Duke Ellington and President Nixon during the Medal of Freedom ceremony in the East Room, April 1969. Harvey Georges, Associated Press.
By his own admission, and attested to by others, Nixon was a classical music devotee. [Moreover, and] no doubt influenced by his early training on violin and piano, his ardor extended to light or semi-classical (Mantovani, Boston Pops, and 1001 Strings) and musical soundtracks (Gone with the Wind, My Fair Lady, Carousel, Oklahoma, and King and I) . . . Nixon told Washington National Symphony conductor Antal Dorati that his favorite composition was the background music by Richard Rodgers for the motion picture Victory at Sea.
Henry Mancini provided additional evidence in his autobiography, Did They Mention the Music? On June 30, 1969, prior to his East Room performance for the moon-circling Apollo 11 astronauts, Henry and wife, Ginny, accompanied Nixon on a tour of the upstairs family quarters. Mancini asked, “What’s your favorite album, Mr. President?”
Nixon pulled an LP from the shelf [in his small private listening room] and handed it to me. It was Richard Rodgers music for the television series Victory at Sea. He said, “I sit here by the hour and listen to that album.” He had several Lawrence Welk albums, some Mantovani, and the Sound of Music, along with Tchaikovsky.
Duke Ellington, who took the same tour some eight weeks prior, recounted the following in his memoir (also from my book):
While taking us around various rooms on the family’s floor, he led us into one where there was an expensive stereo machine with many records and tapes. He proceeded to demonstrate all the audio possibilities—increasing the bass and the treble, one after the other, and showing how well the range was maintained at full and low volume. He was just like a kid with a new toy.
These two private peeks into Nixon’s study confirm that while he did have a genuine interest in music of the American idiom, he was not—in any way, shape, or form—a jazz fan. Yet, to paraphrase his 1968 campaign slogan, Nixon was the one, the first one, to honor jazz as an art form when he bestowed the nation’s highest civil honor on Duke Ellington—the most articulate spokesman, prolific composer, and honored personage in jazz for over four decades—on April 29, 1969, Duke’s 70th birthday.
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