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CNN Sunday Morning

Jazz Comes to Russia

Aired July 15, 2001 - 08:22   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BRIAN NELSON, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the people of Russia are now enjoying some music that was once banned by the old Soviet regime.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: The sound of American jazz is filling the airwaves. CNN's Jill Dougherty reports from Moscow.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They used to listen in the middle of the night. The sounds of jazz broadcast on short wave radio by the Voice of America, the broadcast jammed by Soviet authorities who called it decadent music.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Ellington Orchestra theme "Take the A Train."

DOUGHERTY: And if there was a voice of jazz, it was the voice of Willis Conover, the man who for 40 years introduced Russians to Duke Ellington, Count Bassey, Dizzy Gilespie -- an endless list of jazz greats.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIS CONOVER, RADIO HOST: Louis?

LOUIS ARMSTRONG, MUSICIAN: Yeah, that is what you see here.

CONOVER: We're happy when you're here.

ARMSTRONG: Well, you know, it's always a good chat when we meet, you know?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DOUGHERTY: He died. A jazz fest in Moscow in his memory.

VLADIMIR LUCHIN, PHOTOGRAPHER (through translator): Oh, it's our generation. We used to listen to him on the radio when they used to haul us off to jail for listening.

DOUGHERTY (on camera): Willis Conover had the largest radio audience in the world -- 100 million people listened to his jazz show, Music USA. He believed that jazz was the music of freedom, and that was a message that struck a chord behind the iron curtain. UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Jazz improvisation was uncontrollable by the ideological authorities. They were saying, "What is this? What are those musicians doing? Why can't we control them?"

DOUGHERTY (voice-over): Composer Yuri Saulsky remembers hearing jazz for the very first time.

YURI SAULSKY, COMPOSER (through translator): When I heard that music, I was blown away. It was such a shock, completely new, a different way of thinking, a new spirit. I fell in love with it forever.

DOUGHERTY: Alexei Kozlov, one of Russia's best jazz musicians, first heard Conover's voice in 1955.

ALEXEI KOZLOV, MUSICIAN: I played all my -- and I arranged all of my music from tape recorder with the voice of Willis Conover.

DOUGHERTY: Like most Americans, sax player Michael Brecker, the U.S. star of this festival, never heard Willis Conover. U.S. law didn't allow broadcasting a government station at home. But in today's Russian jazzmen, he sees the influence of Willis Conover.

MICHAEL BRECKER, JAZZ MUSICIAN: They have a lot of soul, you know? And I think that's from having to rise above a lot of difficult circumstances.

DOUGHERTY: Russian jazz lovers today are free to listen to whatever they want. The Cold War is long over and jazz helped to win it.

Jill Dougherty, CNN, Moscow.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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