Kurt Henkels

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Kurt Henkels, 1952

Kurt Henkels (born December 17, 1910 in Solingen ; † July 12, 1986 in Hamburg ) was a German musician and band leader who had his greatest successes with the Leipzig Radio Dance Orchestra with swing titles.

Live and act

Henkels, born the son of a master craftsman, had violin lessons since he was eight. After leaving school, at the request of his parents, he first learned a civil profession in the graphic trade. Then he studied violin in Solingen, Wuppertal and Cologne . At 32, Kurt Henkels, who had previously performed with his own band, was a professional musician. Meanwhile he also played the clarinet and saxophone and has now made guest appearances with his orchestra all over Germany. In 1941 Kurt Henkels was called up for military service, which he spent until 1944 as a clarinetist with a music corps in Danzig. After the end of the war and his discharge from the Wehrmacht, he put together an orchestra of young musicians in Leipzig, which performed with great success in the local "Capitol" and in the "Hotel Elstertal". The people in charge of broadcasting in Leipzig became aware of the band and in 1947 Henkels was commissioned by the then Soviet directorship of the Leipzig broadcaster to put together a big band. On September 1, 1947, the “Leipzig Dance Orchestra Kurt Henkels” became the Leipzig broadcasting orchestra, directed by Kurt Henkels .

The founding members of the Leipzig broadcaster's dance orchestra included well-known musicians such as Rolf Kühn (clarinet, saxophone), Walter Eichenberg (trumpet), Günter Oppenheimer (piano) and Fips Fleischer (drums). The Leipzig Big Band quickly became one of the best-known and most popular in eastern Germany, but was also popular in the west of the divided country and made a name for itself among experts internationally. The first major international success came in 1951. With their progressive jazz recording of Ray Nobles Cherokee , Henkels and his Leipzig orchestra took third place in the French disc competition behind Ellington and Basie .

During the next few years, Henkels and his orchestra not only made recordings for radio in Leipzig, but also made numerous records for the AMIGA label . The vocal soloists he accompanied included Irma Baltuttis , Ilja Glusgal , Rita Paul , Bully Buhlan , the Cornel Trio, Fred Frohberg , Udo Jürgens , Paul Kuhn , Fred Weyrich , Horst Winter, Fred Bertelmann , Conny Froboess and Evelyn Künnecke . However, some of the band's star soloists, such as trumpeter Horst Fischer , clarinetist Rolf Kühn and saxophonist Werner Baumgart , left the Leipzig orchestra in 1949 and the early 1950s and went to West Berlin or the Federal Republic.

Kurt Henkels (1954)

The orchestra made guest appearances in Moscow, Budapest, Prague and other cities in the 1950s. As far as jazz was played, Henkels now moved in a stylistically narrower framework, as marked by orchestras such as Glenn Miller , Tommy Dorsey , Les Brown and Ray Anthony . After a concert in Prague in May 1959, at which the band had been enthusiastically celebrated, the government informed Henkels that he would not be allowed to make any further appearances abroad. At this point in time it was decreed that the repertoire of his orchestra could not contain more than 40% of foreign compositions. Repertoire lists had to be submitted for approval. Consequences of the cultural-political change that began in Moscow in 1955.

In July 1959, Henkels moved from Leipzig first to Munich and then to Hamburg. He justified his decision with increasing discrepancies with the state management of the GDR radio over the function and repertoire of the band. The last record of the Amiga label on which his name was mentioned was "Ferdinand". His two last recordings according to the list of recordings are "Garofitza" and "Swing-Express"; one looks in vain for his name on them. After Kurt Henkels was in the West, his name was deleted. The direction of the Leipzig Radio Dance Orchestra has now been taken over by its previous trumpeter and arranger Walter Eichenberg. Of the hundreds of recordings made by RTO Leipzig before 1960, some appear on later oldie compilations by VEB Deutsche Schallplatten Berlin, but always without specifying the orchestra leader.

Soon after his move, Kurt Henkels recorded the LP Von Acht bis um Acht with dance music and swing tracks for the Ariola label with a studio orchestra . Horst Fischer, Albert Mangelsdorff , Rolf Kühn, Roy Etzel , Macky Kasper and Peter Kreuder took part as soloists .

In Hamburg, from 1961, Henkels led the NDR studio orchestra at the local television station NDR , although he had to take into account the commercial constraints of television. In 1963 he handed over its leadership to Rolf Kühn and founded his own orchestra at ZDF . There he worked with his band as an accompanying orchestra for several nationally broadcast television shows. In 1966 Henkels withdrew from the stage. Since Henkels left the GDR in 1959, his name had been hushed up by the GDR rulers. Now that Henkels was no longer successful as an artist in the Federal Republic of Germany, the SED took the final settlement with the unpopular GDR refugee . The central organ of the party devoted a lengthy, malevolent contribution to the "traitor". At the time, Henkels was a sales representative a. a. worked as a traveler for an American distance learning company for which he recruited members through home visits. Later he worked for a few years as an employee of the Chappell publishing house in Hamburg, on whose behalf he kept in contact with the German broadcasters.

Kurt Henkels was married to Magdalena Henkels geb. Cook. The marriage has a son and a daughter.

literature

Notes / individual evidence

  1. ↑ All of his recordings on shellac records are listed in Frank Oehme, Bernd Meyer-Rähnitz, Joachim Schütte (eds.): Die Ewigefreund. From Lied der Zeit to VEB Deutsche Schallplatten Berlin. A company discography of shellac records from AMIGA, ETERNA, LIED DER ZEIT as well as REGINA and RADIOPHON. albis-international, Dresden-Ústí 2006, ISBN 80-86971-10-4 . See also Jürgen Wölfer , Jazz auf Amiga , in the same: Jazz in Germany , 2008, Höfen and Matthias Brüll (ed.), Amiga Jazz , Berlin, 2003
  2. ↑ AMIGA Schlager Archive 1: 1958-1960, foreword
  3. ↑ Interview 1962 ( Memento of the original from July 27, 2011 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.starinterviews.de
  4. ↑ Cf. but Rainer Bratfisch Freie Töne: Die Jazzszene in der DDR Berlin 2005, p. 46, according to which he is said to have been on the road as a representative for savings banks and vacuum cleaners. The New Germany claimed in 1967 that it was "forgotten after a few days". See the rise and fall of Kurt Henkel's Neues Deutschland, February 5, 1967
  5. ↑ Under the name Maggie Koch she wrote texts for titles by various composers, among others. a. together with Helmut Kießling for the first DEFA music film "Music, Music, Music" (1955), which portrays the Kurt Henkels orchestra (music: Walter Eichenberg).
  6. ↑ This text is almost identical to Leo P. Schlösser, record text for the album "Kurt Henkels & seine Orchester, Electrola 134-45 253/54

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personal data
SURNAME Henkels, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musician and band leader
DATE OF BIRTH December 17, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Solingen
DATE OF DEATH July 12, 1986
Place of death Hamburg