Gustl Mayer (musician)

Gustl Mayer at Jazz in der Burg / Dreieichenhain 2004

Gustl Mayer (born May 8, 1936 in Frankfurt am Main as Günter Mayer ) is a German jazz musician ( clarinet , tenor saxophone ) and editor.

Live and act

Mayer attended the Helmholtz School in his hometown and initially learned the clarinet as an autodidact . Between 1954 and 1956 he studied at the Hoch Conservatory . He then switched to the tenor saxophone and performed in American soldiers' clubs in Germany, France and Spain. In 1961 he played in Freddy Christmann's quintet . From 1963 he was a successor to Barney Wilen at Waldi Heidepriem's Modern Jazz Group Freiburg . At the same time he played with Emil Mangelsdorff ; with Volker Kriegel , he founded the group Sound Constellation in 1967 . He also worked on radio and television recordings with Chet Baker , Claus Ogerman (a title in 1955 on Early Chet: Chet Baker in Germany 1955-1959 ) or Jimmy Smith . In the early 1970s he played in the rock jazz group From with Klaus Göbel .

Mayer had been working full-time in the police administration since 1963 and from 1966 as archivist and then as program designer and music editor at the Hessischer Rundfunk . In 1978 he founded his own Gustl Mayers Jazz Stampede (with Torolf Mølgaard , Joerg Reiter , Günter Lenz and Peter Baumeister ), which recorded the album Yellow Cab and with which he performed at festivals in Frankfurt , Burghausen , Basel and Hanover . In 1985 Mayer co-founded the Frankfurt Swing All Stars with Conny Jackel ( German Record Prize 1988 for Jive at Five ).

His main occupation was jazz from 1986 onwards, as he was now television editor (until 1994) and produced the 54-part series Swing Rarities , moderated by Jan Hofer . From 1990 to 2010 he played regularly on the jazz cruises Jazz Festival on Sea , where he played with American stars such as Blue Mitchell , Barney Kessel and Jimmy Woode . In the last 10 years he was also responsible for the program design. In 1996 he recorded the album Jubilee All Stars: When Legends Get Together with Clark Terry , Harry Sweets Edison , Red Holloway , Bobby Durham , Willie Pickens and Eddie Jones in New York City . He also played with the hr big band under Kurt Bong , the big band of Paul Kuhn and the super trio of Dirk Raufeisen and Charly Antolini .

If Mayer was guided by the game of Hank Mobley around 1970 , he later found his own expression in a “modern swing”. He is also active as a jury member for youth jazz and member of the advisory board of the Frankfurt association Kultur für ALLE e. V.

literature

• Arman Sahihi black mold: Gustl Mayer. In: Wolfgang Sander , Jazz in Frankfurt. 1990. Frankfurt am Main, pp. 116-119 (with discography).
• Martin Kunzler : Jazz Lexicon. Volume 2: M – Z (= rororo-Sachbuch. Vol. 16513). 2nd Edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-499-16513-9 .

Web links

• An autobiographical university lecture with Gustl Mayer (including discography)
• Festival at sea
• Gustl Mayer at Discogs (English)