Hot club combo

The Hotclub Combo (also Hotclub Sextett or Hot-Club Frankfurt ) was a Frankfurt swing jazz band that existed during the National Socialist period and in the post-war years.

History of the band

The young Frankfurt musicians Carlo Bohländer and Emil Mangelsdorff formed a jazz band in 1941 with the clarinetist Charly Petri , the bassist Hans Otto Jung and the drummer Hans Podehl during the time of National Socialism, which according to Joachim-Ernst Berendt "the nucleus for the Frankfurt post-war jazz " should form; they played secretly, in the camouflage swing title typical of the time , by providing the almost exclusively US-American pieces with German titles, because everything American was officially forbidden. The musicians first appeared as a Harlem combo in the "Rokoko-Diele", which was located in a backyard of the Kyffhäuser Hotel at Kaiserstrasse 69, and later played in an empty factory building.

On May 17, 1945, the musicians received a license as a hot club sextet from the US occupation authorities, through which public appearances were permitted. In the post-war ensemble, which was to exist until 1948, the pianist Heinz Gietz , the tenor saxophonist Werner Dies , the drummer Willy 'Bottle' Kühn, the bassist Steve Spiegel and the guitarists Heinz Tischmann and Béla Martinelly played . The sextet performed in US clubs on the one hand, but also in a club in Frankfurt's Myliusstrasse on the other; the program was copied and sent by Horst Lippmann. In 1948, the sextet took a different line on (with Bohländer, tp, this ts, Gietz, p, Louis Freichel , Vib and Young on bass, Lippmann on drums in the sextet as bebop combo; for Dixieland programs changed Freichel to Trumpet and This to the clarinet.) The sextet has now recorded jazz tracks for Radio Frankfurt and soon also for Radio Saarbrücken . The sextet won the competition of various jazz combos organized by the Frankfurt broadcaster "with a tremendous advantage" (according to Horst Lippmann).

The sextet also acted as the musical backbone of jam sessions, which were broadcast weekly from the Palmengarten Special Services Club to AFN in 1948 and led to inquiries from Belgium, the Netherlands, England, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway.

literature

• Joachim-Ernst Berendt : A window made of jazz. Essays, portraits, reflections . Fischer Taschenbuchverl., Frankfurt / M. 1989. ISBN 3-596-23002-0 (EA Frankfurt / M. 1977)
• Jürgen Schwab : The Frankfurt Sound. A city and its jazz history (s). 2nd edition Societätsverlag, Frankfurt / M. 2005. ISBN 3-7973-0888-4 (+ 2 CDs)
• Carlo Bohländer , Karl Heinz Holler, Christian Pfarr: Reclam's Jazz Guide . 5th, revised and supplemented edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-15-010464-5 (EA Stuttgart 1970).

Remarks

1. ↑ Later the formation (until 1944, with changing line-ups) included the violinist Paul Martin , the drummer Ata Berk , the pianist Lous Freichel , Horst Lippmann , the bassist Heiner Merkel and the trombonist Rudy Thomsen ; see. C. Bohländer, 1977 & 1990
2. ↑ Michael H. Kater Daring Game. Jazz under National Socialism . Cologne 1995, p. 276ff.
3. ↑ Jürgen Schwab The Frankfurt Sound , p. 74f.