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.