JAZZ MEETING mit den Spree City Stompers, 1958
Posted: February 28, 2015 Filed under: 50s, Berlin Records, Germany, Jazz Records 1 Comment
Those damned purple Opera sleeves! Why did the design have to be so persitently unimaginative? It could not have hurt to put a little illustration or a photo on the sleeve. No! A cheap product had to look cheap. But Opera didn´t purely release cheap cover songs, they also put out quality records by established artists like Django Reinhardt, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong and a new generation of German jazz groups like the Albert Mangelsdorff Septett,Helmut Brandt Combo and the Spree City Stompers.
Trombonist Hans-Wolf “Hawe” Schneider (1930 – 2011) formed the Spree City Stompers, who became one of the most popular German trad jazz bands, in 1951. Two years later he also opened the legendary “Eierschale”, along with “Badewanne”, the best German Jazz clubs. Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Kid Ory appeared at “The Eggshell”. A website dedicated to the cellar pub is here.
The Spree City Stompers first recorded with Brunswick in 1955, then got picked up by the German Vogue label. They also cut a 10″ album “Jazz aus der Eierschale”, together with “Wild” Bill Davison for the budget Bertelsmann/Manhattan label. They toured Western Europe, Poland, Yugoslavia and Africa, appeared in films and on TV and hit the German charts twice in 1961 with “Warte, warte nur ein Weilchen”, a black humored song that dealt with the 1920´s serial killer Fritz Haarmann, and “Brigitte Bardot”. The band dissolved in 1968, when Hawe Schneider moved to the Black Forest region. He stayed active in the jazz scene, his last performance being with the Black Forest Jazz Band in 2007.
After their Brunswick recordings and before their Vogue deal, the Spree City Stompers recorded this EP for Opera in 1958. It has never been re-released in any format.
Hot Jazz from Berlin!
SPREE CITY STOMPERS, My Gal Sal, 1958
SPREE CITY STOMPERS, Old Stack O´Lee Blues, 1958
SPREE CITY STOMPERS, Ain´t Misbehavin´ , 1958
SPREE CITY STOMPERS, St. Louis Blues, 1958
The Spree City Stompers were: Hawe Schneider (tb), Peter Strohkorb (cl), Gerd Vohwinkel (tp), Björn Jensen (bj), Martin Piepkorn (p), Tilo Wendell (bs and sousaphon) and Udo Künitz (d).
Within a short time they appeared in seven Films: Der Himmel ist nie ausverkauft (1955), Der Schräge Otto (1957), Einmal eine große Dame sein (1957), Liebe, Jazz und Übermut (1957), Meine 99 Bräute (1958), … und noch frech dazu (1960) and Verrückt und zugenäht (1962)
In 1957, the Spree City Stompers also show up in the awesome kitsch-masterpiece Der schräge Otto (Fritz Schulz-Reichel, alias Crazy Otto), backing Nana Gualdi and Eddie Pauly and a bunch of Boogie Woogie dancers:
This footage of the Spree City Stompers in Berlin, was shot to promote their extensive tour of Africa in 1966. The silent Super 8 film was dubbed and uploaded by the son of the group´s drummer Lothar Scharf:
Hawe Scheider also wrote for Jazz magazines, such as the local “Schlagzeug” (drums). From February 1959:
About me:
My name is Andreas Michalke. I´m a cartoonist from Berlin, Germany and I like collecting records. Most of the records I find in thrift stores or at flea markets here in Berlin. I like a lot of music but I thought I`d focus on odd German records. Preferably with cartoon covers.
All my scans are high-resolution. If you double-click on them they will get much bigger.
Berlin Beatet Bestes 
[…] By the late '50s, early '60s, although the original, no-lyrics (unlyricked?), fiddle tune was being played now and again by folk, bluegrass and mountain-music artists, it was pretty much unheard of by anyone outside those circles—but plenty knew the Pee Wee King song, or versions thereof, and instrumental versions of that begin to appear. Not many, what with a ten-year-old hit being old enough to be un-hip, but not yet old enough to be considered a classic, but a few. My favourite, I think, is this 1961 version, by German trad-jazz band, the Spree City Stompers: […]