Hello, welcome to the witness history podcast from the BBC Will Service with me, Jane Wilkinson.

We're going back to 1966 to the Soviet Union, where an American singer has become a rock

and roll superstar at the height of the Cold War. Dean reads success behind the Iron Curtain

would earn him the nickname Red Elvis.

That's our summer romance. Dean's first big hit in a career that brought him both

adulation and abuse. Dean was born in 1938 in Colorado in the United States

and grew up loving the outdoors.

He was an all-American boy coming from a farm. He rode horses and was playing cowboys

out in Colorado mountains and it was really a great childhood.

That's Dean's daughter Ramona Reed.

At the age of 19, armed with talent, looks and charm, he headed to Hollywood.

Before long, he'd signed a record contract.

But while our summer romance was only a modest success in the US, it was a huge hit in

Chile, where magazine poll voted him more popular than Elvis.

His next stop was South America.

The minute he landed, it was chaos.

There were thousands of people at the airport screaming fans and he was staying at a fancy hotel

and he'd had a driver.

And one night, they took a different path through some of the poor areas.

He saw the kids and how malnourished they were.

And he came across a huge sign, spray painted all the wall. Yankee go home.

Now it wasn't for him, but he questioned himself why.

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