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Jutta Hipp


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Just read the article (there's a link to it in the Mosaic Daily Jazz Gazette).  Fascinating read.  She seemed like someone I'd like to be friends with - someone who liked jazz for the art, but wasn't thrilled with the business.  Was also nice to see Tom Evered's name again.

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Yes, a sad story.

I wonder, though, who among the jazz fraternity at large tracked her down fiorst in her latter days. I remember reading a feature on her (and her latter-day paintings) published around the year 2000 in the German jazz mag JAZZ REALITIES (privately published by researcher and discographer M. Frohne) that gave a rather clear account of her later life after she had given up public appearances as a jazz pianist. So her whereabouts were known around that time.

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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Hello Big Beat Steve !

As you mentioned Hans Koller on another thread (Lucky Thompson), I remember I read a rare interview with Jutta Hipp in the late 80´s at Jazz Podium, where she was  asked about her time with Hans Koller and she said she didn´t like to play with him, that she didn´t like his approach to jazz. Well her comments on Hans Koller were quite harsh and she described it a "cold music". As I told in my answer, I don´t want to make statements about a type of music that´s too hard to understand for me as being something that sound´s to me as western avantgarde music, I nevertheless can understand why Jutta Hipp didn´t like it. She was just a swinger and wanted to play bop, hard bop orientated stuff which she really did good and sounded good.

Listening to the stuff I know from her (three BN albums, the one with Zoot and those two at Hickory House) I can understand very well, that she just wanted "to play" and not to figure out difficult written music......

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Hi Gheorghe

Actually I just wondered how much of a "scoop" of having tracked down Jutta Hipp the contents of the story linked above really were. It seems like several people tracked her down and contacted her separately so it is not easy to say who did so first after those decades of "exile".

As for the interview you refer to, if it was run prior to 1991 I must have seen this but don't recall it at all. Anyway, her comments are understandable. I have no problems with Koller's 50s records (though I don't spin them often) but I do remember distinctly that almost all reviews of German jazz records published in Swedish jazz mags of that era described the German recordings (very often featuring Koller) as "mechanical" and "unswinging". 

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Helle Big Beat Steve !

The strange thing is I remember which year which was about until the early 80´s and remember things concerts I saw, articles I read in years like 1975,76,77,78 but if you ask me if it was in 88 or 91 or 98, I´m lost .......

But I remember that article very well and maybe it was in the late 80´s maybe .....or really maybe it was in the early 90´s .

I had Jazz Podium subscribed but chancelled it somewhere in the 90´s maybe even in the late 90´s I don´t remember. The reason was their was too little interesting stuff for me. During the earlier years I´d seek festival reviews, articles about artists I knew and saw live, and later I didn´t know anymore who´s playing cause most of my heros were dead or retired.

But I remember the article about Jutta Hipp was without a foto. And it seemed it was a younger woman who asked the questions.

I also remember one statement of Jutta. She didn´t have a CD player and said she hates buttons and electronics. It reminded me of my late aunt, about the same generation....born 1924.... who had also lived in NY since the mid fifties in a small apartment only with two cats and didn´t like modern equipments and until herdeath it was just old fashioned letters, no mail, no nothing..... ;_)

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Actually I asked about tjhe year only because about 12-13 years ago I was able to buy (at a good price) an almost complete collection of Jazz Podiums from 1953 to 1990 (1990 was when the orignal owner of the mags who was a teenager in 1953 stopped his subscription). I kept the issues up to 1966 and sold off the later volumes (including some via ads around here), and a few weeks ago I finally was able to pass on the final 5-6 remaining volumes (from the 80s). So too late to check now ...

But prior to unloading the 1967-90 years I photocopied all the articles and reviews that were of interest to me and filed them separately. No Jutta Hipp interview, though (I should remember that and would have filed it separately)....

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I'm pretty sure I read that article, too... probably in the stack of recent JazzPodium editions in the Cologne public library... given that I was born 1981, this was certainly not before 1993, most likely 1996 or 1997... I don't think it really was an interview but just a biographic piece by a woman who had tracked her down and talked to her (an art historian from Berlin is what I remember - she didn't seem that young to me then)

 

edit: completely misremembered, this is the article

http://www.vonschuttenbach.com/articles/Jutta_Hipp_Jazz_Podium_July_2006_new.pdf

2006 - but Jazz Podium articles are hard to place in your memory because their layout remained stuck somewhere in the late 80s for a long time...

Edited by Niko
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1 hour ago, Niko said:

I'm pretty sure I read that article, too... probably in the stack of recent JazzPodium editions in the Cologne public library... given that I was born 1981, this was certainly not before 1993, most likely 1996 or 1997... I don't think it really was an interview but just a biographic piece by a woman who had tracked her down and talked to her (an art historian from Berlin is what I remember - she didn't seem that young to me then)

 

edit: completely misremembered, this is the article

http://www.vonschuttenbach.com/articles/Jutta_Hipp_Jazz_Podium_July_2006_new.pdf

2006 - but Jazz Podium articles are hard to place in your memory because their layout remained stuck somewhere in the late 80s for a long time...

Thanks very much, Niko. Much appreciated! Quite a bit of this one and of the Longreads article seem to have drawn from the same primary sources for the details, e.g. the roles of Evered and Leonard Feather. (Now where did Evered INITIALLY publish his account of how he contacted Jutta Hipp, I wonder?)

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13432424_1267969369881296_13153301684624

Katja von Schuttenbach, the author of that piece in Jazzpodium [as an aside: there's an English translation of the text at the end of the document] keeps a JH Facebook Fanpage with loads of fascinating stuff...

https://www.facebook.com/Jutta-Hipp-148942215117356/

one could probably ask her for the Tom Evered source... (I would guess that this was simply an email/word document he shared upon request?)

Edited by Niko
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Thank you Niko for posting that article. That she refused to record/play Leonard Feather´s compositions, made me smile. I liked Leonards Liner Notes when I was a kid, because liner notes was the most information we in Europe could get about musicians.

And his book "From Satchmo to Miles" with that famous Miles Davis interview....

But Leonard as a composer ? Had to think about that. And just two weeks ago when I listened to the whole Dizzy RCA recordings, all that hot big band stuff, Manteca and so on, there was one tune that didn´t really appeal to me andit  is titled "Ole Man Re-Bop" or something like that . I thought why, all the other stuff is great, Good Bait, Ool ya koo, Woody´n You, everything, and this one I dont like and that I saw it was composed by Leonard Feather (smile). Well I don´t know his other compositions and I´m not really curious, but this tune sounds like if somebody has listend to bop and liked it and thinks he must try to write something "boppish" without really having the roots and the feelings for that music.

And then I remembered this thread and thought "yeah Jutta, can understand you, same here, I wouldn´t like to perform that tune (smile).

But about the Jazz Podium, I still think there was another article too, because I remember she told some things in her own words, she even told about the incident with Art Blakey and confessed that she had drunk to much, when Art finally asked her on stage to sit in on an ultra rapid tune. She confessed that she just sat there on the piano stool and smiled and wasn´t able to play.  I´m sure Jutta could have made it if she wasn´t loaded. If I drink only beer my fingers slow down.

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12 hours ago, bertrand said:

I have not clicked on the above link yet, but the discussion seems to suggest that Katja spoke to Jutta. Katja never met Jutta.

Bertrand.

 

Actually, the article doesn't say so at all. She acknowledges that she was too late and refers to earlier reports by people who did meet her.

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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Immaterial. What counts are the contents of the actual article. Jutta Hipp WAS contacted and interviewed by jazz insiders during he self-imposed "exile", and Evered may not have been the first one.

Now what I am wondering rather more about is what reference sources were used exactly for that much-hailed Longreads article published here in 2017. It seems to have been published before elsewhere (according to the fine print) but when and how long ago? That Jazz Podium article linked by Niko was published 11 years ago and - as Niko has shown -  is accessible online, including in an English version. Seeing how much of the details in that Jazz Podium article of 11 years ago crop up in the Longreads text - almost verbatim, in some cases - you start wondering ... So it would indeed be interesting to see how and where Evered's writings were actually published and/or circulated. The duplications of contents in the two articles now linked just baffle me ...

I wonder how much of it is taken up and maybe elaborated on in that huge Jutta Hipp box set released by the Be!Jazz label (I admit I am shying away from taking the plunge as I have most of the music, and shelling out the full amount mainly for the book ... ho hum ...).

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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7 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Immaterial. What counts are the contents of the actual article. Jutta Hipp WAS contacted and interviewed by jazz insiders during he self-imposed "exile", and Evered may not have been the first one.

Now what I am wondering rather more about is what reference sources were used exactly for that much-hailed Longreads article published here in 2017. It seems to have been published before elsewhere (according to the fine print) but when and how long ago? That Jazz Podium article linked by Niko was published 11 years ago and - as Niko has shown -  is accessible online, including in an English version. Seeing how much of the details in that Jazz Podium article of 11 years ago crop up in the Longreads text - almost verbatim, in some cases - you start wondering ... So it would indeed be interesting to see how and where Evered's writings were actually published and/or circulated. The duplications of contents in the two articles now linked just baffle me ...

I wonder how much of it is taken up and maybe elaborated on in that huge Jutta Hipp box set released by the Be!Jazz label (I admit I am shying away from taking the plunge as I have most of the music, and shelling out the full amount mainly for the book ... ho hum ...).

As an owner of the huge Jutta Hipp box set I can tell you that it worth every penny I paid for it. The 6 CDs and the very short DVD are worth the price alone. The 208-page book is a work of art and is far and away the best book accompanying any box set I ever saw.  As far as the narrative goes the book gives a very coherent story of Hipp's life, both during and after her musical life. The book also contains many, many pictures of her at various performances and of her art. It is too bad that the book is not sold separately.   

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Thanks for the feedback. But like I said, I have about 80-90% of the music elsewhere (in quite decent presentation andfidelity). Which basically leaves the book as something mostly new (mostly because they not flood me with facsimiles of the Jazz Podium write-ups from the 50s like they did with the mod Records box set - I have the originals of the mags). I am very tempted but am really hesitating ...

BTW, are there two versions of this box set out? I have seen two differently priced box sets (though with identical descriptions) on two online sellers' platforms (i.e. each of the two platforms listed two differently priced sets). And a price difference of some 40 euros is not negligible.

 

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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On 21.8.2017 at 9:39 PM, mjzee said:

Leonard Feather doesn't come off well in the article.  To be fair, the bad stuff is largely hearsay.  Still, it seems like he did much to dampen her career.

Not wanting to doubt your impressions unduly, but which statements would you qualify as "hearsay" and therefore maybe unfounded? Of course none of us were there to have witnessed these things but what Jutta Hipp said about him sounded like some rather unpleasant reminiscences to me, and after some reading done this morning  this ties in all too well with what others had to say about the Leonard Feather of that era.
To be more specific, this morning I happened to read a piece about and interview with Lucky Thompson authored by Leif Anderson and Björn Fremer in the October, 1957 issue of ORKESTER JOURNALEN (for a background, both authors were regular contributors to OJ at the time and neither of them was known for mincing their words so they did not shy away from tackling sensitive topics).

They told L.T.'s complaints about Leonard Feather like this:

Everybody knows Leonard Feather, the leading hypocrite in the field. Do you remember Lucky Thompson's famous "Just One More Chance" recording for Victor? Feather had set up this session and composed two tunes but did not want to list them under his name but rather listed Lucky as composer. Of course Feather kept the money but Lucky wasn't overjoyed with seeing his name associated with two substandard melodies so he objected. Ever since then Feather diligently avoided mentioning Lucky's name or playing his records on his programs or Blindfold Tests. One of his recordings was in fact included in a test, but although all the other musicians's names were mentioned, Lucky's name was missing, though he was both the leader and the soloist on tenor. To Feather, Lucky is a "dead man".

And so on ...
Doesn't this way of behaving sound strangely familiar? ;)

(BTW, the two tunes that Lucky Thompson apparently alluded to, "From Dixieland to Bebop" and "Boppin' The Blues", are indeed credited to Feather on reissues.)

Leaonard Feather did a lot of good in the field of jazz but this "make or break" attitude towards people who wouldn't play HIS game reeks of something rather unpleasant.

 

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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Feather was not a nice guy; I had one weird conversation with him and he was extremely nasty. Others have confirmed this aspect of his personality.

As a composer he was beneath contempt. Check out the session he made with Hot Lips Page; only Feather could take Page and make him dull. He also wrote a lot of god-awful blues (had one hit, as I recall).

I did talk to Hipp in the '90s when I was working on my '50s book. Unfortunately by then I was living in Maine, so I was unable to maintain contact (Marian McPartland had given me her number). She was very nice and seemed completely fine with her decision to abandon jazz.

As for her playing, for me the best work is the earlier, proto-Tristano style. Later on, to my ears, she became just another pianist, which is unfortunate.

 

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7 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Not wanting to doubt your impressions unduly, but which statements would you qualify as "hearsay" and therefore maybe unfounded?

I call it hearsay because the only person we're hearing these allegations from is von Schuttenbach, who never even met Hipp.  She says she "found evidence;" okay, when she publishes and shows us the evidence, then we can make our decisions.  Mind you, it might all turn out to be correct, but right now it's hearsay.

Hipp not only turned down his compositions, she turned down his advances. Although Feather’s memoir makes no mention of any sexual tension or personal conflict, Hipp’s biographer, Katja von Schuttenbach, found evidence when she interviewed musicians who knew Hipp; they said that Feather pursued Hipp romantically once she was in the United States. Feather was married and a father at the time, and Jutta was engaged to a Hungarian guitarist named Atilla Zoller. Even though they called off their engagement after he moved to the United States in 1956, Zoller and Hipp remained lifelong friends.

Von Schuttenbach has been researching Hipp since 2005 as part of her master’s thesis, and she intends to publish as a biography. Her account will show how Feather retaliated, turning Hipp, in von Schuttenbach’s words, “from protégée to persona non grata.”

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