Gery Scott at The Kiev Opera House, April 12, 1961 - the day Gagarin flew in space

Gery Scott acknowledges her audience at The Kiev Opera House, April 12, 1961

by Larissa MacFarquhar

In 1961, British singer Gery Scott was engaged to perform a thirteen city, seventy-five concert tour of the Soviet Union, including Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Tbilisi, Odessa and Baku. 

Jazz, seen as an American attempt at cultural infiltration, had been repressed in the Soviet Union after the war and became the music of the underground.

Then, for a brief period after Stalin died, from the mid-fifties to the early sixties, jazz was permitted, the underground emerged, and suddenly bop, cool jazz, Dixieland and big band were everywhere.

By the time the tour started, three million of Gery’s records on the Czech based Supraphon label had been sold in the country and everybody knew who Gery Scottova was.

On the evening of April 12, Gery performed two sold out concerts at the Kiev Opera House.

But this was no ordinary night in Russia. Yuri Gagarin had shot up into space in the Vostok spaceship that day - the first manned space flight ever.

Gery, accompanied by husband Igo Fisher on piano, Kiev Opera House, April 12, 1961

Wearing an extradorinaiy dress - red sequins, strapless, low-cut and mermaid-shaped, Gery sang two two-hour concerts, back to back, with encores and at the end of each she sang “How High the Moon”. 

The audience, swelled with pride and happiness about Vostok 1 and Gagarin, went wild.

They made her sing it again and again.

An excerpt from “The Jazz Singer” by Larissa MacFarquhar, printed in The New Yorker, August 18 & 25, 2003

Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin, July 3 1961, during a Finnish press conference. Photo: Arto Jousi,
restored by Adam Cuerden - Finnish Museum of Photography. Public Domain.

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who, aboard the first successful crewed spaceflight, became the first human to journey into outer space. Travelling on Vostok 1, Gagarin completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961, with his flight taking 108 minutes. By achieving this major milestone for the Soviet Union amidst the Space Race, he became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including the nation's highest distinction: Hero of the Soviet Union.

Hailing from the village of Klushino in the Russian SFSR, Gagarin was a foundryman at a steel plant in Lyubertsy in his youth. He later joined the Soviet Air Forces as a pilot and was stationed at the Luostari Air Base, near the Norway-Soviet Union Border, before his selection for the Soviet space programme alongside five other cosmonauts. Following his spaceflight, Gagarin became the deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre which was later named after him. He was also elected as a deputy of the Soviet of the Union in 1962 and then to the Soviet of Nationalities, respectively the lower and upper chambers of the Supreme Soviet.

The liftoff of Vostok 1. Photo: Roscosmos, courtesy The Planetary Society

Vostok 1 was Gagarin's only spaceflight, but he served as the backup crew to Soyuz 1, which ended in a fatal crash, killing his friend and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Fearful that a high-level national hero might be killed, Soviet officials banned Gagarin from participating in further spaceflights. After completing training at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy in February 1968, he was again allowed to fly regular aircraft. However, Gagarin died five weeks later, when the MiG-15 that he was piloting with flight instructor Vladimir Seyrogin crashed near the town of Kirzhach.

Text reprinted from the Wikipedia article on Yuri Gagarin

Appendix

Two more photos from Gery's time in The Soviet Union in 1961:

Gery performing in Baku, Soviet Union 1961. It's packed!

Gery Scott and Igo Fisher are married in The Moscow Palace of Weddings 1961, at the suggestion of the wife to the British Ambassador. For official purposes, she probably would have used Diana Whitburn as her maiden name, and become Diana Fisher.

Gery Scott performs in Germany, 1955

Gery with son Christopher (aged 6) and Pan American Airways executive Barry Eldridge at Frankfurt Airport, 1955. Collection Gery Scott.

For aviation enthusiasts: The Pan American Airways plane registration number can be seen - N773PA. It was a Douglas DC-7B named Clipper Endeavour. Entered service that year - 1955, and retired 1964. My thanks to John Steele and the Pan Am Historical Foundation 2015.

by Larissa MacFarquhar

In the Summer of 1955, at the height of the Cold War, Gery was invited to perform at a big music festival in East Germany: Communist officials had come around to jazz in the fifties, because they had been led, by Paul Robeson among others, to understand that real jazz (as opposed to white commercialisation) was the music of the oppressed American Negro. 

By that time, Gery was well known: she had sung with Chet Baker and the Woody Herman band and had gone solo - she was living in sin in Wiesbaden with her accompanist, a handsome German pianist named Igo Fisher, with whom she travelled to gigs all over Europe, east and west.

She had a recording contract with Supraphon in Prague, and her recording of “When the Saints Go Marching In” was No. 1 on the Czechoslovakian hit parade for more than a year.

The music festival was to take place on an open-air stage in a park and officials expected an audience of more than 70,000. They were quite nervous about it and they were adamant that Gery sing only pretty songs - nichts zu heiss, nothing too “hot” - but at the same time they were very keen that she sing her signature hit, “When the Saints Go Marching In,” because it was Dixieland and most definitely the music of the oppressed American Negro. 

Gery explained that it was a fast song and could get quite heiss, but the officials insisted that she go ahead and sing it none-the-less.

The park was teaming. There was an East German Dixieland band, a jazz singer from Romania, a jazz singer from Hungary, singers and bands from all over the place, but they were all warm-up acts for Gery, who would close the show.

By the end of her set, everybody was yelling for more and when at last she sang “When the Saints Go Marching In,” the crowd went wild, clapping and screaming and singing along. 

As she was taking her bows and saying thank you, a little boy about ten years old slipped onto the stage, through a two-man-deep cordon of policemen, thrust a copy of one of her records at her and begged her to sign it. Gery was so high and boy was so small that she did.

Gery singing at Landsthul Air Base, Germany, 1955. Collection Gery Scott

At that moment, the crowd broke through the cordon and rushed the stage. Gery, terrified, ran backwards and fell down the stage steps and a thick piece of wood sliced into her calf. She screamed in pain, Igo screamed in fear, seventy-thousand people screamed in excitement and police whistles and sirens were going off everywhere.

But before a doctor could remove the wood from her leg, the police rushed into the Red Cross tent and demanded that she and Igo get in their car and drive straight to the border without stopping.

They were accompanied on the journey by the East German police and then drove eleven hours to Prague, where they were due to record the next day.

By the time they arrived, Gery’s leg was so swollen that she was worried about gangrene.

A week later, Neues Deutschland, the East German equivalent of Pravda, carried an article stating that Western entertainers were not allowed to come to East Germany to try to coerce the young people into revolution. Gery was declared persona-non-grata and was never invited to perform there again.

Reprinted from “The Jazz Singer” by Larissa MacFarquhar, The New Yorker, August 18, 2003

Album review: DOUG WILLIAMS - Check It

The Basement (Warner) BASE005

Review copy supplied by Abels Music, Canberra: (02) 6295 1466

Reviewed by Tony Magee

Here is a great album for funky bars and nightclubs.

Sydney based singer and songwriter Doug Williams is absolutely groovin' in this excellent CD of funk, funk -rock, soul and groove.

If you like performers like Stevie Wonder, George Benson, Les McCann - those kinds of soulful Afro American singers  - you will like Doug Williams.

Here, he presents a selection of mostly his own compositions, tightly arranged and performed with himself on lead vocals and a fabulous funky band with brass, congas and other cool instruments. Also present are the soul sisters providing great backing harmonies.

This album was actually recorded live at the basement. The sound is excellent. Punchy, dynamic and powerful. Not to heavy on the applause - just enough to remind you that a whole room full of people were grooving and moving to this excellent artist on the night.

Williams sings with conviction and ease. His voice can be tight and gripping, or sometimes so relaxed, soulful and mellifluous.

Many tracks are dance tracks, including Keep On Dancing, Loveland, Too Hot, Dance and Love Me Like You. Then there are some quieter mood tracks such as Love Is, Too Hot, As Long As I Know and Love. Yes - he seems to have a "thang" about love. 

If you want to get your guests tapping and grooving, then I would highly recommend this one.

First published in Restaurant and Catering magazine, August 2003