don redman 1946

[bichos]

there is a good and well researched blog about don redman´s european tour 1946. look here.

keep boppin´

marcel

[brownie]

Quite a fascinating blog on the jazz situation in Europe right after WWII!

[king ubu]

Intriguing!

(But why would there be a restaurant Munich in Copenhagen in 1946 and why would this place - a place that, sorry, sounds lots like nazi in 1946 - have negros playing jazz? Rather weird ... anyone knows the story of that restaurant?)

[king ubu]

And speaking of Nazis, the newspaper clippings are absolutely intriguing ... the mix of naïvete and plain racism, of helplessness and malignity, is quite something!

[Big Beat Steve]

King Ubu, I don't think this is any sign of nazism. These period documents need to be read and understood within the framework of their times. I'd say it's a mixture of extreme conservatism and cluelessness with regard to this "newfangled jazz". A dose of racism was in there too, yes, like it existed in many nations. Check internet sources/references to that BOOK published at about the time of this tour in SWEDEN, for example: "Jazzen anfaller". A very, very conservative "musicologist"'s stance on the evils of jazz and jazzmen.

Referring to that blog - yes, the documentation of that tour is most fascinating as a document of the European jazz scene in these days. Strange, however, that so little was quoted from the Swedish publications (no full translations at all), though a number of Danish were involved in compiling that material (and they should have sufficient knowledge of the Swedish langugage).

Surprising, BTW, that there is no trace of the coverage in ESTRAD (Don Redman rated a title page feature in the October, 1946 issue of ESTRAD) on that website either, though old ESTRAD copies are not totally impossible to come by.

The coverage in Swedish jazz magazines was fairly thorough and insightful, though the "Don Redman en besvikelse" ("Don Redman a disappointment") concert coverage was surprisingly harsh indeed. In hindsight and to be quite honest, maybe the author did rate the Redman band correctly enough - a major event and a revelation to jazz-hungry post-war Europe but by the standards of the early post-war U.S jazz scene that band for the most part would have rated among the "also-rans" (including their musical level).

Sorry to see that, for all the tidbits compiled on the Don Redman band's stay in several European countries, their presence and live appearances in Germany seem to have gone virtually undocumented, judging by the meager references to their stay there. Probably most if not all of their live appearances were in US officers' and NCO clubs that were off-limits to German citizens but still some more eye/earwitness accounts of their appearance there would have added immensely to the picture.

[king ubu]

Well, we really needn't go into detail, but sometimes it was very hard back then to draw a line between extreme conservatism and nazism, wasn't it? But I was just being somewhat pushy

As my Swedish is inexistant, I don't seem to find anything useful about that book right now.

But back on topic: why not try and get in touch with those folks and ask them, and if needed, provide some material on the Swedish leg of the tour?

[Big Beat Steve]

But back on topic: why not try and get in touch with those folks and ask them, and if needed, provide some material on the Swedish leg of the tour?

Actually this is what I had thought about when I found out about that omission yesterday while working my way through those 100+ pages.

Though I do not know if they had for some reason deliberately decided not to include ESTRAD (maybe feeling that in THEIR opinion it did not add to the facts about the Danish/Swedish part of the tour already covered by Orkester Journalen). This would surprise me, however (seeing that they did scan two only slightly different ads for the very same concert in Switzerland, etc. etc. - a collector's approach which I fully symapthize with, BTW ), particularly since ESTRAD had some good scribes and did show some nice pics.

Such as those shown hereafter:

The cover page ...

A jam session with local Danish musicians in Copenhagen. BTW, the trumpeter to the right is the one who elsewhere on that blog is said to have been obliged to shave his beard because Norwegians mistook him for a German submarine officer. Go figure ...

The crowd in excitement ... "This is how you look when the jazz devil grabs you", the caption says ... Certainly a bit more excitement there than what that "Billed-Bladet" picture feature says about the Danish jazz nobilitiy looking totally in awe yet being described in the caption as being "all in ecstasy".

[king ubu]

Great photos!

I guess me, I've long been inhabited by the jazz devil - but no one will ever mistake me for a German submarine officer, I'm quite sure

[Caravan]

The bearded trumpeter is Alan Jeffries, one of the "bebop boys" in the Redman band.

Edited September 2, 2012 by caravan

[fasstrack]

I wouldn't get so hot and bothered. Look at, say, our own NYT of that period wherever it is archived and you'd be shocked at how provincial the opinions and tone were generally. Plenty of innuendo-if not outright dispicable treatment of black folks in the pages of major dailies. I think most of know how high hat the legendary prick Walter Winchell treated Nica Rothschild in his column (in whatever rag ran it-likely it was syndicated) for having the low taste to have Charlie Parker die in her crib. He strongly inferred they were lovers-and knew just the trouble he was making and who he was trying to rile. And that was 1955! Europe didn't have nearly as many blacks as us-and viewed them either as 'exotic' or way beneath them. It was the times. I wish this were more about Redman's music.

[Hoppy T. Frog]

Big Beat Steve, they want to talk to you.

http://donredman1946tour.wordpress.com/

[Big Beat Steve]

Oh my ... and I had searched high and low for a sort of impressum with a straight CONTACT e-mail address on that Don Redman blog as well as on Armin Buettner's excellent Crownpropeller blog but to no avail ...

Will do ...

Edited September 2, 2012 by Big Beat Steve