THEY SERVED US BETTER THAN WE SERVED THEM:

In 1954, President Eisenhower wrangled $5m from Congress to send US cultural groups abroad as part of the growing "public diplomacy" effort. Initially they sent symphony orchestras, theatre groups, a cappella singers and folk dancers. The Soviets responded by touring national institutions such as the Kirov and Bolshoi ballet troupes - though the country's political claims were undermined when star performers like Nora Kovach and Rudolf Nureyev defected while abroad.

Then in 1956, Adam Clayton Powell Jr, an African American congressman from Harlem, suggested that America send its greatest jazz musicians overseas as cultural emissaries. The State Department warmed to the idea, believing that touring mixed-race jazz groups could help deflect attention from the spiralling civil rights abuses and present a uniquely American art form that the Russians couldn't compete with. Plus, as a deluge of fanmail from Voice of America radio attests, jazz was immensely popular with international audiences.

Powell convinced his friend Dizzy Gillespie to become America's first jazz ambassador, though the irony of the request was not lost of Gillespie. When the State Department asked him to come in for a pre-tour briefing, Gillespie responded with characteristic swagger: "I've had 300 years of briefing. I know what they've done to us." He went on to explain: "I sort've liked the idea of representing America, but I wasn't going over there to apologise for the racist policies of America." Dizzy, like all the jazz musicians who would tour on behalf of the State Department, was torn between the feelings of patriotism and his progressive politics, of hoping that America would win the cold war, and wishing that his country would actually embrace its founding ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all.

Dizzy's tour to the Middle East, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey and Greece was a triumph and convinced State Department planners that jazz diplomacy had real legs. Ironically, when Gillespie's band took the stage in Damascus, it wasn't the mix of black and white musicians that shocked audiences, but the presence of female trumpeter Melba Liston and singer Dottie Salter. Gillespie's band was attacked in Congress by segregationist politicians outraged at the thought of bebop music representing America abroad. But the die was cast; US diplomats now saw jazz as an important tool in their arsenal.

The tours didn't always go smoothly. In September 1957, outraged by Eisenhower's refusal to send troops into Little Rock to guarantee the safety of nine black children attempting to enrol in the local high school, Louis Armstrong cancelled his trip to the Soviet Union, saying he wouldn't defend the US constitution abroad if it wasn't properly enforced at home.

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