Sam Wooding Dies at 90; Took U.S. Jazz to Russia Before Ban

Band leader Sam Wooding, who took American jazz to the Soviet Union nearly 60 years ago just before it was banned there, has died at age 90, his family said Friday.

Wooding’s Chocolate Kiddies big band was a sensation when it played in Moscow and Leningrad in 1926, creating a demand that ended in a Stalinist crackdown.

By 1930, the Soviet Union enacted laws authorizing fines or prison terms for anyone even playing foreign jazz records. Wooding’s band was believed to be the last American jazz group permitted in the Soviet Union until Benny Goodman played in Moscow in 1956.

Wooding’s big band was also one of the first to play the Soviet Union. And it played extensive European and Latin American engagements, performing in Berlin as early as 1924 before breaking up in 1931.

Apprehensive in Russia

In a 1966 interview, Wooding recalled how apprehensive his band was about appearing in Russia just a few years after the Bolsheviks came to power. He said his drummer “disappeared and sailed for home out of sheer fright.” But a replacement was found, he said, and the Moscow performances proved the highlight of his tour as “the people cheered and stamped their feet for more. Igor Stravinsky came backstage just to tell us how much he enjoyed us.”

The Philadelphia-born Wooding returned to the United States in 1931 but was never able to build a big band again, partly because U.S. booking agents weren’t familiar with him. Wooding, who held a master’s degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania, spent the rest of life teaching music.