radio broadcaster

Willis Conover’s character was all but European. In fact, he was strongly American, a radio broadcaster who devoted himself to the dissemination of American jazz. Through his broadcasts, he helped to create and shape European jazz in a subtle, but nevertheless very effective way. Because of Conover’s unique position as a broadcaster, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, his jazz broadcasts were the only possibility for Eastern Bloc listeners to hear American jazz. When Conover visited Eastern Bloc countries such as Poland, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, Hungary, and the Soviet Union, he established a mutual jazz distribution system. He attended Eastern Bloc jazz festivals, obtained tapes and then broadcasted them over Voice of America. Conover even created special jazz shows for radio stations in these countries. With the help of gatekeepers like Andrzej Jaroszewski, Stanislav Titzl, Imre Kiss, and Aleksey Batashev he established a firm network that survived for decades and helped to strengthen jazz in Europe even while jazz in America was losing its former strong position. However, it is important to note that Conover did not simply promote all forms of jazz. He organized his broadcasts according to his own musical preferences: jazz classics such as Duke Ellington or Stan Kenton played an important role, but he disregarded all manner of jazzrock trends. He also rejected, or at least neglected, some of the most important European jazz musicians, for example Krzysztof Komeda or the Ganelin Trio. So, Conover was not the father of European jazz, as the ‘Conover myth’ wants us to believe. But it seems Conover had a decisive role at least for the evolving jazz scenes in Eastern Bloc countries. Here, Conover was highly appreciated, whereas in the western part of Europe he was largely unknown. The reason was that his broadcasts were a part of the USA’s Cold War cultural diplomacy and as such were directed to the eastern part of Europe.
What jazz music did Conover broadcast and which musicians did he support? The question draws us into the history of cultural relations with its coincidental events and misunderstandings. This paper discusses the perceptions of Conover’s historical place.