Alfred Lion

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Memorial plaque on Alfred-Lion-Steg , in Berlin-Schöneberg

Alfred Wladislaus Lion (supposedly actually Alfred Löw ) (* 21st April 1908 in Schoeneberg in Berlin , † 2. February 1987 in San Diego , California ), was a founder of the Jazz - record label Blue Note , which is now an almost legendary reputation as "The epitome of the jazz label" enjoys.

Youth in Berlin in the 1920s

Lion was born in 1908 in the house at Wielandstrasse 22 in the still independent town of Schöneberg . Even as a child he showed a pronounced enthusiasm for music, although it is significant that his passion did not have such an effect that the boy would have taken the effort to really learn a musical instrument. Rather, he devoted his attention to the then completely new media of radio and record and evidently put his ambition early on in the task of being a competent music listener . On top of that, the circumstances of the time resulted in a particularly fortunate constellation for live music: Lion's home district of Schöneberg was incorporated into Greater Berlin in 1920 , and the area around Nollendorfplatz in particular subsequently developed into one of the actual settings of the Roaring Twenties in Germany. The current trends in all areas of entertainment culture at the time were absorbed much faster and more readily in the "New West" than on the amusement mile established from the imperial era in Friedrichstadt and around the boulevard Unter den Linden .

In 1925, 16-year-old Alfred Lion heard a Berlin guest performance by the Chocolate Kiddies revue , which was musically accompanied by the band of the black jazz pianist Sam Wooding , who was then popular in New York . During the band's stay in Berlin, a photograph of the musicians was taken in the Vox phonograph studio; in which he recorded 8 tracks with his orchestra, all of which were published. With Tommy Ladnier and Gene Sedric, the eleven-member ensemble had two soloists who later became quite famous in its ranks, and the repertoire also included arrangements of pieces by the still little-known Duke Ellington . Since the Wooding band only began to make recordings to a significant extent some time later (precisely because of their great success in the Old World ), it is difficult to assess exactly what the young Berliner may have heard; but statements from contemporaries suggest that it was a relatively competent early big band in the style of Fletcher Henderson's orchestra. In any case, the experience moved Lion deeply ("It was the beat - it hit me right in the bones") and was the initial spark for him in a "lifelong love affair with jazz". A few years later, his first one was supposed to be quite adventurous Business trip to the USA with nearly 300 shellac records returned to Berlin.

Escape from the Nazi regime

As a Jew , Lion was forced to turn his back on Nazi Germany . First he fled to Chile with his mother , before he managed to immigrate to the USA sometime between 1936 and 1938 - here the information contradicts one another - where he and his partner Max Margulis soon worked in a small office in West New York 47th Street started a new jazz label.

Regarding Lions change of name, some interpretations are rumored, the truth of which is difficult to verify; This is understandable in the case of a man who saw himself as a supporting figure in the background anyway and made little fuss about his own - albeit extremely exciting - biography.

It is unlikely that a US immigration officer in Ellis Island simply forced the Anglicization of his German name on him in the mid-1930s. On the other hand, the “Americanophile” Lion himself will have been aware of the fact that the anglicised version of his name had to sound much more catchy, especially for African-Americans. Since Lion never made great efforts to deny his Berlin roots, the following interpretation can claim at least psychological plausibility: in addition to the purely practical effect of easier pronunciation, the name Lion also pays homage to Alexander Lion , the founder of the German scout movement to which the young Alfred Lion actually belonged.

Alfred Lion's childhood friend Frank (Francis) Wolff , a trained photographer from a wealthy Berlin family, also managed to escape to the USA in mid-1939. He became Lion's most important partner on Blue Note , and the suggestive combination of the two names certainly contributed to the myth surrounding the duo - this is most evident in Lee Morgan's composition The Lion and the Wolff on his 1960 record Leeway .

The beginnings of Blue Note

Blue Note Records logo

The called Lion and Margulis in life record company had their first recording session finally on January 6, 1939. Among the participants were at that time as a prominent musician, the two at the time extremely popular boogie-woogie - pianists Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis present. Blue Note's slogan , The Finest in Jazz Since 1939, which later became so famous , relates the entire further history of the label to this first session . The first successes were already apparent in 1940: the soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet recorded a version of George Gershwin's song Summertime for the label , which became a jazz success in the USA.

Lean years

However, two events put a significant damper on the ambitious Lions project. On the one hand, this was the entry into the war of the USA after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the associated special charges in the entertainment sector and the rationing of the now scarce raw material for record production, namely shellac , and, last but not least, its own conscription to the Military service. Second, in 1942 , the American Musicians' Union announced a ban on recording instrumental musicians, the so-called recording ban , which remained in force for almost two years and made work for a small label specializing in jazz as good as impossible. Lion, however, was not ready to give up; on the contrary, he was now full-time working for the label and even moved with his "workforce", which included his wife Lorraine , new offices at 767 Lexington Avenue. Throughout the 1940s For years, Blue Note's financial situation remained extremely precarious, so that Max Margulis finally felt forced to retire in 1947. The switch from 12-inch shellacs to the more modern long-playing records propagated by major labels at the beginning of the 1950s was initially a financial burden for Blue Note , before they learned to use this format for their own benefit from around 1954.

The Hard Bop and Blue Note: "a match made in heaven"

All of this ultimately turned out to be a lucky stroke of luck, as it became clear that the times for the Blue Note aesthetic were only just ripe. The emerging new style of jazz, now known as hard bop , hit Lion's musical nerve in an unprecedented way. The extremely eclectic mix of different, especially Afro-American musical influences seemed to represent exactly the sound that the German had strived for from the start.

Musicians like Art Blakey , Horace Silver , Lee Morgan or Jackie McLean could from now on present their latest projects for years to come with a label that was carried by an unshakable enthusiasm for precisely this musical conception. Lion's generous and at the time completely unheard-of policy of paying the musicians a few days of rehearsal before the actual session paid off just as much as Wolff's “cool” photo aesthetics, Reid Miles' visionary cover design and sound engineer Rudy Van's incisive sound performance Funds .

Success and retreat

From around 1955 to 1965 the label of the two German emigrants Lion and Wolff functioned as the main “mouthpiece”, especially for the Afro-American varieties of jazz. Especially Lion made himself particularly well with his fine feeling for promising musicians of the "youngsters" of that time. His protégés included musicians such as Jimmy Smith , Joe Henderson and Freddie Hubbard , some of whom were to belong to the crème of the jazz establishment by the end of the 1960s. Occasionally, Lion's wife Ruth, who was a jazz singer, campaigned for young talent - for example in the case of her colleague Sheila Jordan . For all his idealism, Lion remained realistic enough to see that his creative company policy had to be underpinned by a certain amount of commercial success. In this way, Blue Note even succeeded in launching real chart successes with a few singles . The latter included Horace Silver's Song for My Father and Lee Morgan's The Sidewinder . Nevertheless, Lion, according to his own statement, felt an increasing lack of understanding of newer trends in jazz, which ultimately led him to withdraw from the music business. The last Blue Note session he produced took place (with tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine as band leader) on July 18, 1967.

personality

Sign on Alfred-Lion-Steg, opened in 2012 (Berlin)

Like hardly any other record producer before or after him, Lion was personally close to the artists he supported. His own vita may have encouraged him to counter the racism that was omnipresent in the USA in the middle of the century with the integrating power of music. For a comparatively respectable company in the music industry, it bordered on scandalous that Lion occupied the responsible key position of A&R (Artist and Repertoire) manager with the black tenor saxophonist Ike Quebec . He was also one of Lions' closest friends, whom the musician's death on January 16, 1963 plunged into a serious personal crisis. The anecdotes about Lions behavior when recording are legion, whereby the strong German accent plays an essential role in his English. In the legendary jazz world, this is overdone by adding a Yiddish touch to Lion in his speech, which seems obvious to him as a German-Jewish refugee, but is only based on the similarity of the two languages ​​to American ears. In fact, like most modern assimilated Jews in Germany in his youth, Lion spoke next to no Yiddish, but had a slight Berlin tone, if at all.

Nonetheless, Lions ceterum censeo , with which he repeatedly suggested to his artists the main quality of a good jazz piece for his ears, is still a classic as a catchphrase to this day , even among musicians who are far too young to have met it themselves : "It must swing!"

Private

He was married to Lorraine from 1942 to 1947, who would later become the wife of Max Gordon and head of the Village Vanguard .

Honors

On November 8, 2012, a pedestrian bridge named after Alfred Lion was opened in Berlin's Tempelhof-Schöneberg district . The Alfred-Lion-Steg connects the Rote Insel , from which Lion originated, with the north of Tempelhof .

Quote

As early as 1939, Lion published his lofty plans with Blue Note in its first advertising brochure, which seem all the more visionary when you consider that jazz was hardly accepted as artistically relevant music at that time. In addition to the fact that Lion has remained true to his intentions, it is noteworthy how (in spite of the completely correct English) his train of thought and his formulation remains "German" or at least "European":

"Blue Note Records are designed simply to serve the uncompromising expressions of hot jazz or swing, in general. Any particular style of playing which represents an authentic way of musical feeling is genuine expression. By virtue of its significance in place, time and circumstance, it possesses its own tradition, artistic standards and audience that keeps it alive. Hot jazz, therefore, is expression and communication, a musical and social manifestation, and Blue Note records are concerned with identifying its impulses, not its sensational and commercial adornments. "

"(Blue Note simply aims to make the uncompromising forms of expression of hot jazz or swing generally heard. Any particular playing style that represents an authentic musical feeling is real expression. Because of its meaning in space, time and the circumstances it comes from, this music has its own tradition, artistic values ​​and an audience that keeps it alive. Therefore, hot jazz means expression and communication, a musical and social revelation, and Blue Note strives to reveal its actual impulses instead of screaming and commercialized superficialities. ) "

Documentaries

literature

  • Jazz Institute Darmstadt (ed.): That's Jazz. The sound of the 20th century . Exhibition catalog, Darmstadt 1988
  • Richard Cook: Blue Note. The biography . Argon Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-87024-599-9 .
  • Richard Havers: Blue Note - The Finest in Jazz Since 1939 , Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3944874074 .
  • David H. Rosenthal: Hard Bop. Jazz and Black Music 1955-1965 . Oxford University Press, New York 1993, ISBN 0195085566 .
  • Hans Hielscher, Blue Note record label. How two German emigrants gave jazz a home , in: Spiegel online , January 3, 2019 (online)

Web links

Commons : Alfred Lion  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard Havers: Blue Note - The Finest in Jazz , p. 22. According to Theresia Ziehe: Talkin 'about the Lion and the Wolff, In: Dietrich Rünger (Ed.) Painted Jazz !: talking about Blue Note. Bad Oeynhausen, Jazzprezzo, 2014, pp. 48–56, but according to the birth certificate his name is Lion and not Löw.
  2. ↑ Sam Wooding to his Chocolate Kiddies in Germany . Rainerjazz.com. Retrieved September 19, 2010.
  3. ↑ Sam Wooding and his Orchestra 1925 (photo) . Redhotjazz.com. Retrieved September 19, 2010.
  4. ^ Opening of the east-west green corridor on Tagesspiegel.de. Retrieved November 8, 2012.
  5. ↑ A film about friendship, love and jazz , on NDR -Online from June 28, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Lion, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Loew, Alfred; Loew, Alfred; Lion, Alfred Wladislaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American record producer of German origin
DATE OF BIRTH April 21, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Schöneberg
DATE OF DEATH 2nd February 1987
Place of death San Diego