Whygold’s Weekend

… under this motto I present you my music tip for the weekend.

Maybe one or the other discovers something new.

Consciously listening to music is, in my opinion, as important as reading a good book.

Today: Hazy Osterwald – Hits & Rarities

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_l-QYQTtvC9z0KcodYwpOKPEHMQpZ0f_MY

Hazy Osterwald (real name Rolf Erich Osterwalder; * February 18, 1922 in Bern; † February 26, 2012 in Lucerne^[1]) was a Swiss musician, singer and orchestra leader. Among his best-known pieces are the “Kriminal-Tango” and the “Konjunktur-Cha-Cha” (“Geh’n Sie mit der Konjunktur”).

Osterwald, the son of the national soccer player and accountant Adolf Osterwalder, who was also nicknamed Hazy, and of Martha Frieda Osterwalder (née Dier), was more enthusiastic about soccer as a student and was excluded from piano lessons for lack of practice. Fellow students, however, urged him to become a pianist in the school orchestra. In 1939 he became its director. From 1933 to 1941, Osterwald attended the Kirchenfeld Gymnasium in Bern, where he graduated in 1941 with a Type C Matura (now a mathematics and science high school). From 1940 he attended the conservatory in Bern and studied composition and theory with Albert Moeschinger, while also practicing the trumpet. In 1940, a year before he graduated from high school, he arranged for orchestra leader Teddy Stauffer and others. In 1941 he played trumpet in Fred Böhler‘s band, from 1942 under the stage name “Hazy Osterwald”. In 1944 he played piano and trumpet with the “Original Teddies” of saxophonist Eddie Brunner, Stauffer’s successor, but in the same year he formed his own eight-piece combo with singer Kitty Ramon. On September 1, 1944 came the first engagement at the Dancing Chikito in Bern. The extension to the big band proved too expensive, and so, following the example of Svend Asmussen on May 1, 1949, his sextet, with which he played the same year at the Festival International 1949 de Jazz in Paris, where greats such as Charlie Parker and Sidney Bechet also performed.

After performing in Europe, the Americans hired the sextet in 1951 as the Hazy Osterwald USO show (O for Overseas). Shortly after, in 1952, a six-month contract to Beverly Hills was turned down by the American Musicians Union. The sextet focused on Europe again and played in Stockholm, Lisbon and Arosa, among others. In 1953, the first German radio production took place at the NWDR in Hamburg, and the first recordings followed for the Austrian Austroton. In 1954, the Hazy Osterwald Sextet appeared in the German television film Eine kleine, große Reise.^[2] In 1955, it received a recording contract with Polydor and made recordings with Cologne producers Heinz Gietz and Kurt Feltz. In 1957 and 1958 they played to sold-out crowds at the Olympia in Paris.

The “Hazy Osterwald Sextet” initially included Ernst Höllerhagen (clarinet), Sunny Lang (bass), Gil Cuppini (drums), Pierre Cavalli (guitar) and Francis Burger (piano). Later members included Dennis Armitage (saxophone), Curt Prina (piano), Peter Beil (trumpet), Lars Blach and John Ward (drums). They were very successful not least because of their funny stage show. In 1961, Franz Josef Gottlieb made a musical film about their success story.
The Hazy Osterwald Story
with Gustav Knuth, Eddi Arent and Peer Schmidt. It is based on a biography by Walter Grieder published in 1961.^[3] Osterwald acted in personal union with the sextet as trumpeter, pianist, vibraphonist, bandleader, composer, lyricist, choreographer, arranger, director and producer.

In 1957, Heliodor released an LP under the title Das ist Rhythmus. Their first single on Polydor was released in October 1959 and immediately became a hit: Kriminal-Tango. It was a cover version of the Italian original by Piero Trombetta, who wrote the music to the Italian text Kriminal Tango by Aldo Locatelli (Columbia SCMQ #1202), released in August 1959. The German lyrics were written by Kurt Feltz after some resistance from the band and produced and arranged by Heinz Gietz.^[6] While the original reached an eighth place in the Italian charts, Osterwald’s version reached number one in the Swiss, Austrian and German charts, where it remained for three weeks. The single (Polydor #24048), with Sechs Musikanten on the B-side, sold 900,000 copies in Germany and sold a total of one million copies. Jazz musicians Dennis Armitage, Werner Dies, Curt Prina and others initially felt that the title was not up to the band’s standards. But then they were convinced by Heinz Gietz’s arrangement. Especially drummer John Ward, who was allowed to fire the gun several times in the song, “had a blast with it”.^[7]

In February 1960, the title Panoptikum followed, but just like the third single Konjunktur-Cha-Cha in February 1961 only lower placements. In the United States in 1961, the title La Pachanga, which had been released in Germany as Wieder mal Paschanga (The Music from Caracas), reached number 87 on the Billboard charts. The Hazy Osterwald Sextet accompanied singer Audrey Arno on it.

This was followed by the TV show “Lieben Sie Show?” on ARD, directed by Michael Pfleghar, which was first broadcast on November 24, 1962, and remained one of Germany’s most successful international TV shows, broadcast in 35 countries. Here Osterwald was presented in its own show. The last episode ran on March 16, 1963. Osterwald toured until 1979, now under the name Hazy Osterwald Jetset. Among other things, the musicians were the official band at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich and 1976 in Innsbruck, as well as in numerous television broadcasts. Osterwald had his own record publishing company and a series of nightclubs(Hazyland) in Switzerland at the height of his career in the 1970s, but he had to sell them when public tastes(discos) changed. He then took a break from performing until 1984, after which he also performed as a vibraphonist with Hazy Osterwald and the Entertainers, turning more to jazz again. In 2002, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, he performed together with Anna Larsen and John Ward at the Zurich Volkshaus at the gala “Hazy kommt”.^[8]

In 2005, Osterwald gave a considerable part of his private collection, including original scores, personal documents, photos and concert recordings, to the International Jazz Archive in Eisenach.

Osterwald was married three times:^[9] from 1951 until her death in 1965 to Käthe Marga Maschetzke, then from 1966 to Ema Damia (the marriage was divorced in 1979) and since 1985 to the actress Eleonore Mathilde Schmid. He was the father of four children.^[10]

In 1999 he published his autobiography. On the occasion of his 90th birthday, it became known that, as a result of an illness that had been going on since 1992^[11] Parkinson’s disease had been dependent on a wheelchair for some time.^[12] Hazy Osterwald lived in Lucerne until his death in February 2012.

(Source: Wikipedia)

It’s always interesting when you read these musicians’ biographies what you learn. So, as happened with Hazy Osterwald, it is not quite so bad after all if you are excluded from piano lessons because of a lack of practice, and prefer to play soccer instead. 🙂

Have fun listening to this album !

Your Chris Weigold

P.S.: Maybe you enjoy the listening pleasure together with a Glass of wine from our “Orchestra of Cultures Edition”.