Posting yesterday about the anniversary of Duke Ellington appearing on Time for Joya reminded me that this year makes the tenth anniversary of Joya's passing.
I posted briefly at the time and illustrated the piece with some joyful photographs of the singer from Life in what looks like holiday repose.
In fact, the photographs were taken from Joya's tour of the Soviet Union with a band put together for Benny Goodman in 1962. While all the photographs of Joya on this State Department sponsored tour are watermarked (rightly so) and copyrighted to Getty Images, I will republish them here in continuing celebration of Joya's bright spirit.
The Russian tour was not altogether an unalloyed pleasure as an (in)famous essay about Benny Goodman by bassist Bill Crow makes clear. I will post an extract from the essay along with the Getty images in due course.
Firstly, however, the origin of the tour was controversial in the first place. Researcher and podcaster Steve Bowie of Ellington Reflections, whose most recent podcast is devoted to Joya's music, recently shared to Facebook scans from the cover story of Jet which details the débâcle of the tour and specifically Goodman's offer to Ellington to appear as a guest star. In his typically gracious style, Ellington declined...
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