The Jazz Ambassadors

The Cold War and Civil Rights collide in this remarkable story of music, diplomacy and race. Beginning in 1955, when America asked its greatest jazz artists to travel the world as cultural ambassadors, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and their mixed-race band members, faced a painful dilemma: how could they represent a country that still practiced Jim Crow segregation?

• Hugo BerkeleyDirector

• Leslie Odom Jr.Narrator
• Quincy JonesSelf
• Dizzy GillespieSelf (archive footage)
• Louis ArmstrongSelf (archive footage)
• Darius BrubeckSelf
• Bill CrowSelf
• Duke EllingtonSelf (archive footage)
• Charlie PersipSelf