JOE DIXIE MIT SEINEM ORCHESTER

A couple of years ago I found two 78s by Joe Dixie in a little thrift store in the street where I live. When I recently found two more records that had his name on it,  it was time to do some research. Unfortunately there is very little information about pianist, arranger, band leader and songwriter Joe Dixie on the Internet. Not even his real name is known. His music seems to be forgotten. Although clearly jazz tinged, it is too commercial for hardcore jazz fans and too obscure for everybody else to ever be reissued. A good starting point for a very small portrait.

In 1946 a group of young jazz fanatics who had survived the chaos of the last years of World War II were determined to establish a jazz scene in the ruins of Dresden. Among them was a 22-yer old pianist who called himself Joe Dixie, because crazy English-sounding nicknames were customary among German jazz fans. Spurred by his love for real Jazz, Joe Dixie founded one of the first big bands in post war Germany, the Original Dixies – Dresdner Tanzsinfoniker. The group fused jazz and dance music and even had a string section. Although popular locally they did not record, which they most probably would have, had they been based in Berlin. In 1951 the young ambitious bandleader left the group and Dresden for the Western part of  Germany to pursue a professional career in music. Throughout the next decades he would keep his moniker “Dixie” from his early life in Dresden.

When exactly Joe Dixie recorded these songs for the West Berlin record label Metrophon is not known, but it was definitely prior to his leaving East Germany, because the little annex on the side of the label Hergestellt unter der Zulassung Nr B-511 der Nachrichtenkontrolle der Militärregierung (made by permission Nr. B-511 of the surveillance of the military government) was only used until the founding of the Federal Republic of  Germany in 1949. Cultural transfer between the two Germanys was still relatively common, before the Berlin wall was built in 1961. While the borders were transparent,  it might have been decisive that it was a West Berlin label that  released Dixie´s first records. It mustalso  have been obvious to the young musician, that in the long run an artist going by the name of “Joe Dixie” would not fly with the communist East German regime.  Nor would a song about springtime in Texas and the cowboys having a ball with no cops and no tax authorities around…

I already posted these songs two years ago, but back then I did not know how to record them properly, so now I did it again and though there are still ticks and hisses to be heard, the files sound much better than before…

JOE DIXIE MIT SEINEN SOLISTEN UND DIE PING-PONGS, Frühling in Texas, 1949

JOE DIXIE MIT SEINEN SOLISTEN UND “DIE PING-PONGS”, Tage vergehen…, 1949

JOE DIXIE MIT SEINEN SOLISTEN UND “DIE PING-PONGS”, Ein, zwei. drei kleine Mädchen, 1949

Eins, zwei, drei kleine Mädchen is a German version of  The Trolley Song performed by Judy Garland in the film ‘Meet Me in St. Louis’, from 1944. The German lyrics are credited to Joe Dixie so I suppose this was his unique version. The Ping-Pongs were an East German girl group very much like the Andrew Sisters.

JOE DIXIE MIT SEINEM ORCHESTER, Louise, 1949

Louise was composed in 1929 with music by Richard Whiting and lyrics by Leo Robin for the film “The Innocents of Paris”, Paramount´s first musical picture, starring Maurice Chevalier. The song became a swing favorite recorded by many groups.

After Joe Dixie escaped from communist East Germany, he settled in a small village, tellingly called Freiheit in Osterode, Lower Saxony. By 1952 he had established himself as a songwriter and even started his own small publishing company for sheet music issuing songs like: Der Lange Jan Aus Amsterdam, Die Fahrt zum Mond,  Fritzchen pfeift fabelhaft, Sieben Tage keinen Kuss von dir, Canzonetta d`amore, Prego, prego, Gondoliere (together wit Fred Oldörp, die drei Travellers)

In the late fifties he led groups of various sizes (Joe Dixie Swingtett, Joe Dixie Und Sein Tanzorchester, Joe Dixie Und Seine Instrumental-Virtuosen, Joe Dixie Und Seine Solisten) and recorded for Telefunken, Baccarola and Ariola but also for the small indie label Jupiter from Munich. Jupiter released two 45s by Mona Baptiste backed by Joe Dixie and his orchestra.

This EP, released in 1957 on the Opera label out of Stuttgart (and also on Donauland 1563), really does have extended playtime, with each side being around six minutes long. Though burdened by the fact that these tracks are not only medleys, a particularly weak format, but also medleys of German schlager songs from the 1930s and 40s, Joe still manages to fill in quite a few jazz licks on his piano.

JOE DIXIE, PIANO UND SEINE INSTRUMENTAL-VIRTUOSEN, Mit Musik geht alles besser, Seite 1

JOE DIXIE, PIANO, UND SEINE INSTRUMENTAL-VIRTUOSEN, Mit Musik geht alles besser, Seite 2

 By the mid-60s Joe Dixie stopped performing and moved towards  songwriting and arranging.  But I´m pretty sure there´s more Joe Dixie solo material out there that I´ve never heard of.

TED MORRIS UND SEIN ORCHESTER, Der verliebte Gockel, 1960

I´m not going to DJ these songs. I´m not going to play them on the radio. I will not even play them for anyone at home. The only communication I will have about this record is here. Like some crazy person talking to myself…

There is a reason why nobody wants to listen to these songs and why they have not been reissued in over fifty years. Real 1930s/40s swing music is still in high demand today, but not this type of goofy 1950s retro swing music with a harmonica theme. Despite the cover showing some teenagers draped around a French hot rod, this music was not made for teenagers.  It was for old people, guys like me. Today the equivalent would be a no name band playing slightly spiced-up 1980s hit songs.  Ted Morris sounds very much like a pseudonym.  I suspect the group to be German, but I don´t know anything about them, there is no information on the Internet.

These expendable type of records are why I started this blog. What I find  endearing, is that nobody needs them. Nobody wants them. They´re lost.  But if you´ll listen, there´s a lot happening in these songs…

TED MORRIS UND SEIN ORCHESTER, Der verliebte Gockel, 1960

TED MORRIS UND SEIN ORCHESTER, Farmers Dance, 1960

TED MORRIS UND SEIN ORCHESTER, Weekend, 1960

TED MORRIS UND SEIN ORCHESTER, Highway Patrol, 1960

The car has a little  § 51 painted on the side.  It refers to a German law that into the 1960s ruled that mentally ill persons  could not be held criminally responsible.

Really… totally crazy, these teenagers…

HARMONIKA-TRIO HARMONIE

A couple of month ago I found this 45 by Harmonika-Trio Harmonie in the 50 cents bin of a local second hand store. The record didn´t have a sleeve and was lumped together with a bunch of other sleeveless 45s. It looked pretty scratched up and dirty. However the titles  Get Up On The Stairs and June Night sounded promising, like they might be some kind of jazz.  So took it home, cleaned it and it didn´t sound so bad. And once you get behind the harmonica sound, the songs are great too.

HARMONIKA-TRIO HARMONIE, Get Up On The Stairs, 1956

HARMONIKA-TRIO HARMONIE, June Night, 1956

Apparently Trio Harmonie was a top German jazz group in the late 40s and early 50s.  As I will show in the next couple of posts, all sorts of groups used to be very comfortable playing the current hits of the day with their unlikely instruments. It was this  sort of diversity in styles and adaptions that made jazz  so popular. Groups like the Harmonica Rascals and the Harmonicats and dozens of others were a regular part of the entertainment business in the 30s and 40s. In Europe one of the most popular harmonica groups was the Dutch Hotcha Trio who started as a five piece group in the mid-30s.

In Germany harmonica groups were especially active in the post war era. One of the first outings of Harmonika-Trio Harmonie (with members Rolf Balschun , Günter Koerber and Max Fricke) was a version of  St. Louis Blues , recorded in Berlin, October 1948.

HARMONIKA-TRIO HARMONIE, St. Louis Blues, 1948

No information about the group on the Internet and no full reissues either, but their very nice up-beat harmonica version of  Don´t Be Cruel has been featured on a compilation of German cover versions of Elvis songs.

Last week I went back to the same second hand store and found two more 45s by Trio Harmonie in the same bins. Back home I realized that all three were from the same collection as the numbers on the small record album stickers indicate. These records have probably been sitting in those boxes for years, ignored by both jazz fans and record collectors.

None of them have been reissued in 57 years, so I think they do deserve to be listened to once more…

HARMONIKA-TRIO HARMONIE, The Huckle-Buck, 1956

HARMONIKA-TRIO HARMONIE, Harmonika-Dixie, 1956

HARMONIKA-TRIO HARMONIE, Avalon, 1956

HARMONIKA-TRIO HARMONIE, Chinatown, My Chinatown, 1956

All the way from Austin comes this image and two more tracks from Mundharmonika-Trio Harmonie, taken from Die Illustrierte Schallplatte 2. Folge (Telefunken LA 6125).

Thanks a lot Austin!

MUNDHARMONIKA-TRIO HARMONIE, A-Ting-A-Ling

MUNDHARMONIKA-TRIO HARMONIE, Tweedle-Dee