Uncle Po

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Onkel Pö (Rainer Baumann Band, August 29, 1981)

Onkel Pö was the short name for a jazz bar that Bernd Cordua and Peter Marxen (1939–2020), who had founded the Jazzhouse in the Brandstwiete in 1967, founded on Mittelweg in the Pöseldorf district of Hamburg . When the house had to be demolished due to dilapidation, Uncle Pös Peu à Peu , as the club was initially called with its full name, moved to Eppendorf and from then on called itself Uncle Pös Carnegie Hall as a tribute to a world-famous venue in New York City .

After the move, it became known as a trendy bar in the 1970s and 1980s in Hamburg (district Hoheluft-Ost , Lehmweg 44); October 1, 1970 was given as the foundation date. In old Uncle Pö am Mittelweg there were often sessions with a wide variety of musicians; this was also maintained in Eppendorf and the spectators came more numerous. Television came on and Uncle Pö, under the direction of Peter Marxen (Bernd Cordua had left), became the center of the “new Hamburg good mood”. The German rock singer Udo Lindenberg immortalized the bar in his album Alles Klar auf der Andrea Doria with the text passage from the song Alles Klar auf der Andrea Doria : "A pensioner band has been playing Dixieland for twenty years at Uncle Pö's ..." .

Mid-1970s, they began from the Hamburg scene to talk, which was accompanied by a New Orleans- and Dixieland - Revival . Peter Marxen combined jazz , rock and pop music , whereby the accent in the jazz area increasingly shifted to modern jazz . It remained the club character, that is, you went to the pub because you wanted to meet others, and not necessarily because of the music - and so a trendy get-together was born ; you met people from the record industry and radio.

The uncle Pö was one of the organizers of the Jazz Festival in Hamburg (1975), then under the name of "New Jazz Festival". In order to boost the festival's success, the musicians, for example Albert Mangelsdorff , Wolfgang Dauner or Gerd Dudek , played for low fees. This positive history of Hamburg for the international stars, however, concealed a considerable deficit for the active Hamburg musicians. As well-known and crowded as the clubs were, they did nothing for their local artists. These could occasionally appear on a smaller scale and only the owner of Uncle Pö gave them regular opportunities to play in jam sessions.

Uncle Pö's November program 1984

From the world-famous jazz greats played in Uncle Pö among others, John Abercrombie - Chet Baker - Art Blakey - Carla Bley - Joanne Brackeen - Dollar Brand - Michael Brecker - Gary Burton - Don Cherry - Chick Corea - Gil Evans - Jan Garbarek - Dizzy Gillespie - Steve Goodman - Dexter Gordon - Charlie Haden - Louis Hayes - Joe Henderson - Bobby Hutcherson - Leo Kottke - Steve Kuhn - Dave Liebman - Michael Mantler - Pat Metheny - Alphonse Mouzon - Marvin "Hannibal" Peterson - Tom Shaka - Woody Shaw - Archie Shepp - Horace Silver - Ralph Towner - Bennie Wallace - Mike Westbrook - Yōsuke Yamashita - Attila Zoller , some, like Al Jarreau and Helen Schneider , started their world careers there. Even U2 had before her international breakthrough here in 1981 made an appearance.

The day after Al Jarreau's appearance on March 12, 1976, the NDR drove up with editor Michael Naura to record the new discovery. The concert was recorded live by NDR and broadcast on the radio. In addition, Al Jarreau was hired for a TV show The Al Jarreau Show . At that time, the NDR talk show was also recorded in Onkel Pö , but soon had to move to the studio because Peter Marxen refused to allow Adolf Hitler's favorite sculptor , Arno Breker , as a talk guest. As a result, New Wave bands like the Talking Heads or Hanseatic New Wave greats like the Roundheads could be seen in “Pö”.

Peter Marxen ran the music bar until 1979, when he gave up his bar and musician job and took over the “Forsthaus Hessenstein” restaurant in the Plön district. His successor Holger Jass changed the direction of the Corner of Jazz into a Corner of Jazz and Rock, employee Andreas Kiel remained as program manager for some time, but 1985 brought the end to the club: The “Legendär” restaurant was created in the rooms. Since November 1, 2006 there has been a restaurant of the “Schweinske” gastronomy chain, later a restaurant of the “Mama” chain.

The reason for the closure of the Uncle Pö was ultimately a result of an investigation by the building supervision, which had determined that the music system (1200 watts sinus output) had impaired the stability of the building due to the associated vibrations in the course of time to such an extent that the operation for building supervision reasons the amplifier system should have been prohibited. The club was thus deprived of its livelihood. The Pö founder Bernd Cordua later tried several times without much success to reopen music bars under the name of Uncle Pö , in the 1990s also in East Germany .

documentary

  • The Eppendorf Cave - The legendary Onkel Pö - Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) 2016 - 60 minutes - Director and screenplay: Oliver Schwabe
  • Our story - When Udo, Otto & Co became stars (NDR) 2017 - 45 minutes - Director and screenplay: Oliver Schwabe

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The man whose name is Uncle Pö , from the archive of musikexpress.de, 1975
  2. ↑ The heart of Uncle Pö. In: Spiegel.de. June 17, 2020, accessed June 17, 2020 .
  3. ↑ The Eppendorf Cave - The legendary Uncle Pö. Documentation , ndr.de, D 2016, accessed on March 22, 2017
  4. ↑ a b c d e Onkel Pö: Wo Udo lernte rocken , ndr.de, July 22, 2011
  5. ↑ a b c "At Uncle Pö's, there's a pensioner band playing" , Hamburger Abendblatt, February 23, 2008
  6. ↑ a b No room for Dionysus - out for the Hamburg music pub "Onkel Pö" , Die Zeit, January 10, 1986
  7. ↑ Cherry pancakes with U2 spiegel.de from November 1, 2011. Retrieved on February 10, 2017.
  8. ^ Page on the Forsthaus Hessenstein on the Gut Panker website ( Memento from June 17, 2016 in the Internet Archive ).
  9. ^ Filmportal.de: The Eppendorf Cave - The legendary Onkel Pö
  10. ↑ ndr.de [1]

Coordinates: 53 ° 35 ′ 5 ″  N , 9 ° 58 ′ 50 ″  E