In 1960, the year of John Kennedy’s election which promised a “New Frontier,” a year when negro students confronted segregation at lunch counters in Greensboro, and a year when Soviet Air Defense Forces shot down a United States U-2 Spy plane, four African American musicians accepted an invitation to perform in the Soviet Union. The New York Jazz Quartet consisted of Jamil Nasser, Oscar Dennard, Buster Smith and Idrees Sulieman: “We played private parties throughout the country. The minister of culture loved our music and wanted us to open for the Bolshoi Ballet. The offer required us to denounce our US citizenship in Red Square: everyone except Buster agreed, but it was an all or none proposition. The minister paid for our tickets to Cairo.”
My father bassist Jamil Nasser and drummer Buster Smith shared these and other experiences from behind The Iron Curtain when I interviewed them for my book Upright Bass: The Musical Life and Legacy of Jamil Nasser. Moreover, they spoke about the Mitchell and Ruff Duo’s Soviet Union tour in1959. “A Call to Assembly” by Willie Ruff published in 1991 gives a first-hand account of their Soviet tour. However, each group is absent from the books, documentaries, and articles I studied concerning Soviet Jazz. I discovered the following recent examples:
“Playing Changes” by Nate Chinen mentioned Charles Lloyd’s (1967 Soviet Concert), “Later that year (1967) his (Charles Lloyd’s) quartet became the first jazz group to appear in the Soviet Union without sponsorship from the US State Department.” Second, a documentary entitled, “Jazz Ambassadors” credits Benny Goodman’s 1962 visit as the first. Lastly, an August 2024 Downbeat article, “Charles Lloyd in the Soviet Union” quotes Ira Gitler’s from a 1967 Downbeat, “the thought of American jazz artists playing in Russia was hard to conceive amid the political currents of 1967.” This second quote appears in a different section of the same article, “Live America jazz had come to the Soviet Union for the first time (1967).”
I hope jazz writers include the previously mentioned yet overlooked groups. Charles Lloyd’s musical evolution started in the same Memphis cultural epicenter (Beale Street) that spawned Jamil, Phineas Newborn, George Coleman, and many others. Finally, Memphis musicians contributed to the development of Soviet jazz: Jamil in 1960 and Charles in 1967. Please help upgrade and update jazz history by ordering a copy of Upright Bass at www.jamilsnasser.com.
Muneer Nasser, author, jazz historian, musician, educator, public speaker
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