In Paris, Jazz Expats Wonder If Times Have Changed Enough

Max Colchester reports from Paris on the inauguration. In the 1960s, a number of African American jazz musicians moved to Paris looking for artistic inspiration and shelter from racial discrimination. Today, despite Barack Obama ’s inauguration as president, many are skeptical that the U.S. has changed fundamentally. Saxophonist Steve Potts , 71, says that the U.S. in the 1960s was a society where minorities were oppressed. He says he just wanted to play music and leave behind the racial tension he felt back then. In 1969, he was strolling down a street in New York, when he saw a sticker on the rear window of a car. “America, like it or leave it,” it read. “It was like a bell going off in my head,” says Mr. Potts. “It was the year after the death of Martin Luther King . I just had to get out.” He left for in Paris, where he joined a flourishing jazz scene. In the following years he played Europe’s jazz bars, hung out with Aretha Franklin — one of the singers at Obama’s ... (link)