An Unusual Degree of Dissonance
I was listening to the 15-minute long track 'Diminuendo and Crescendo In Blue' by Duke Ellington the other night. Reminding myself of the uproar that piece of music caused to the normally staid folks at the Newport Jazz Festival of 1956 that they got up on their seats - literally - to boogie like there was no tomorrow. This thought somehow reminded me of reading about another moment in American history from a year later by another star of popular music at that time, which also caused an uproar.

That man was Louis Armstrong, famous the world over for his music and in critical circles at one point as an 'Uncle Tom' who spoke no ill about the racism all around him in the changing south of the 1950's. Right? Well, no it's not.

On the night of 17 September 1957, just two weeks after the racist governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus and his band of segregationists had barred the entrance to Little Rock Central High School to nine black students, Larry Lubenow, a 21-year-old journalism student bagged an exclusive interview with Louis Armstrong. One newspaper editorial described Armstrong's comments in the interview as 'having the explosive effect of an H-bomb', on the black communities around the country.

Lubenow's editor ordered there was to be no talk of politics. However, after a few routine questions and answers, Lubenow couldn't resist but mention the situation in Little Rock and couldn't believe what he heard. Armstrong furiously charged that, "it's getting so bad a colored man hasn't got a country", and called the then president, Eisenhower, "two-faced" and had "no guts". Governor Faubus he referred to as a mother-f*cker. Recounting some of his bitter experiences touring the Jim Crow south, he commented how the US State Department has asked Armstrong to go on a good-will tour of the Soviet Union, but he'd changed his mind saying, "The way they are treating my people in the south, the government can go to hell".

Armstrong suffered a backlash, with southern radio stations throwing out his records, the Ford Motor Company threatened to pull out of support for a Bing Crosby special Armstrong was to appear on and southern white artists refusing to perform duets with him on Steve Allen's talk show.

None of this mattered of course as a week later, Eisenhower sent in 1200 paratroopers to escort the nine black students into the newly desegregated high school. The world had finally changed in the south. Lubenow meanwhile left the Grand Forks Herald a week later. He'd been paid the grand sum of $3.50 for the story that changed history.

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The Cotton Club House Band
Edward Kennedy Ellington ['Duke'] was born in Washington DC in 1899 to the son of a former slave. He paid little attention during his piano lessons at aged seven, until sneaking into pool rooms to listen to the bar piano players electrified him. By age 15 he'd written his first composition, Soda Fountain Rag. By 1917 he'd launched his musical career, painting commercial signs by day and playing jazz by night. By career's end he'd earned 13 Grammys and many other awards. Duke Ellington died in 1974 and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx.

3,000 British Spies in NYC
In fact we're talking an operation from room 3603 in the Rockefeller Center, Manhattan, run by a man that worked for no salary, recruited glamorous Canadian women and allegedly used 'hit-squads'. Operated under the nose of a disapproving J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI. Spies included Ian Fleming [of James Bond fame] and Sterling Hayden, the actor and close friend of Marshall Tito of the Yugoslav communist partisans. You just couldn't make this stuff up.

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