Jutta Hipp died on Monday, April 7

[brownie]

The New York Times has a Jutta Hipp obituary in their edition

today.

Jutta Hipp, Jazz Pianist With a Percussive Style, Dies at 78

By BEN RATLIFF

Jutta Hipp, a jazz pianist from Germany who had a short, celebrated career

in the 1950's playing in New York nightclubs and making records for the Blue Note

label, then turned her back on jazz to become a dressmaker, died on Monday

at her home in Queens. She was 78.

The cause has not been determined, said Tom Evered, general manager of

Blue Note Records.

Ms. Hipp (whose first name was pronounced YOU-ta) left Europe for the United

States in 1955. As a young adult, she studied at the Leipzig Academy of Graphic

Arts in East Germany, but crossed over to West Germany in 1946 after the

Russians moved in to occupy Leipzig.

In an interview with Whitney Balliett of The New Yorker, she said that she

had been excited about the initial postwar occupation of Leipzig by American

forces. "We were very happy at their coming and brought out all our jazz records

to play for them," she said. "No response. We were terribly hurt until we discovered

what was wrong, which was that those G.I.'s didn't like jazz; they

liked hillbilly music." She did not get along much better with the Russians,

who wanted to put her design skills to work on propaganda posters.

Ms. Hipp had been playing piano since she was 9, and in West Germany she

played in a circus and eventually at nightclubs.

In Munich she started her own small group, and around 1951 a friend sent a

tape to the American jazz critic and record producer Leonard Feather. Feather

found her in Germany in 1954 and arranged a visa for her to work in the United States.

Once she was in New York, he booked her at the Hickory House jazz club.

She started playing at the Hickory House in March 1956 and stayed there

for six months. Through Feather's agency, three records appeared in quick

succession on Blue Note: "Jutta Hipp With Zoot Sims" and two volumes of

"Jutta Hipp at the Hickory House," with a trio including the bassist Peter Ind

and the drummer Ed Thigpen. She appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival in

1956.

[Soul Stream]

i think this might have been mentioned already. but seeing as the amount of blue note material available (or unavailable as you see it), Jutta Hipp's BN stuff might make a nice Mosaic Select.

[pryan]

i think this might have been mentioned already. but seeing as the amount of blue note material available (or unavailable as you see it), Jutta Hipp's BN stuff might make a nice Mosaic Select.

I agree.

[mikeweil]

Her playing here is rythmically rather stiff, something akin to Dave Brubeck of the period.

I haven't heard these early Hipp recordings, they are hard to find, even here in Germany, but I know Brubeck's early stuff very well and know he just tried something ryhthmically different than just swing in a conventional jazz sense. I appreciate his ideas wery much, have tried similar things and sometimes received criticsim from people - listeners or fellow musicians - who could not follow the idea that rhythmic phrasing was subject to improvisation just as melody or harmony are.

[andybleaden]

Too late I know but truely sad news. I have all her Blue Note stuff and it was lovely.

Sad sad news indeed

Andy

[JohnS]

Jutta's obit in one of the Uk papers included the following

When Art Blakey asked her to sit in with his band at New York's Cafe Bohemia, she refused saying she was drunk and anyway did not think she was good enough. Blakey dragged her to the piano, and started playing a tempo which she could not handle. Blakey then addressed the audience; "Now you see why we don't want these Europeans coming over here and taking our jobs"

[JohnS]

Nice picture too