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

BLP 1530

 Jutta Hipp With Zoot Sims

Released - February 1957

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, July 28, 1956
Jerry Lloyd, trumpet; Zoot Sims, tenor sax; Jutta Hipp, piano; Ahmed Abdul-Malik, bass; Ed Thigpen, drums.

tk.4 Violets For Your Furs
tk.6 Down Home
tk.7 Wee-Dot
tk.9 Too Close For Comfort
tk.14 Almost Like Being In Love
tk.15 Just Blues

Session Photos

Photos: © Francis Wolff/Mosaic Images 
https://www.mosaicrecordsimages.com/

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Just Blues	Zoot Sims	28/07/1956
Violets for Your Furs	Matt Dennis, Tom Adair	28/07/1956
Down Home	Jerry Lloyd	28/07/1956
Side Two
Almost Like Being in Love	Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe	28/07/1956
Wee Dot	J.J. Johnson, Leo Parker	28/07/1956
Too Close for Comfort	Jerry Bock, George David Weiss, Larry Holofcener	28/07/1956

Credits

Cover Photo:
Cover Design:	REID MILES
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	LEONARD FEATHER

Liner Notes

WHEN the two volumes of music encased in BLP 1515 and BLP 1516 were recorded under the title Jutta Hipp at the Hickory House, the red-headed Madchen from Leipzig had only recently opened her engagement at that Fifty-Second Street emporium. It was her first bow on the New York scene after many months of suspense due to the lack of that most material of prerequisites, a Musicians' Union membership card.

There was no telling how America would take to Miss Hipp or she to America. Perhaps after a couple of nervous weeks the gig would be over and the time charged off to experience. It speaks eloquently for Jutta that no such thing happened. She stayed at the Hickory House for no less than six months - a run that might be the envy of 999 jazzmen out of a thousand in these days of one-week stands. During those spring and summer months of 1956, the German jazz queen held court for many a visiting citizen at the oval bar that surrounded her trio. When not busy chatting with Duke Ellington, Lennie Tristano, and other distinguished guests, she could be found around the corner at Basin Street, watching what the opposition was cooking up. It was during this time that she had a musical meeting of the minds with Zoot Sims, with results that can be heard here.

Zoot and Jutta were not strangers. They had met a couple of years earlier, when Zoot was touring the Continent with Stan Kenton's orchestra, and had jammed together in one of Frankfurt's hipper cellars.

For this Blue Note reunion two-thirds of the Hipp trio (the leader and her fine drummer, Ed Thigpen, who has since joined Billy Taylor) joined forces with three-fifths of the Zoot Sims Quintet. Zoot brought along his trumpeter, Jerry Lloyd, who a few years ago was on the New York music scene as Jerry Hurwitz, but of late had taken to driving a taxicab, preferring a calling that offered advancement, in a more literal sense. It is good to know that he has shifted gears and rejoined the ranks of the blowing. Ahmed Abdul-Malik, who practices bass playing as seriously as Mohammedanism, lent a solid foundation to the proceedings.

The style for the session, as might be suspected by anyone familiar with Jutta's musical and personal character, was completely without formality or restriction; improvisation is engagingly audible from start to finish on most of the tracks.

"Just Blues" is a lengthy and thorough inspection of the twelve-bar tradition in which the California-born tenor man helps himself to the first eleven choruses (and at 13 seconds to a chorus this doesn't make him a glutton) in the firmly swinging, Young-rooted but Sims-styled manner that brought him so successfully through the Herman, Goodman, and Kenton ranks. Jerry Lloyd follows with about seven choruses (we were more interested in what he had to express than in the exact numbers of measures it took him to express it), after which Jutta takes over for a few exercises in hip restraint, her style clearly reoriented by the time spent listening to Horace Silver and other modernists since her arrival in the U.S. a year ago. Ahmed walks a couple before the blues swings its way to a close.

"Violets for Your Furs," possibly better known for its Matt Dennis lyrics than for the Tom Adair melody, is Zoot and Jutta almost all the way, with Jerry coming in only briefly at the end.

"Back Home," an excursion to Indiana along a harmonically familiar trail, starts with a thematic framework, mostly in unison by the two horns, but is again primarily a workout for Zoot, Jutta, and Jerry.

"Almost Like Being in Love" gets right into a good middle-ground tempo and groove from the first bar, with Zoot swinging the melody before taking off into chord-based ad libbing, on the 40-bar chorus. Again the accent is on understatement in Lloyd's slightly Bakerish approach and in Jutta's single-note, middle-register lines, which rarely stray more than an octave or so above middle C.

"Wee Dot" is an up-tempo blues theme written back in the late-'40s by Jay Jay Johnson. After 24 bars of theme the solo spotlight is on Zoot from choruses 3 through 10, on Jutta for the next eight, and Jerry for six more, but everyone comes back for another taste before going out on chorus 37 (this time we did happen to keep count). "Too Close for Comfort" is, of course, the recent hit from Broadway's Mr. Wonderful. I suspect that Sammy Davis is going to get a big kick out of this, the first recorded cool jazz version. It hits a nice medium pace with Zoot in charge at the outset, followed by Jutta and Jerry in a mood that seemed to me slightly more assertive than some of the other performances in this set.

The total effect to be observed on these sides is similar to what you would experience if you happened to drop in one night at Basin Street or the Bohemia and found Jutta Hipp sitting in with Zoot's combo. The same laisser-souffler (or man, let's blow) spirit; the same concentration on individual expression. In fact, everything is there but the audience applause; it only remains to be hoped that you' Il feel like providing it yourself.

- LEONARD FEATHER

Cover Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

RVG CD Reissue Liner Notes

A NEW LOOK AT JUTTA HIPP WITH ZOOT SIMS

Thanks to the efforts of Sally Placksin, who interviewed Jutta Hipp when the pianist's debut recordings were reissued in 1989, and Katja von Schuttenbach, who summarized her Masters' Thesis on Hipp in the July/August 2006 issue of Germany's Jazz Podium, we can now supplement the biographical information on this most elusive figure.

Hipp was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1925 and developed a love for both jazz and painting as a child. She was a student of her home town's Academy of Graphic Arts when World War Il commenced, and by her own account would ignore air raids signals to listen to forbidden Allied radio broadcasts. When Soviet troops occupied Leipzig at the end of the war, Hipp and her family escaped to West Germany, ultimately settling in Frankfort. She began her musical career in GI service clubs before joining the group of saxophonist Hans Roller. Like many young European players of the time, Hipp became influenced by the work of Lennie Tristano, and the quintet she assembled in 1954 had the alto-tenor front line that had been popularized by Tristano, Lee Konitz, and Warne Marsh.

This was the band that Leonard Feather heard in a Duisburg nightclub early that year. As a longtime champion of both female and European musicians, Feather quickly became determined to share his discovery. He arranged for Hipp's group to record an album that appeared in Blue Note's 10" LP series New Faces—New Sounds, and then late in 1955 assisted Hipp in immigrating to the US, upon securing Musicians' Union membership, Hipp began a Hickory House gig that produced two live Blue Note albums in April 1956, recordings that found Horace Silver emerging as another major influence on her playing.

The present encounter with tenor giant Zoot Sims features less of the Tristano feeling that imbued Hipp's Blue Note 10" (traces remain in the accents on her "Down Home" solo, which is played over the "Indiana" chord sequence that was a Tristano favorite) and more of the loose, jamming atmosphere of her 1955 encounter with Swedish baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin. The setting is ideal tor the informal eloquence of Sims, who dominates each track with his loose, life-affirming flow of invention. Sims is inspired by Lester Young, whose "Blue Lester" gets a nod during the tenor solos of "Just Blues," "Wee Dot, " and even the non-blues "Too Close for Comfort"; but he gets deeper into his own space on "These Foolish Things," another Young favorite and one of two bonus tracks. As both a Tristano inspiration and one of Silver's earliest employers, Young provides an ideal aura for Hipp to operate under.

Trumpeter Jerry Lloyd (Hurwitz), another of modern jazz's obscure figures, was around in the late-1940s to absorb the influence of early Miles Davis, and appeared sporadically on disc between 1949 and 1957, primarily with Sims, George Wallington, and Gerry Mulligan. His trumpet is in the tight, mid-range style of such other brass players in the Sims/Mulligan orbit as Chet Baker, Jon Eardley, and Don Ferrara. Remembered as much for his writing as his playing, Lloyd composed "Down Home" and is also probably responsible for the line that the group plays over the chord changes of "'S Wonderful."

After three albums on a major label within eight months of her arrival, and amidst the foreign-female-pianist hype that also surrounded Marian McPartland and Toshiko Akiyoshi at the time, Hipp appeared poised for a long and successful career; but things quickly fell apart. Feather's patronage ended, in part because she (unlike many others he championed) refused to record his original compositions, and the break left Hipp without a business adviser. A combination of stage fright and alcohol abuse also made it increasingly difficult for her to perform. Hipp toured the southern US in the unlikely setting of R&B tenor saxophonist Jesse Powell's band, an experience she later described as the most fun of her career; but by 1958 she had stopped playing piano and returned to painting, supporting herself for 35 years as a seamstress in a clothing factory. While she would occasionally send caricatures and photographs of musicians to Jazz Podium and contributed a drawing to the walls of the Village Vanguard, she had little contact with the jazz world beyond a circle of friends from her European years that included guitarist Atilla Zoller (her onetime fiancé) and writer Dan Morgenstern.

In 2001, two years before her death, Blue Note located Hipp in the Queens apartment where she had lived quietly for decades. When label representatives visited to deliver a check for $40,000 in back royalties, she enthusiastically displayed her works of visual art, but declined to talk about music.

— Bob Blumenthal, 2007

BLP 1516

Jutta Hipp - At The Hickory House, Volume 2

 

Released - September 1957

Recording and Session Information

"Hickory House", NYC, April 5, 1956
Jutta Hipp, piano; Peter Ind, bass; Ed Thigpen, drums.

Gone With The Wind
After Hours
The Squirrel
We'll Be Together Again
Horacio
I Married An Angel
Moonlight In Vermont
Star Eyes
If I Had You
My Heart Stood Still

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Gone With the Wind	Herb Magidson, Allie Wrubel	05/04/1956
After Hours	Avery Parrish	05/04/1956
The Squirrel	Tadd Dameron	05/04/1956
We'll Be Together Again	Carl Fischer, Frankie Laine	05/04/1956
Horacio	Jutta Hipp	05/04/1956
Side Two
I Married an Angel	Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers	05/04/1956
Moonlight in Vermont	John Blackburn, Karl Suessdorf	05/04/1956
Star Eyes	Gene de Paul, Don Raye	05/04/1956
If I Had You	Irving King, Ted Shapiro	05/04/1956
My Heart Stood Still	Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers	05/04/1956

Credits

Cover Photo:	FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design:	REID K. MILES
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	LEONARD FEATHER

Liner Notes

AT 11 A.M. on Nov. 18, 1955, a nervous figure stepped off the gangplank of the S.S. New York at Pier 88 in Manhattan and gazed around with myopic eyes at the unfamiliar landscape of a strange new country. Jutta Hipp had arrived in America.

It had been almost two years since Jutta and I had last met, in the crowded cellar club in Duisberg; almost two years since we had begun the long correspondence that began with unformulated yearnings, that later materialized into specific plans, into consultations with a New York lawyer at this end, with her family and friends at the other, and into the ultimate news that her visa had come through and her career as a German pianist in Germany could end as soon as she wanted.

It had not been easy for a girl of Jutta's sensitivity to do in Germany all that she wonted to do musically. The good night club jobs were few and far between. During the two years of waiting there had been trips to Scandinavia and Jugoslavia, and her letters had told of the healthy musical climate of Sweden and the tawdry Communist restrictions of Belgrade.

Small wonder that when she arrived in Manhattan, a decade after her escape from the Russian Zone in Germany and the commencement of her career as a professional pianist, Jutta was bemused. On her first nights in town, a visit to Basin Street, Birdland, Bohemia, to hear Erroll Garner, Miles Davis, Count Basie and a dozen other idols, left her speechless and awe-struck as a teen-aged bobby-soxer. For weeks afterward, she went into a shell, spending long evenings glued before the television set, watching mystery after escapist mystery — and, between mysteries, crossing over to the phonograph to play a record by her new discovery, Horace Silver.

Jutta hardly touched the piano during those weeks at least, never when she felt anyone might be within earshot. Her nervousness took a month, two months to break down. For the first time, one night at the Bohemia, she met Horace Silver, and was happy that the man was as charming as his music. Friends and fans everywhere besought her to sit in, but she felt neither ready nor willing.

Then come two important developments: the arrival of her Musicians’ Union card and the promise of a job at the Hickory House on West 52nd Street, for more than 20 years the pied-à-terre of countless American jazz stars she had read about. The challenge galvanized Jutta into action, enthusiastic action. It was a matter of days before she was at the keyboard for hours at o stretch.

Jutta realized that she was not the only new pianist on the jazz scene. A number of other new stars, some of them from overseas, some feminine, had stormed the American jazz citadels. But the stimulation of competition, by this time, was scarcely even necessary, for Jutta soon found that the pleasure of working with an American rhythm section had been worth those idle months of apprehensive anticipation.

Joe Morgen, the indomitable press agent for the Hickory House, was more than just a publicity man, he was a friend, someone in our corner who wanted to do everything in his power to make her name a bright one in American lights. it was with Morgen’s help that she settled down to the threesome you hear on these records, with Peter Ind on bass and Edmund Thigpen on drums.

Ind, born in Middlesex, England in 1928, studied piano and harmony at Trinity College, played piano with local bands around London, and took up bass in 1947. Starting in 1949 he used every opportunity to work on the Transatlantic liners, enabling him to grasp treasured tours in New York at the studio of Lennie Tristano. In April of 1951 he came to New York again, this time as an immigrant. He had worked frequently with Tristano and with Lee Konitz’ combo before joining Jutta.

Ed Thigpen is, like so many drummers (Sonny Payne and Bill Bradley, for instance) the son of a great swing era musician. His father, Ben Thigpen, played drums in Andy Kirk’s band for 17 years. Born in Chicago Dec. 28, 1930, Ed was just 20 when he joined Cootie Williams’ band. After serving in the Army from 1952-4 he worked with Dinah Washington, Johnny Hodges, Tristano and Konitz, Gil Mellé, and for several months in 1955 with Bud Powell.

As for Jutta — well, if you don’t know all about Jutta from the notes on her first Blue Note LP (BLP5061 you should rectify the situation by buying it - not because of the notes, but because of the interesting contrast in style that becomes apparent from a study of those German sides. In those days there seemed to be a Tristano influence, but more recently the impact of Silver has produced in Jutta a more outgoing, hnrdswinging approach that is, she is firmly convinced, the true expression of her musical personality. Not that she has stopped growing or will cease to evolve: but the direction her evolution will take is now solidly established.

The informality of her present work, the free-swingng feeling of the trio and the wonderful in-person cooperation of Thigpen and Ind made an ‘on-the-spot” recording a logical step for Jutta’s U.S. disc debut. Thanks to the ready assistance volunteered by John and Howard Popkin of the Hickory House, and a masterful engineering job by the indispensable Rudy van Gelder, two entire LPs were recorded in one highly productive evening at the club, an evening when Jutta and Edmund and Peter felt right, and the audience was with them, and every set went smoothly and kept moving at just the right tempo.

It would be superfluous to single out any one tune for comment: your reaction will depend on your taste for moods and materials, though I must add a couple of personal notes to the effect that I was especially engaged by Dear Old Stockholm and the Parker Blues Billie's Bounce in BLP 1515, and by her delightful impression of Avery Parrish (After Hours) and tribute to Horace Silver (Horacio) in BLP 1516. After Hours will be welcomed by the countless GIs who heard her play it at service clubs in Germany, where it was her most popular request number

Shortly after the release of these sides, possibly even before you happen to read these lines. Jutta will have made her American concert debut as a participant at the Newport Jazz Festival. At this writing she is already in her third month at the Hickory House and has endeared herself, as a pianist and as a person, to those who work around its big oval bar as well as those who have visited there — and they hove included scores of admiring American jazzmen from Duke Ellington on down. No, I don't think there can be much doubt about it now. America is taking to Miss Hipp, and I'm hip Miss Hipp likes America.

-LEONARD FEATHER

BLP 1515

 

Jutta Hipp - At The Hickory House, Volume 1

Released - May 1956

Recording and Session Information

"Hickory House", NYC, April 5, 1956
Jutta Hipp, piano; Peter Ind, bass; Ed Thigpen, drums.

Take Me In Your Arms
Dear Old Stockholm
Billie's Bounce
I'll Remember April
Lady Bird
Mad About The Boy
Ain't Misbehavin'
These Foolish Things
Jeepers Creepers
The Moon Was Yellow

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Take Me in Your Arms	Fred Markush	05/04/1956
Dear Old Stockholm	Traditional	05/04/1956
Billie's Bounce	Charlie Parker	05/04/1956
I'll Remember April	Gene de Paul, Patricia Johnston, Don Raye	05/04/1956
Lady Bird	Tadd Dameron	05/04/1956
Side Two
Mad About the Boy	Noël Coward	05/04/1956
Ain't Misbehavin'	Harry Brooks, Andy Razaf, Fats Waller	05/04/1956
These Foolish Things	Harry Link, Eric Maschwitz, Jack Strachey	05/04/1956
Jeepers Creepers	Johnny Mercer, Harry Warren	05/04/1956
The Moon Was Yellow	Fred E. Ahlert, Edgar Leslie	05/04/1956

Credits

Cover Photo:	FRANCIS WOLFF
Cover Design:	REID K. MILES
Engineer:	RUDY VAN GELDER
Producer:	ALFRED LION
Liner Notes:	LEONARD FEATHER

Liner Notes

AT 11 A.M. on Nov. 18, 1955, a nervous figure stepped off the gangplank of the S.S. New York at Pier 88 in Manhattan and gazed around with myopic eyes at the unfamiliar landscape of a strange new country. Jutta Hipp had arrived in America.

It had been almost two years since Jutta and I had last met, in the crowded cellar club in Duisberg; almost two years since we had begun the long correspondence that began with unformulated yearnings, that later materialized into specific plans, into consultations with a New York lawyer at this end, with her family and friends at the other, and into the ultimate news that her visa had come through and her career as a German pianist in Germany could end as soon as she wanted.

It had not been easy for a girl of Jutta's sensitivity to do in Germany all that she wonted to do musically. The good night club jobs were few and far between. During the two years of waiting there had been trips to Scandinavia and Jugoslavia, and her letters had told of the healthy musical climate of Sweden and the tawdry Communist restrictions of Belgrade.

Small wonder that when she arrived in Manhattan, a decade after her escape from the Russian Zone in Germany and the commencement of her career as a professional pianist, Jutta was bemused. On her first nights in town, a visit to Basin Street, Birdland, Bohemia, to hear Erroll Garner, Miles Davis, Count Basie and a dozen other idols, left her speechless and awe-struck as a teen-aged bobby-soxer. For weeks afterward, she went into a shell, spending long evenings glued before the television set, watching mystery after escapist mystery — and, between mysteries, crossing over to the phonograph to play a record by her new discovery, Horace Silver.

Jutta hardly touched the piano during those weeks at least, never when she felt anyone might be within earshot. Her nervousness took a month, two months to break down. For the first time, one night at the Bohemia, she met Horace Silver, and was happy that the man was as charming as his music. Friends and fans everywhere besought her to sit in, but she felt neither ready nor willing.

Then come two important developments: the arrival of her Musicians’ Union card and the promise of a job at the Hickory House on West 52nd Street, for more than 20 years the pied-à-terre of countless American jazz stars she had read about. The challenge galvanized Jutta into action, enthusiastic action. It was a matter of days before she was at the keyboard for hours at o stretch.

Jutta realized that she was not the only new pianist on the jazz scene. A number of other new stars, some of them from overseas, some feminine, had stormed the American jazz citadels. But the stimulation of competition, by this time, was scarcely even necessary, for Jutta soon found that the pleasure of working with an American rhythm section had been worth those idle months of apprehensive anticipation.

Joe Morgen, the indomitable press agent for the Hickory House, was more than just a publicity man, he was a friend, someone in our corner who wanted to do everything in his power to make her name a bright one in American lights. it was with Morgen’s help that she settled down to the threesome you hear on these records, with Peter Ind on bass and Edmund Thigpen on drums.

Ind, born in Middlesex, England in 1928, studied piano and harmony at Trinity College, played piano with local bands around London, and took up bass in 1947. Starting in 1949 he used every opportunity to work on the Transatlantic liners, enabling him to grasp treasured tours in New York at the studio of Lennie Tristano. In April of 1951 he came to New York again, this time as an immigrant. He had worked frequently with Tristano and with Lee Konitz’ combo before joining Jutta.

Ed Thigpen is, like so many drummers (Sonny Payne and Bill Bradley, for instance) the son of a great swing era musician. His father, Ben Thigpen, played drums in Andy Kirk’s band for 17 years. Born in Chicago Dec. 28, 1930, Ed was just 20 when he joined Cootie Williams’ band. After serving in the Army from 1952-4 he worked with Dinah Washington, Johnny Hodges, Tristano and Konitz, Gil Mellé, and for several months in 1955 with Bud Powell.

As for Jutta — well, if you don’t know all about Jutta from the notes on her first Blue Note LP (BLP5061 you should rectify the situation by buying it - not because of the notes, but because of the interesting contrast in style that becomes apparent from a study of those German sides. In those days there seemed to be a Tristano influence, but more recently the impact of Silver has produced in Jutta a more outgoing, hnrdswinging approach that is, she is firmly convinced, the true expression of her musical personality. Not that she has stopped growing or will cease to evolve: but the direction her evolution will take is now solidly established.

The informality of her present work, the free-swingng feeling of the trio and the wonderful in-person cooperation of Thigpen and Ind made an ‘on-the-spot” recording a logical step for Jutta’s U.S. disc debut. Thanks to the ready assistance volunteered by John and Howard Popkin of the Hickory House, and a masterful engineering job by the indispensable Rudy van Gelder, two entire LPs were recorded in one highly productive evening at the club, an evening when Jutta and Edmund and Peter felt right, and the audience was with them, and every set went smoothly and kept moving at just the right tempo.

It would be superfluous to single out any one tune for comment: your reaction will depend on your taste for moods and materials, though I must add a couple of personal notes to the effect that I was especially engaged by Dear Old Stockholm and the Parker Blues Billie's Bounce in BLP 1515, and by her delightful impression of Avery Parrish (After Hours) and tribute to Horace Silver (Horacio) in BLP 1516. After Hours will be welcomed by the countless GIs who heard her play it at service clubs in Germany, where it was her most popular request number

Shortly after the release of these sides, possibly even before you happen to read these lines. Jutta will have made her American concert debut as a participant at the Newport Jazz Festival. At this writing she is already in her third month at the Hickory House and has endeared herself, as a pianist and as a person, to those who work around its big oval bar as well as those who have visited there — and they hove included scores of admiring American jazzmen from Duke Ellington on down. No, I don't think there can be much doubt about it now. America is taking to Miss Hipp, and I'm hip Miss Hipp likes America.

-LEONARD FEATHER