The Jazz Ambassadors poster

Movie profile

The Jazz Ambassadors

The untold story of America's coolest weapon in the Cold War

7.0/ 1020181h 0m

Documentary

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?

Directed by Hugo Berkeley

Visual gallery

Behind the frames

8 stills

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The cast

Faces behind the story

Leslie Odom Jr.

Leslie Odom Jr.

Narrator

Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones

Self

Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie

Self (archive footage)

Louis Armstrong

Self (archive footage)

Darius Brubeck

Self

Bill Crow

Self

Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington

Self (archive footage)

Charlie Persip

Self