Eugen Wolff (musician)

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Eugen José Wolff (born February 19, 1901 in Hamm / Westphalia ; † November 7, 1961 in Berlin ) was a German violinist and orchestra conductor who was active in swing and dance music in the 1930s and early 1940s .

Live and act

Wolff studied violin in Bochum and Antwerp. He gave his first concerts at the age of eleven. In the mid-twenties, Eugen Wolff performed with his own small dance bands, for example in the Hotel Astoria (Leipzig), in Munich and in the Faun in Hamburg. At the end of the 1920s he renamed himself in the wake of the rumba wave and temporarily appeared as José Wolff . From autumn 1929 he received his first engagements in Berlin (Haus Imperator). At the beginning of 1930 he called his orchestra Jazz-Solisten-Kapelle and performed with this septet in Hamburg. By the end of 1930 he expanded his formation to big band strength and performed with his 12 jazz cannons in Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria.

Wolff played (again as Eugen Wolff) with his dance orchestra in 1934/35 in Berlin's Eden Hotel . In 1937 the Hotel Esplanade becomes the permanent venue for the formation. From 1936 Wolff recorded a number of shellac records with a studio ensemble for Odeon , mostly popular daily hits and film melodies such as "Es shine the stars" (from the sound film of the same name), "Kautschuk" / "Caramba" (O-31423, from the Adventure film Kautschuk from 1938), "Donkey-Serenade" (O-31384, from Tarantella , 1937) and "Stern von Rio" (O-31613, from the film of the same name from 1940), furthermore "Don't tell me" Adieu "- Just say "Goodbye!" "/" Cheri ... You are so different today! "(O-4783, with Zarah Leander , 1938)," My heart is beating boom! " Being able to play the piano "(O-31712, with Gustav Lutzey) or" In Deine Augen "/" Put a tango record on "(O-31616), but also some jazz tracks such as" Cherokee "(O-31590)," On a Sunday Afternoon ”(O-31012, with Ralph Maria Siegel ) or Will Hudson's “ Organ Grinder's Swing ”(O-31123).

In Wolff's orchestra played a. a. Willy Berking , Detlev Lais and Lubo D'Orio ; Vocalists were Ralph Maria Siegel ("The stars shine"), Fred Kassen and the Metropol vocalists ("Why does Adelheid have no evening for me", 1939) and Greta Schönfelder / Gustav Ludzey ("Good night little girl", 1943) and Doddy Delissen ("Yes Sir", Odeon O-31220). In the field of jazz , he was involved in 18 recording sessions between 1936 and 1939, according to Tom Lord . From 1940 Eugen Wolff was used in the troop support. In 1942, when he was working to support the Wehrmacht, he met his wife, the singer Marlene Mathan. Their only joint admission session took place at the end of 1942. Wolff's last recordings were made in 1943.

In 1943 Wolff was drafted as a soldier; At the end of the war he was taken prisoner by the Soviets. When he returned to Berlin in 1949, he founded a new orchestra. The first post-war recordings for Odeon took place in October 1949. After negotiations about further recordings were unsuccessful, Wolff and his wife withdrew from the music business in 1954.

Horst H. Lange counts Eugen Wolff's orchestra with those of Lewis Ruth , Billy Bartholomew , Corny Ostermann and Georg Nettelmann to the remarkable dance orchestras of the period "which unfortunately too rarely produced themselves with hotsolistic despite good soloists".

Discographic notes

  • Peter Mach's Music, 1936–43

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manfred Weihermüller: Discography of German Cabaret - Volume 5 . 1998, p. 1283
  2. ↑ Tom Lord: The Jazz Discography (online, accessed October 4, 2014)
  3. ^ Horst Heinz Lange: Jazz in Germany: the German jazz chronicle up to 1960 . 1996, page 104
personal data
SURNAME Wolff, Eugene
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wolff, Eugen José; Wolff, Eugen Josef (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musician and orchestra leader
DATE OF BIRTH February 19, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamm (Westphalia)
DATE OF DEATH November 7, 1961
Place of death Berlin