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American jazz musicians in the 1960s perceived France as a land of exile and welcome ; they helped create the myth of a “golden age of jazz” in Paris. This historical period still rings with nostalgia and feeds the current myth and actions of the French cultural establishment. Based on a corpus of interviews collected for the monthly journal, Jazz Hot, this article explores the process by which such a myth was constructed and maintained. The author analyzes how positive representations of cultural confrontation were manipulated by French decision-makers, to serve their political and ideological purposes, sometimes to the detriment of the artists.