The Jazz Ambassadors

Plot Summary

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?

Top Cast

Leslie Odom Jr. Narrator

Quincy Jones Self

Dizzy Gillespie Self (archive footage)

Louis Armstrong Self (archive footage)

Darius Brubeck Self