Inge Brandenburg

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Inge Brandenburg (born February 18, 1929 in Leipzig , † February 23, 1999 in Munich ; actually Ingeborg Brandenburg ) was a German jazz singer and theater actress . She is often referred to as the best German jazz singer of the 1960s.

Live and act

Inge Brandenburg was born as one of six children into a broken family in which violence and strife raged. She lost her parents when she was young to the National Socialists: The father, a communist and conscientious objector in World War I , was imprisoned in Mauthausen concentration camp in 1939 , where he later died, the mother was interned as "anti-social" in Ravensbrück concentration camp and was briefly found there in 1945 End of war at. The siblings were separated from each other and placed in different children's homes, so that Inge Brandenburg spent most of her youth in homes in Dessau and Bernburg .

Immediately after the end of the war, she fled to the American zone in Hof , where she was imprisoned for several months as a drifter. Then she moved to Augsburg . There she worked in a bakery, began to learn to play the piano and came into contact with jazz for the first time in the city's GI clubs . She successfully applied for a newspaper ad for a dance orchestra that was looking for a singer and after moving to Frankfurt am Main , she went through German nightclubs and dance halls with them. As an autodidact , she increasingly developed into an excellent jazz interpreter and - after an engagement in Libya - finally undertook an eight-month tour trip to Sweden, which was crowned with success (originally only four weeks were planned). Back in Germany, the breakthrough came in 1958 at the German Jazz Festival ; the critics also prophesied a great future for it. She received her first record deal and, appreciated for the dark timbre of her voice and her excellent timing , soon sang with the first jazz guard.

At the Festival Européen du Jazz in Antibes in 1960 she was named “best European jazz singer”. The collaboration with Hans Koller , Albert Mangelsdorff , Emil Mangelsdorff , Helmut Brandt and the orchestras of Kurt Edelhagen and Erwin Lehn cemented her reputation as the best West German jazz singer; she sang mainly in swing idioms and blues pieces. Her interpretation of Lover Man allegedly made her "a legend" in 1960: "Unimpressed by the overwhelming vocal recordings that were already available at the time, the young German sang her heart out with individual phrasing and a soulful, dark voice."

In the early 1960s was Inge Brandenburg from the AFN presenter Charlie Hickman managed, which gave her first television appearances, including with Ted Heath (1962). She toured with the Gunter Hampel Group in 1965 and performed Ornette Coleman pieces such as Lonely Woman . In 1968 she went on tour with Wolfgang Dauner's trio . Record companies released some recordings with her, but preferred to record (better salable) hit- like pieces, which she was not ready to do. After her unsuccessful attempt to force the label in court to publish jazz recordings with her, as originally agreed, she was "burned" in the industry. Also, because of her alcohol consumption and her irritable nature, she was increasingly considered difficult, as a result of which she received only a few engagements, so that she later played mostly theater. In 1976 she sang again at a jazz festival in Würzburg, 1974 and 1976 in the Sinkkasten in Frankfurt am Main, 1985 in the Brotfabrik in Frankfurt am Main, or in Omnibus (Würzburg) and in the Sudhaus in Stuttgart with the Peter Mayer Quartet and Jan Jankeje . Then she withdrew completely from the music market due to the difficult economic situation.

After the end of his career, Brandenburg slipped into deeper alcohol problems, in addition to problems with her vocal cords. In 1990 she underwent vocal cord surgery. In the mid-1990s she attempted a comeback - supported by Gerry Hayes and Charly Antolini , with the trios of pianists Walter Lang and Heinz Frommeyer, which failed, however. She died impoverished in the Schwabing hospital in 1999 . Her grave is in the Munich North Cemetery .

Discography

Singles

  • 1960: "That only happens once" / "It's always nice" ( Decca )
  • 1960: "Bye Bye Benjamino" / "Harry's little ballroom" (Decca)
  • 1960: "Seven days, seven nights" / "Goody Goody" (Decca)
  • 1961: "They are all crooks" / "Because I'm afraid of you" ( Polydor )
  • 1962: "South of Hawaii" ("Message in a Bottle") / "At Midnight" (Polydor)
  • 1962: "Tiger Twist" / "Amateur d'amour" (Polydor)
  • 1965: "Hey Baby" / "Tomorrow I'll take your photo off the wall" (Inge & Fats ; CBS)
  • 1965: "Take a rest with me" / "You won't let go of me" (Inge & Fats; CBS)
  • 1967: "I love him" / "A man is a man" (CBS)
  • 1970: "You Lost" / "The Song Of The Pumpkin" ( Schwann )
  • 1970: "I open my mouth" / "Another Easter song" (Schwann)

EPs and LP

Posthumously published as CD :

documentation

On June 16, 2011, the two-hour documentary Sing! Inge, sing! - The broken dream of Inge Brandenburg premiered by Marc Boettcher . The film, which was awarded the “Predicate Valuable”, was released in theaters in October 2011, and in May 2012 the film was also released on DVD. On December 5, 2012, a 52-minute short version of the film entitled Die Deutsche Lady Jazz (La lady allemande du Jazz) was broadcast for the first time on German and French television on ARTE TV . This TV version was nominated on January 29, 2013 for the 2013 Grimme Prize in the field of information and culture.

In October 2016, Boettcher's book biography of the same name, Sing! Inge, sing! on the occasion of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

literature

  • Singing means everything to me! Inge Brandenburg in conversation. In: Gunna Wendt (ed.): The jazz women. Luchterhand, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-630-71082-4 .
  • Marc Boettcher: Sing! Inge, sing! Inge Brandenburg's broken dream. Parthas Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86964-113-3 .

Lexical entries

Web links

Footnotes

Remarks

  1. ↑ The exact circumstances of his death, which is said to have occurred after an electric shock, are not known; 1940 as well as 1941 are recorded as the year of death.
  2. ↑ There are also different information about the circumstances and place of death of the mother. According to one source, she died in Ravensbrück concentration camp, while according to another, the trace is lost during her transfer from there to Dachau concentration camp . According to an article in the Berliner Tagesspiegel, she was shot.
  3. ↑ The main initiator of the republication of the archive recordings was the musician and journalist Jürgen Schwab , who also moderated an episode of the radio show "JazzFacts" on June 2, 2015, which was recorded online as an MP3 file (approx. 32 minutes, approx. 58 minutes) MB) is available.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e full content (from the press booklet) . From inge-brandenburg.de, accessed on March 13, 2017
  2. ↑ a b The tragic life of Inge Brandenburg ( Memento of the original from March 28, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . On May 27, 2015 at hr-online .de, accessed on March 27, 2017 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hr-online.de
  3. ↑ a b c d Marcus A. Woelfle : STAR ON TIME . Obituary for Inge Brandenburg (1929-1999). In: Jazz newspaper . April 1999, 1999 ( jazzzeitung.de [accessed on March 13, 2017]).
  4. ↑ a b c d e Christian Schröder: Show me what love is . On October 25, 2011 at tagesspiegel.de , accessed on March 13, 2017
  5. ↑ Marcus A. Woelfle in Hans-Jürgen Schaal (Ed.): Jazz standards. The encyclopedia. Bärenreiter, Kassel u. a. 2001, ISBN 3-7618-1414-3 , pp. 295f.
  6. ^ Klaus Nerger: Musician XLIV - Inge (borg) Brandenburg . 2000 from knerger.de, accessed on March 13, 2017
  7. ↑ Frank Bongers: Inge Brandenburg - "Sing! Inge, sing!" ( Memento of the original from January 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . On November 6, 2011 from jazzdimensions.de, accessed on March 13, 2017 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jazzdimensions.de
  8. ↑ Frank Becker: A worthy memory: Inge Brandenburg "Easy Street" - The little that stayed . On May 17, 2015 at musenblaetter.de, accessed on March 13, 2017
  9. ↑ Previously unpublished songs by Inge Brandenburg with the hr-Jazzensemble ( memento of the original from March 2, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . On May 7, 2015 at hr-online.de, accessed on March 13, 2017 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hr-online.de
  10. ↑ Early start with Inge: Unpublished songs by Inge Brandenburg with the hr-Jazzensemble ( Memento of the original from March 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . On June 2, 2015 at hr-online.de, accessed on March 13, 2017 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hr-online.de
  11. ↑ 49th Grimme Prize 2013: Nominations - Competition Information & Culture / Special . At grimme-preis.de , accessed on March 13, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Brandenburg, Inge
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brandenburg, Ingeborg (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German jazz singer and actress
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 1999
Place of death Munich