Jazz in Germany has a fractured history, with a strong start in the ‘Golden Twenties’, especially in Berlin, which after WW I was the biggest metropole in Europe with over 4 million inhabitants. Once the ban on US music was lifted after the war, jazz records were imported from the early 1920’s and around 1924 local labels like Polydor, DG and Brunswick started to record German jazz musicians. When earlier groups, like the Original Piccadilly Four, had mostly copied US music and not improvised, the new breed of artists was already a few steps ahead. The Weintraub Syncopators, under pianist and drummer Stefan Weintraub, was one of the most famous groups of the time, appearing in the movie ‘The Blue Angel’ and in various theatre productions of director Max Reinhardt. Another top act of the time was the vocal quintet (plus piano) Comedian Harmonists, who, among other songs, sang standards in German translations. In Berlin many theatres, hotels, dance halls and clubs offered entertainment – giving musicians a lot of opportunities to perform or learn – from the visiting US musicians like Paul Whiteman, Sam Wooding, Alex Hyde and others. But soon right-wing political parties would scream loud against the ‘Americanization’ of German culture.
“The history of jazz in Germany began relatively late compared to other European countries. In the 1930’s and 1940’s jazz was ostracised, suppressed and in some cases subject to criminal prosecution” writes Hans-Jürgen Linke and he is right: immediately after their election the Nazi Party banned the performance of jazz and many musicians, especially those with a Jewish background, left the country, including Weintraub and the Comedian Harmonists, as well as Alfred Löw and Frank Wolff, who would, once in the US, found the now legendary Blue Note label. The import of US jazz recordings however continued until 1941, when the United States joined the war. Jazz only happened in private … and under risk of severe punishment.
“The swing youth in Nazi Germany were teenagers whose love for jazz and affinity for British and American pop culture stood in stark contrast to German nationalism, uniformity and military regulation. The Swing kids hence raised many red flags with Nazi authorities, most shockingly, they tended to welcome Jewish teenagers into their midst. Their rebellion was in the forms of visual clues, their dress and behaviour, but not so much in subversive political action”. (Tanja B. Spitzer) From around 1940 onwards the Nazis went after the swing kids and many were arrested, brutally interrogated, their hair cut short and all jazz records destroyed. Very few were sent home, the rest to the front lines or to a one of concentration camps.
In March 1940 Herbert Joos was born in Karlsruhe, in a time of war and destruction. He grew up in a rebuilding world, looking, after the WW II ended, for a new beginning. Relatively short after the end of the war, the first jazz clubs opened again in Germany – first in Frankfurt, then in Berlin. There were as well US army clubs which offered live jazz, but more in a traditional form. Some of the first musicians coming up were bandleader Maz Greger, Kurt Edelhagen and drummers Freddie Brocksieper and Horst Lippmann. The first jazz festival happened in Frankfurt in 1953 and in the 50’s Joachim Ernst Berendt published his first jazz books and moderated radio shows and so became, as well as a producer for the MPS label, a driving force in West German Jazz, a role that radio host and writer Reginald Rudolf played in the East until his arrest in 1957. US musicians started to tour West Germany again and brought a more modern version of jazz with it, which artists like Jutta Hipp, Albert Mangelsdorff, Rolf Kühn, Helmut Zacharias and in Germany living Austrians Hans Koller, Vera Auer and Hungarian Atilla Zoller, started to perform as well.
Germany was divided by the four allies of the war, US, Britain, France and Russia. When Russia established in their zone the German Democratic Republic in 1949, jazz was seen as decadent music and jazz fans and musicians persecuted once again. And after the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, all contact between musicians in the West and East of the country was lost and two very different developments of jazz in the now two German states followed.
When the wall was built Herbert Joos was 21 years old and studied bass at the Music College in Karlsruhe and trumpet by self-study, but later decided to take a private teacher for this instrument and following this added the flugelhorn, baritone horn, mellophone and alphorn to his means of expression. He started to perform in local bands around that time as well, first of all the Modern Jazz Quintet Karlsruhe, which featured as well pianist Helmut Zimmer, saxist Wilfried Eichhorn, bass player Claus Bühler and drummer Rudi Theilmann. They recorded two albums together, ‘Trees’ (1969) and ‘Position 2000’ (1970) for which Herbert Joos as well designed the cover art and for the later wrote all compositions. These first recordings by Joos were re-issued in 2020 as a Box set together with the two albums by another group Herbert Joos was part of – Fourmenonly, which had more or less the same line-up except for bass player Bühler and performed Joos’ compositions. They recorded two adventurous jazz albums in 1972 and 1974 that gave Herbert Joos the first kind of recognition in the German jazz scene. What made Joos so different to other trumpet and flugelhorn players, was his smooth and ‘airy’ sound. The warmness of this sound and the transmitted emotions made him one of the most recognisable trumpet voices in Europe. In the early 1970’s he moved to Stuttgart, where he would spend the rest of his life – working as a musician and illustrator for books, calendars, album covers and magazines. He always worked after the motto: “first comes what I like to do, independent of whether it is ‘In’ or ‘Out’ at the moment. Only then comes making money”.
Meanwhile in West Germany Albert Mangelsdorff had become one of the most individual and uncompromising jazz artists, with his unique way of playing the trombone by singing into the instrument at the time of playing it and so creating overtones. This can be heard especially on his solo recordings on MPS records and later on Moods. Other important artists in Germany in that period include Gunter Hampel, Wolfgang Dauner and Manfred Schoof, whose ‘Voices’ album is seen as the first German free jazz recording. In the Free Jazz area there were as well The Globe Unity Orchestra, founded by pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, plus Peter Brötzman, Peter Kowald and Paul Lovens, to name just a few from a very active, interesting and lasting scene. Some of these were as well involved in the founding of the FMP (Free Music Production) label in 1968, so creating themselves an outlet for their music. Around the same time bassist Manfred Eicher started his ECM (Edition Of Contemporary Music) label and Matthias Winckelmann and Horst Weber enja, which stands for European New Jazz. And in the East of the divided country the hostility towards jazz slowly faded for different reasons and by 1964 even some radio programs began to add jazz to their broadcast schedule. Jazz/Rock was the most popular jazz genre in the 1970’s and in both countries important groups led the pack – saxophonist Klaus Doldinger with his group Passport and Spectrum, the group featuring guitarist Volker Kriegel, bass player Eberhard Weber and keyboarder Rainer Brüninghaus, in the West and SOK, with pianist Ulrich Gumpert and drummer Günter Sommer, in the East.
Within this stylistic openness in the jazz scene, Herbert Joos started to record his first album under his own name in 1973 for a release in the following year, ‘The Philosophy Of The Flugelhorn’, whose 13-minute title track is a step into nature and its beauty. The album, on which Joos plays with overdubs all instruments – fluegelhorn, bass, bass recorder, bamboo flute, mellophone, trumpet, alto horn, vibes – is today as valid musically as it was 50 years ago and worth checking out. This was followed in 1977 by his second album ‘Daybreak- The Dark side Of Twilight’, featuring the strings of the Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, Wolgang Czelusta on bass and trombone and Thomas Schwarz on oboe. This album confirms what Thomas Fitterling wrote in Rondo Magazine: “In his continuing search for sounds there is a preference for the morbid half-dark, which has much more in common with Chet Baker and Billie Holiday, than, for example, with Freddie Hubbard”. And Bert Noglik added in Jazzpodium that “the ideal of Herbert Joos is precision in the emotional message, a fragility intensified into the artificial – expression of the feeling between security and being doomed, a romantic feeling”.
Both records, as adventurous as they were then, are now part of the European jazz history and still important documents of Joos’s artistry. In 1979 he founded his Quartet and released the first of their three albums, ‘Ballad 1’. The group then featured Paul Schwarz on the piano, Jürgen Wuchner on bass and Thomas Cremer on drums, who for the next two recordings would be replaced by Joe Koinzer. The covers for these albums were all designed and drawn by Herbert Joos, who beside as a musician had made himself a name as illustrator and had already designed covers for some German jazz magazines, especially Jazzpodium. Around that time Herbert was also a member of the Carlos Bäder Big Band and made a few self-released recordings with them.
It was as well in 1979 that he was contacted by Mathias Rüegg with the invitation to play in the Vienna Art Orchestra, a new big band Mathias had co-founded and whose leader, composer, arranger and organizer he was. And so began a musical voyage of eighteen years, during which Herbert recorded as many albums and performed hundreds of concerts all around the world, with what would become the most important and famous big band of its time. His contribution to the success of the Vienna Art Orchestra was massive and some outstanding soli on the records he participated on, are proof of this. Remembers Mathias Rüegg: “For the Vienna Art Choir he played his wonderful and heartbreaking melodies over the Swiss folk song “Es git kein sölige Stamme” (album ‘Five Old Songs’, 1984). In ‘Plädoyer For Sir Major Moll’ (album ‘Suite For The Green Eighties’, 1982) Herbert can show all his nuances and in ‘Herzogstrasse 4’ (album ‘Concerto Piccolo’, 1981), the address in Stuttgart where the confirmed bachelor lived most of his live, he is managing admirably for 11 minutes all the challenges and then plays a duel with Wolfgang Puschnig at the end, in perfect ‘Art Orchestra aesthetic’ of the 1980’s. I like especially the ballad by pianist Uli Scherer ‘le XVIII catalan’ (album ‘standing …. WHAT?’, 1993), as it has extremely beautiful, at times completely open, dialogues between Uli and Herbert”. Even so the VAO really brought Joos to a wider and global audience and became his main recording and touring outlet for the 80’s and most of the 90’s, he worked, toured and recorded as well with different artists and bands at the same period of time. One example is the group Part Of Art, which featured members of the Vienna Art Orchestra, but gave them a small group vehicle to express themselves. The group featured Wolfgang Puschnig on alto sax, Uli Scherer on piano, Jürgen Wuchner on bass and first Joe Koinzer and then Wolfgang Reisinger on drums. Their two albums, ‘Moebius’ (1981) and ‘Son Sauvage’ (1983) are powerful and timeless modern jazz recordings, which have been re-issued in 2004 under the title ‘Complete Works’. He recorded as well with Hans Koller and the collective Südpool, where he features on six of their recordings. A duo album with Joe Koinzer and one with Mathis Rüegg were released before his next solo recording ‘Still Life’ in 1984, which, one can say, is the follow up to his first album, with inclusion of nature sounds and Herbert playing all instruments. And before the 80’s came to an end he went into the studio with Austrian guitar master Harry Pepl and Norwegian drummer Jon Christensen to record ‘Cracked Mirrors’, which was released in 1988 to critical acclaim. The ECM website states that on this album “Joos lays down a breathy gorgeousness … and … shines like a snake of light”.
Jazz in both parts of Germany after 1980 shows a rich diversity in styles, from traditional to avantgarde and all possible mixes in between, with various influences from rock to pop, classical and local folk music. Jazz education improved, specialised magazines, festivals and labels were founded and the two scenes stood on fertile ground. With the disappearance of the Berlin Wall in 1989, followed by reunification, Berlin once again became the jazz centre of Germany. Many musicians from all over the world moved to Berlin and gave the music scene an injection of fresh ideas. Leading bands and artists of the time were Jazzkantine, Der Rote Bereich, Lisa Bassenge, Nils Wogram and trumpeter/singer Till Brönner, who became the most successful jazz artist in the history of the country. In 1990 the Jazz Institute Darmstadt was founded, financed by the city, and maintained the archive of Joachim Ernst Berendt – records, photos, books – which the city had bought a few years earlier and thanks to this archive and their ongoing activities it became the most important information centre for the jazz community in Germany.
I had heard and seen the Vienna Art Orchestra a few times already and knew some of the musicians a bit, but when I signed them to PolyGram Austria in 1989, I got to meet and know everyone better. And for the 1991 release ‘Chapter II’ I worked for the first time directly with Herbert Joos, as he was delivering the art work for his album. I met a straight forward, charming man, humble and humorous. We spoke a lot about jazz and he showed me some of the portraits of musicians he had sketched and drawn – amazingly accurate and beautiful. For three album covers for the VAO he delivered wonderful ready-mades, using parts of instruments and cement to create a musical piece of art. We stayed in touch after I moved to London and I asked him to draw some legendary artists of the Verve roster and some active artists for our company Christmas cards in the early to mid 90’s. He did portraits of Charlie Parker, Ella, Diana Krall, Andrea Bocelli and many others for these cards and I as well have a signed Billie Holiday and Joe Henderson at home.
In 1991 Herbert released the first of his huge art books, dedicated to Chet Baker. The screw-bound book allows you to take any given page out without destroying the book, frame it and decorate your flat or house with it. The books are 49 cm x 43 cm big and include portraits of the artist through his or her career – a truly impressive feat. The second book was released in 1991 and was dedicated to Miles Davis and even featured a CD – a selection from the Columbia recordings. And the third book, published in 1994 was dedicated to Billie Holiday and as well featured a CD, but this time it was Herbert and his group (Paul Schwarz on piano, Mirjam Ernst on English Horn and Joe Koinzer on drums) performing Billie’s songs in Herbert’s arrangements. This album I released as well commercially on Emarcy Records, part of PolyGram Jazz, whose international marketing office I was running by that time. I am the proud owner of all three books, sought after rarities nowadays.
Alto saxophonist Wolfgang Puschnig and Herbert had played together in the VAO and as well in the small ensemble Part Of Art and in 1999 they renewed their cooperation on Puschnig’s album ‘Aspects’, continued it on the 2002 release ‘3+4 Ob’n Und Unt’n – Austrian Songs’, a touching and jazzy take on Austrian Folk compositions. Puschnig again called on Herbert’s art when recording his new album with his group Alpine Aspects (a mix of a jazz group with a traditional Austrian Brass Band) ‘Homage To O.C.’, a groovy and powerful tribute to Ornette Coleman (2008). The last cooperation between the two came on Puschnig’s 2018 release ‘Songs With Strings’, a chamber music influenced jazz record. Herberts airy sound makes these recording even more special than they already were. Most of these projects had a tour connected to the release, so Herbert, after the Vienna Art Orchestra, was still continuously on the road. And he recorded as well his own music: in 1992 he released his ‘Ballade Noir’ with Paul Schwarz and Joe Koinzer, a touching take on the art of the ballad with Joos in top form. This was followed in 2000 by ‘Nature Way’ a group recording featuring saxophonist Klaus Dickbauer, bass player Georg Breinschmid and drummers Mario Gonzi and Emil Kristof. Most of the compositions on the album are from Joos and Dickbauer, plus they play a great version of Ornette Coleman’s ‘Tomorrow Is The Question’. In June of 2001 Herbert recorded the live album ‘New Bottles, Old Wine – The Standard Project’ with Klaus Dickbauer and Peter Lehel on saxes, Achim Tang on bass, Kalman Olah on piano and Mario Gonzi on drums. They perform compositions by Miles Davis, Benny Golson and others and swing and groove amazingly. ‘Adagio 1+2’ reunited Joos with old friends Michel Godard, Wolfgang Puschnig and others for a studio and live session. Joos then recorded a few duo albums – with guitarist Frank Kuruc and pianist Patrick Bebelaar respectively and they confirm what a outstanding improviser Joos was and that, as Herbert said, “the breaks are the most important in music”.
In 2017 Herbert Joos was awarded the Jazz Prize Baden-Württemberg and the ceremony was held at the Theaterhaus Stuttgart on Janury 20th. He got the prize for his lifetime achievements for jazz in Germany and was delighted to be awarded this honour. Instead of a speech he decided to bring some of his friends and played a concert with his latest compositions instead, which was recorded and released the following year under the title ‘Change of Beauty’.
On December 7th, 2019 Herbert Joos died in a hospital in Baden-Baden after short illness. His unique sound, kind humanity, outstanding recordings and wonderful paintings will be his legacy for eternity.
Sources:
Martin Pfleiderer, Germany in The History Of European Jazz – Edited by Francesco Martinelli
Redaktion Jazzeitung, 11. Dezember 2019, Flügelhorn und Zeichentisch: Zum Tod von Herbert Joos
Uta G. Poiger – Seaching for Proper New Music: Jazz In cold War Germany
Guido Fackler, Jazz Under The Nazis, Music And The Holocaust
Mathias Rüegg, Herbert Joos Nachruf in Jazzpodium 2/2020
Hans-Jürgen Linke, Jazz in Germany in Deutsches Musikinformations Zentrum, 2023
Tanja B. Spitzer, ‘Swing Heil‘: Swing Youth, Schlurfs, and others in Nazi Germany in The National WWII Museum, New Orleans, 2020
Wikipedia / Discogs / Jazzpodium archive
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