ABSTRACT
In November 1955 a foreign correspondent for the New York Times declared “America’s secret weapon” in the Cold War to be “a blue note in a minor key.” Since then, countless scholars have designated the mid-1950s as the beginning of American jazz diplomacy, with the Soviet Union and Africa as primary targets. But as this chapter explains, the State Department’s use of jazz as a tool for suppressing Communism began in Italy at least a decade earlier and set the stage for the well-known Jazz Ambassadors program launched by President Eisenhower in 1954.
