What are you talking about, Willis? The answer to this popular and proverbial question relates to, or resembles, a proverb or byword. is Jazz.
Maestro Willis Conover worked at the Voice of America 🇺🇸 https://www.voanews.com/ and was best known to jazz lovers by his award-winning broadcast, Voice of America Jazz Hour.
Willis Clark Conover, Jr., was pivotal in the global spread and preservation of jazz during the 20th century. As a broadcaster for the Voice of America (VOA) for over four decades, he became a household name—not in the United States, where VOA wasn't broadcast domestically, but across Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and other parts of the world during the Cold War. His "Music USA" jazz program became a cultural lifeline, introducing countless listeners behind the Iron Curtain to American jazz and its values of freedom and improvisation.
Beyond broadcasting, Conover was deeply involved in promoting jazz live. He produced concerts at prestigious venues such as the White House and the Newport Jazz Festival, and even worked in film and television to bring jazz to wider audiences.
Crucially, he was also a quiet but powerful force for social change. By organizing integrated jazz concerts in Washington, D.C., during a time of segregation, he played a meaningful role in the desegregation of the city’s nightlife, creating spaces where people of all races could gather around a shared love of music.
Though he remained relatively unknown in his home country during his lifetime, Conover's influence abroad was immense. His work helped sustain interest in jazz in oppressive regimes, where Western music was often censored, and he became a symbol of cultural diplomacy and artistic freedom.
Willis Conover's slow delivery and the use of scripts written in Special English made his programmes more widely accessible, and he is said to have become the first teacher of English to a whole generation of East European jazz lovers. Conover was not well known in the United States, even among jazz aficionados, as the Voice of America did not broadcast domestically except on shortwave, but his visits to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union brought huge crowds and star treatment for him. He was a celebrity figure in the Soviet Union, where the Voice of America was a prime source of information as well as music.
In 1956, Conover conducted a series of interviews with jazz musicians such as Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, Peggy Lee, Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, and Art Tatum. His interview with Tatum is reputedly "the only known in-depth recorded interview with the pianist". These interviews were selected by the Library of Congress as a 2010 addition to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Conover died of lung cancer on May 17, 1996, at age 75. He had been a smoker for 57 years. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
In 2001, on the fifth anniversary of his death, the US Embassy in Moscow and the Moscow Jazz Society co-organized a commemorative concert in Moscow.
https://www.voanews.com/a/episode_watch-centennial-birthday-tribute-wil…