In 1933, Charles Lampkin Sr., a pioneer of Spoken Word, graduated from Cleveland Central High School, Langston Hughes's alma mater.
[7][8] Jazz Casual was a series produced for National Educational Television (NET), the predecessor to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
It ran from 1961 to 1968 and was hosted by journalist and jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason, who would go on to co-found Rolling Stone magazine.
[9][10] In 1956, the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet became part of a campaign by the State Department to spread American culture and music around the world during the Cold War, especially into countries whose allegiances were not well defined or that were perceived as being at risk of aligning with the Soviet Union.
[11][12] As a first salvo in a program that would continue for more than two decades, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. proposed that Dizzy Gillespie form a big band to represent the U.S. as musical envoys.
Starting in 1963, Lampkin joined the Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis Quintet and recorded Bossa Nova (1963) and Jazz for Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Dale Lind at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Manhattan where the late Puerto Rican pastor John Gensil had started a Jazz vespers service in the 1960s.