BLP 5056

Jutta Hipp - New Faces - New Sounds From Germany

Released - 1954

Recording and Session Information

Frankfurt/Main, West Germany, April 24, 1954
Emil Mangelsdorff, alto sax #1,3-6,8; Joki Freund, tenor sax #1,4-8; Jutta Hipp, piano; Hans Kresse, bass; Karl Sanner, drums; Horst Lippmann, supervisor.

Cleopatra
Don't Worry 'Bout Me
Ghost Of A Chance
I Never Knew (as Mon Petit)
What's New
Blue Skies
Laura
Variations

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Cleopatra	Freund	April 24 1954
Don't Worry 'Bout Me	Koehler-Bloom	April 24 1954
Ghost Of A Chance	Young	April 24 1954
Mon Petit	Jutta Hipp	April 24 1954
Side Two
What's New	Haggart-Burke	April 24 1954
Blue Skies	Berlin	April 24 1954
Laura	Rocksin	April 24 1954
Variations	Ad Lib	April 24 1954

Liner Notes

DURING THE past year a new personality has flashed like a comet into the awareness of American jazz fans.

That a new jazz star should be a German is almost without precedent. That this brilliant young discovery should also be a girl is rare too, and a pretty girl even rarer. Jutta (pronounced Yoo-ta) Hipp is all these, and more.

Many words, and a few sounds, had reached this country about Jutta Hipp before 1954. She had corresponded with Lennie Tristano; a few of her recordings in Hans Koller's quartet had circulated here. Learning of the imminence of a visit to Germany as part of my Jazz Club USA concert tour in January 1954, I quickly determined to find this intriguing personality and arrange for further recorded evidence to present to the American public.

Finding her was a problem, for it appeared that she was not booked in any of the towns we were to play. But on reaching Düsseldorf we learned that she was leading her own quintet in a smaller town called Duisburg, an hour or so away. After our concert that night Buddy De Franco, Billie Holiday and some others slipped away in the company of Horst Lippmann, of the German Jazz Federation.

As we entered a crowded cellar club in Duisburg, music floated up to our ears that we could hardly believe was the work of five Germans. Surrounded by alto and tenor saxes, bass and drums, an attractive girl sat at the piano, her auburn hair hanging loose down her back; she was completely absorbed in the music, apparently oblivious of the noisy crowd around her. The five were playing Mon Petit — one of her own arrangements, played by the same musicians in this LP.

Jutta's American visitors were all amazed almost beyond belief. Hearing good music played in Sweden a week earlier had been no surprise — but to encounter the finest European jazz we had discovered thus far, played in a country that had been deprived of the sight and sound of real jazz during so many years of Nazism and war—this was incredible!

Nevertheless it was true, and thanks to Horst Lippmann, arrangements were made soon afterward for the evidence to be presented, via Blue Note records, as soon as the musicians could be brought within reach of that German rarity, a good recording studio.

Before taking leave of Jutta I found out a great deal of her background and was not surprised to learn that here was a sensitive, articulate, educated human being.

Born in Leipzig Feb. 4, 1925, she had spent much of her young life fleeing the twin oppressions of Nazism and communism, both of which officially frowned on jazz as decadent American music. During the war she had been an active participant in the clandestine affairs of the Leipzig Hot Club and had studied to become a painter, listening to rare smuggled American records in every spare moment.

When the Russians occupied Leipzig and closed the Academy of Arts, where she had been studying, Jutta and her family had to flee to Munich. Jutta concentrated less on her painting and more on her piano—"classics in any key, but jazz at first in only two," she recalls. She worked with Charlie Tabor, with the Hans Koller Quartet and others before forming her own quintet.

The present sides were recorded in April 1954 at the Franz Althoff Bau in Frankfurt-am-Main, with Heinz Ballauff as recording engineer and Horst Lippmann supervising.

Four of the numbers, including the opening Cleopatra, are by the full quintet. The ensemble, With Emil Mangelsdorff's alto and Oki Freund's tenor as the dominant voices, recalls that of e Tristano quintet of 1950, but the solos are by no means derivative. Mon Petit, Blue Skies and Variations are patterned similarly, with a chorus each for Jutta and the two horns.

Ghost of a Chance and Laura are quartet numbers featuring Emil and Joki respectively; the remaining two sides, Don't Worry 'Bout Me and What's New, are piano solos by Jutta with her able rhythm section, Hans Kresse on bass and Karl Sanner on drums. All five musicians, by the way, have been highly placed in Germany's Jazz Echo poll — but significantly, they have not yet been winners, for all are comparatively new stars, on the way up. It's safe to predict that within the next year or so all five will have reached the top in their national balloting as well as making a definite dent in the American consciousness.

Jutta's piano has a serenity, a single-line continuity that many will find superficially comparable with Tristano, yet she acknowledges no one influence, having listened to and absorbed the ideas of many leading American pianists. The fugue-like ideas that open What's New, the brilliant use of contrary motion, the constant sweep and length of her phrases betoken a strongly developed individual personality.

Jutta Hipp has announced her intention of coming to America as soon as possible. Her place, not merely as a novelty but as an original and important new voice on the international jazz scene, seems already assured. Blue Note is rightly proud to be the first company to bring to American audiences the Jutta Hipp Quintet.

—LEONARD FEATHER (Down Beat Magazine)

Cover Design by TRUDY FARMILANT