Jazz in Germany - Postwar Period and The 50s

Postwar Period and The 50s

In the postwar period, and after nearly 20 years of isolation, many music fans as well as musicians themselves were very interested in the movements of jazz they had missed. In fact jazz gave young people the enthusiastic hope for rebuilding the country. In the jazz clubs, jazz lovers played important records even before they could organize concerts. As World War 2 ended, Jazz was imported to Germany via its strong footholds in England and France, and home-grown post-war jazz was able to develop, particularly in the American-occupied zone. Ironically, many German prisoners first heard Jazz in French camps, and then the occupying Allied forces introduced those records and sheet music into the country. Berlin, Bremen and Frankfurt became centers of jazz. Young German musicians could perform before a larger audience in American GI venues.

In the 1950s, following the model established in Paris, "Existential" jazz cellars (Existence in the French way of philosophy) emerged in numerous West German cities.

On April 2. 1951 Erwin Lehn founded the dance orchestra of the South German Radio (SDR) in Stuttgart, which he led until 1992. In a short time it developed from a radio-band to a modern swinging Big Band: Erwin Lehn and his Südfunk (southern radio) dance orchestra. In 1955 Lehn, with Dieter Zimmerle and Wolfram Röhrig, initiated the SDR broadcast Treffpunkt Jazz. There Lehn played with international jazz greats such as Miles Davis and Chet Baker. In addition to the band of Kurt Edelhagen at the Southwestern Radio (SWF), the "Südfunk" dance orchestra became one of the leading Swing-Big-Bands in the Federal Republic of Germany in the following years. In 1953, Edelhagen discovered Caterina Valente in Baden-Baden as a singer for his big band.

American jazz musicians were heard at the Jazz at Philharmonic concerts, and at events in the major concert halls in western Germany. Primarily, local musicians played in the clubs. In order to raise the level of cultural recognition, concert tours by the German Jazz Federation (a merger of the clubs) were increasingly organised. Until the end of the 1950s, the German jazz scene was strongly fixated on imitating American jazz, and on regaining the period of development it had previously missed. However, from 1954 on, West German jazz slowly departed from the pattern established by this musical role model. The quintet of pianist and composer Jutta Hipp played a central role in doing so; this group included the saxophonist Emil Mangelsdorff and Joki Freund, who also wrote instrumental compositions. Although Hipp's music was heavily influenced by American role models, she impressed the American jazz critics with her distinctive and independent performances. The peculiarity of her music was an asymmetrical melody in the improvisations, the beginning and end located in unusual places. English New Orleans jazzbands were fervently welcomed: particularly Ken Colyer & Sonny Morris.

Whereas in America, the rhythmically-accented and innovative Bebop enjoyed a heyday until the mid-1950s, this music---unlike the Cool Jazz that had also boomed in the 1950s---was a genre German musicians were unaccostomed to. They preferred Cool Jazz, because with its emphasis on brass melodies, and its interaction, as well as the tone, it was softer and slower---less explosive.

Authorities in German Democratic Republic (GDR) were highly skeptical of jazz due to its American roots. Karl Heinz Drechsel was dismissed from his job at the GDR broadcasting organization in 1952 because of his fondness for jazz and was prohibited from organizing jazz broadcasts again until 1958. The founder of the jazz group Leipzig, Reginald Rudorf, held well-attended lectures on jazz, which also explained the culture of the United States. But they were stopped with disruptive actions by the state security organization ("Staatssicherheit"). In 1957, the Dresdner Interessengemeinschaft Jazz (community of jazz interests) was prohibited in connection with the trial of the regime against Rudorf, as a suspected spy.

While the GDR dance orchestras still played a few Swing numbers, it was Modern Jazz, which could not be integrated into the dance combos, that was officially criticized. It was later denounced as "snotnosed Jazz" by André Asriel.

In 1956 the clarinettist Rolf Kühn moved to America, gave a guest performance with Caterina Valente in New York and performed with his quartet at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1957. From 1958 to 1962 Kühn played (as the first German musician) with the orchestras of Benny Goodman and as a solo clarinettist with Tommy Dorsey - as replacement for Buddy DeFranco - one and a half years later. In 1962 Rolf Kühn returned to West Germany.