Guckenheimer Sour Kraut Band - Personnel

Personnel

• Dr. Fritz Guckenheimer - Director, Arranger, and Vocalist (Richard B. Gump).
• Ernst Schmid - Fluegelhorn (Dick Hiatt, an architect; as a young man he played viola in the San Francisco Symphony)
• Rudi Schmitt - Trumpet (Robert McDonnell, a fireman with the Southern Pacific Railroad.)
• Ludwig Schmitz - Trombone (George "Cookie" Conroy, a salesman with Crown-Zellerbach Paper Corp.)
• Otto Schmits - First Clarinet (Robert Entriken, an executive with the Fireman's Fund Insurance Group, later a professor at Golden Gate University.)
• Johann Sebastian Schmidtz III - Second Clarinet (Paul Faria, an interior designer and cabinetmaker and leader of his own professional dance band.)
• Heinrich Schwerdt - Tuba (Bob Kellogg, owner of two music stores.)
• Hugo Schmid - Bass Drum and Cymbal (George Lichty, creator of the nationally-famous syndicated newspaper cartoon Grin and Bear It.) Lichty was listed specifically in the Local 6 directory as playing "Bass Drum and Cymbal" for he played no other percussion. His was the responsibility for the "boom-chik-chik" rhythm of all the waltz-time numbers.
• Wolfgang Schwett - Cornet (Dean Coleman, an inspector for the Pacific Fire Rating Bureau and part-time music teacher. He did not appear on the first album.)

Earlier band members, before the records were made, included Esquire writer Barney Harrold, cabinetmaker George Phoedovius, designer George Ashley and business executive Harry Mohler.

George Lichty created the cover art for the first two albums, both being comic representations of the band in Lichty's inimitable cartoon style including the "Guckenheimer Über Alles" legend on the bass drum. The third album's cover was a photograph of the band, or at least eight members of it as (according to a note on the reverse side) "Johann Sebastian Schmidtz III was not present -- he overslept." There was, however, a ninth character on the cover, as the band was arrayed before a casting of the famous "The Thinker" statue by Auguste Rodin on display at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. The statue, wearing earmuffs, is identified as an "unmoved sitting bystander."

On the second album, Gump—or rather, Herr Doktor Guckenheimer—wrote a short note addressed to "Dear Music-Lovers:"

"One evening as I wandered along the San Francisco Waterfront, dreaming of my youth and homeland, I heard the dulcet wail of a foghorn rebound off the cliffs that support Telegraph Hill. Here at last, I thought, is the exact timbre-quality of the wald-horn echoing through the rocky crags of my native Bavarian Alps. This nostalgic tone-experience was the inspiration and locale for the record 'Sour Kraut in Hi-Fi' .... a synthesis of Altdeutschbierfestkultur."