Jutta Hipp Quintet - April 24 1954
Nat Hentoff - Down Beat 8 September 1954 Volume 21 Issue 18
For the last two years or so I’ve been reading and hearing quite a lot about jazz in Sweden, France, and England but comparatively little about jazz in Germany and Italy. Assuming that your curiosity about jazz in these countries parallels mine, I’ve asked Jutta Hipp and Arrigo Polillo for reports on their respective national scenes, and the next several columns will be devoted to their candid appraisals. Polillo is an editor of Italy’s leading jazz magazine, Musica Jazz, and was & co-editor of last year’s valuable Enciclopedia del Jazz. He is a lawyer by vocation and a keen student of jazz as an enthusiastic avocation.
Miss Hipp will begin the series; and her story of jazz in Germany is told in the framework of her own career as one of the more inventive young jazz pianists in Europe. Those of Jutta’s records that have been released with Hans Koller on Discovery, have already made her the object of keen interest to American jazz musicians and listeners.
Examples of her more recent work are due for release shortly on the Blue Note and MGM labels, and there is a good chance she'll make her first American apperances this fall. Her communique will, therefore, also serve for most of us as the first fairly detailed introduction to an artist who may eventually become one of the most important interpreters of modern jazz regardless of national boundaries.
“I was born Feb. 4, 1925,” Miss Hipp begins, “in Leipzig. That’s the Russian zone now, and I left there in April of 1946 because any kind of jazz is impossible there, as well as any kind of personal freedom. It’s even worse than during the war.
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| Photo by Hajo Hipp |
“I think this is why there are so many fanatic jazz fans over here, because jazz was forbidden during the war. The latest records we had at that time were those of the Benny Goodman quartet, and it was that way until the Americans came (what a happy day that was! I almost lost my mind).
“Over here, from our experience in the past few years in German night clubs, the only future in jazz I can see is to play a waltz or tango if they’re requested, and if there are no requests, to play the music you like. And when the square guests find out you can play their waltz, they also listen to your music, and they even applaud, no matter how old they are. This is only way over here to build their taste of jazz, and I hope the more they hear it, they’ll start liking or at least listening to it without complaining to the bar-owner.
“But in Germany, you have to do it the diplomatic way by playing their tunes also. The towns are small, and the rich people who can afford to go to the clubs are either square or ‘gangsters’ or both. Those young people who like jazz can’t afford to come too often, and if you play for them only, you’d be fired the next night because they don’t spend enough money on drinks. Still, in every German night club we worked, we played 90 percent jazz and just 10 percent no-music.
“One thing we noticed. American squares like any kind of slow music to which they can dance with arm around the neck. German people don’t have a national] talent for dancing, but they prefer fast tunes and jump around on each others’ feet somehow. At any age!
“Very few care about the music. They want loud and easy music. But still, if you have to work in a German night club, you can always arrange to play music also.
“I hope eventually to join the mother country of jazz. I'll be there some kind of way some day. And if I can get settled in the United States somehow, I hope I'll be able to get my drummer, Karl Sanney, over there also, because to me (and I’ve tried every good one in Germany) he is the greatest over here.
“Also in the group I have in Germany now since I left Hans Koller, are Hans Kresse, bass; Emil Mangelsdorff, alto and arranger, and Joki Freund, tenor. Joki also arranges and—sometimes we can’t believe it ourselves the way he plays—is also raising pigeons in the country.”
Blue Note Biography – Scott Yanow
Jutta Hipp had a strangely brief career, dropping out of music altogether shortly after emigrating to the United States. She studied painting in Germany and played jazz during World War II. When the Soviets took over East Germany, she moved with her family to Munich. Hipp played locally and in 1952, recorded with Hans Koller. She led her own quintet in Frankfurt in 1953-1955 and recorded for several labels, including a session that was later released by Blue Note. Moving to New York in November 1955, Hipp played at the Hickory House for much of the first half of 1956, recording two trio albums for Blue Note. Although originally inspired by Lennie Tristano, she was criticized at the time for being too influenced by Horace Silver; however, a studio album from July 1956 with Zoot Sims finds her showing a fairly original style. Unfortunately, that was her final recording, for Jutta Hipp soon dropped out of music, returned to painting, then worked as a seamstress. She lost contact with the music world to the extent that Blue Note didn’t know where her royalties should be sent until 2000. Three years later, at the age of 78, Jutta Hipp passed away in the Queens apartment where she lived alone.
Leonard Feather: Jutta Hipp – New Faces – New Sounds From Germany
DURING THE past year a new personality has flashed like a comet into the awareness of American jazz fans.
That a new jazz star should be a German is almost without precedent. That this brilliant young discovery should also be a girl is rare too, and a pretty girl even rarer. Jutta (pronounced Yoo-ta) Hipp is all these, and more.
Many words, and a few sounds, had reached this country about Jutta Hipp before 1954. She had corresponded with Lennie Tristano; a few of her recordings in Hans Koller's quartet had circulated here. Learning of the imminence of a visit to Germany as part of my Jazz Club USA concert tour in January 1954, I quickly determined to find this intriguing personality and arrange for further recorded evidence to present to the American public.
Finding her was a problem, for it appeared that she was not booked in any of the towns we were to play. But on reaching Düsseldorf we learned that she was leading her own quintet in a smaller town called Duisburg, an hour or so away. After our concert that night Buddy De Franco, Billie Holiday and some others slipped away in the company of Horst Lippmann, of the German Jazz Federation.
As we entered a crowded cellar club in Duisburg, music floated up to our ears that we could hardly believe was the work of five Germans. Surrounded by alto and tenor saxes, bass and drums, an attractive girl sat at the piano, her auburn hair hanging loose down her back; she was completely absorbed in the music, apparently oblivious of the noisy crowd around her. The five were playing Mon Petit — one of her own arrangements, played by the same musicians in this LP.
Jutta's American visitors were all amazed almost beyond belief. Hearing good music played in Sweden a week earlier had been no surprise — but to encounter the finest European jazz we had discovered thus far, played in a country that had been deprived of the sight and sound of real jazz during so many years of Nazism and war—this was incredible!
Nevertheless it was true, and thanks to Horst Lippmann, arrangements were made soon afterward for the evidence to be presented, via Blue Note records, as soon as the musicians could be brought within reach of that German rarity, a good recording studio.
Before taking leave of Jutta I found out a great deal of her background and was not surprised to learn that here was a sensitive, articulate, educated human being.
Born in Leipzig Feb. 4, 1925, she had spent much of her young life fleeing the twin oppressions of Nazism and communism, both of which officially frowned on jazz as decadent American music. During the war she had been an active participant in the clandestine affairs of the Leipzig Hot Club and had studied to become a painter, listening to rare smuggled American records in every spare moment.
When the Russians occupied Leipzig and closed the Academy of Arts, where she had been studying, Jutta and her family had to flee to Munich. Jutta concentrated less on her painting and more on her piano—"classics in any key, but jazz at first in only two," she recalls. She worked with Charlie Tabor, with the Hans Koller Quartet and others before forming her own quintet.
The present sides were recorded in April 1954 at the Franz Althoff Bau in Frankfurt-am-Main, with Heinz Ballauff as recording engineer and Horst Lippmann supervising.
Four of the numbers, including the opening Cleopatra, are by the full quintet. The ensemble, With Emil Mangelsdorff's alto and Oki Freund's tenor as the dominant voices, recalls that of e Tristano quintet of 1950, but the solos are by no means derivative. Mon Petit, Blue Skies and Variations are patterned similarly, with a chorus each for Jutta and the two horns.
Ghost of a Chance and Laura are quartet numbers featuring Emil and Joki respectively; the remaining two sides, Don't Worry 'Bout Me and What's New, are piano solos by Jutta with her able rhythm section, Hans Kresse on bass and Karl Sanner on drums. All five musicians, by the way, have been highly placed in Germany's Jazz Echo poll — but significantly, they have not yet been winners, for all are comparatively new stars, on the way up. It's safe to predict that within the next year or so all five will have reached the top in their national balloting as well as making a definite dent in the American consciousness.
Jutta's piano has a serenity, a single-line continuity that many will find superficially comparable with Tristano, yet she acknowledges no one influence, having listened to and absorbed the ideas of many leading American pianists. The fugue-like ideas that open What's New, the brilliant use of contrary motion, the constant sweep and length of her phrases betoken a strongly developed individual personality.
Jutta Hipp has announced her intention of coming to America as soon as possible. Her place, not merely as a novelty but as an original and important new voice on the international jazz scene, seems already assured. Blue Note is rightly proud to be the first company to bring to American audiences the Jutta Hipp Quintet.
—LEONARD FEATHER (Down Beat Magazine)
Cover Design by TRUDY FARMILANT
Down Beat 9 February 1955 Volume 22 Issue 3
The freshly sensitive German pianist who has been heard here previously only on the Hans Koller Discovery sides (Discovery DL 2005) makes a warm American debut as leader of her own quintet. Evidence of the growing stature of German jazz is the playing quality of her sidemen: Emil Mangelsdorff (alto); Joki Freund (tenor); Hans Kresse (bass), and Karl Sanner (drums). Mangelsdorff is especially notable. There are the inevitable influences to be discerned (particularly here the Tristano-Konitz-Marsh linear directions and sound) but all give strong indications of individual things to say, particularly Miss Hipp.
Jutta’s What's New? with, as Leonard Feather notes, “the brilliant use of contrary motion, the constant sweep and length of her phrases” is one of the most beautifully conceived piano solos in recent months. Four sides are with quintet; two with quartet; and there are two Hipp solos with rhythm section. Of the originals, Jutta’s Mon Petit is the most engaging, but every song on the set as much of musical value. Miss Hipp is said to be due here soon; she'll be able, I’m sure, to stay as long as she wishes. For once, incidentally, I cannot comment one way or another on the cover for this album, because this one was done by my wife [Trudi Farmilant]. (Blue Note LP 5056)
Notes etc.
There’s a great article on Jutta Hipp and her mounting royalties here: https://longreads.com/2017/08/04/the-brief-career-and-self-imposed-exile-of-jutta-hipp-jazz-pianist/
Session Information
Emil Mangelsdorff, alto sax; Joki Freund, tenor sax; Jutta Hipp, piano; Hans Kresse, bass; Karl Sanner, drums; Horst Lippmann, supervisor.
Frankfurt/Main, West Germany, April 24, 1954
Cleopatra
Don't Worry 'Bout Me
Ghost Of A Chance
I Never Knew (as Mon Petit)
What's New
Blue Skies
Laura
Variations
All selections released on Blue Note 5056
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