they choose to be painted together - with an array of globes, astronomical and musical instruments, books and other objects placed on shelves between them, a skull concealed in the foreground of the painting, and a crucifix partially hidden behind a curtain? The recent careful cleaning and restoration of 'The Ambassadors' has enabled an art historian, conservator, and scientist at the National Gallery in London to collaborate on a thorough study of the making and meaning of this painting.
Author | : David McKean |
Publisher | : St. Martin's Press |
Total Pages | : 352 |
Release | : 2021-11-09 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 1250206987 |
A gripping and groundbreaking account of how all but one of FDR's ambassadors in Europe misjudged Hitler and his intentions As German tanks rolled toward Paris in late May 1940, the U.S. Ambassador to France, William Bullitt, was determined to stay put, holed up in the Chateau St. Firmin in Chantilly, his country residence. Bullitt told the president that he would neither evacuate the embassy nor his chateau, an eighteenth Renaissance manse with a wine cellar of over 18,000 bottles, even though “we have only two revolvers in this entire mission with only forty bullets.” As German forces closed in on the French capital, Bullitt wrote the president, “In case I should get blown up before I see you again, I want you to know that it has been marvelous to work for you.” As the fighting raged in France, across the English Channel, Ambassador to Great Britain Joseph P. Kennedy wrote to his wife Rose, “The situation is more than critical. It means a terrible finish for the allies.” David McKean's Watching Darkness Fall will recount the rise of the Third Reich in Germany and the road to war from the perspective of four American diplomats in Europe who witnessed it firsthand: Joseph Kennedy, William Dodd, Breckinridge Long, and William Bullitt, who all served in key Western European capitals—London, Berlin, Rome, Paris, and Moscow—in the years prior to World War II. In many ways they were America’s first line of defense and they often communicated with the president directly, as Roosevelt's eyes and ears on the ground. Unfortunately, most of them underestimated the power and resolve of Adolf Hitler and Germany’s Third Reich. Watching Darkness Fall is a gripping new history of the years leading up to and the beginning of WWII in Europe told through the lives of five well-educated and mostly wealthy men all vying for the attention of the man in the Oval Office.