Wolfgang Dauner RIP

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Notice on Organissimo that the German pianist/leader Wolfgang Dauner has died. I know very little about him as I gather he worked in that European jazz/rock idiom (United Jazz & Rock Ensemble) that left me indifferent. But apparently he did some free stuff as well and "could play anything"..

Here he (and they) are with Barbara Thompson. Guessing this is from the early 70s?

http://youtu.be/f926PkrpaDQ

[Serial_Apologist]

Notice on Organissimo that the German pianist/leader Wolfgang Dauner has died. I know very little about him as I gather he worked in that European jazz/rock idiom (United Jazz & Rock Ensemble) that left me indifferent. But apparently he did some free stuff as well and "could play anything"..

Here he (and they) are with Barbara Thompson. Guessing this is from the early 70s?

http://youtu.be/f926PkrpaDQ

No idea what that is from, but it looks late 1980s from the clobber. That was the, to my mind, absurdly portentiously titled United Jazz + Rock Ensemble, brought together by a German TV producer and jazz fan, Werner Schretzmayer in 1975, effectively a co-operative but with Albert Mangelsdorff (here a featured soloist), Dauner (pronounced "Downer" btw) and Jon Hiseman the musical initiators, and very much at the helm. Jon never claimed originality for the type of music they played; what was remarkable was the assemblage of stars with international reputations from both sides of The Pond: Mangelsdorff, trumpeters Manfred Schoof, Ian Carr, and often Kenny Wheeler; Charlie Mariano, Barbara Thompson and Eberhard Weber.

The original intention was for the band to introduce jazz and jazz-rock in a regular German TV programme primarily devoted to live discussion on political subjects with a young studio audience - such a thing could never have been expected to happen in this country, either then or especially now. In 1977 Dauner, guitarist Volker Kriegel, Mangelsdorff and trumpeter Ack van Rooyan launched Mood Records specifically for releases by the band, the first of which, from 1977, Live in Schützenhaus, sold more than 150k pressings by the mid '80s. The UJRE constituted a large percentage of the work undertaken by Jon and Barbara other than Paraphernalia, much of it on international tours. Besides Dauner, many of its personnel have long passed on.

I first came across Wolfgang Dauner on an early ECM album recorded in 1970 titled Output, with Dauner performing mostly overdubbed on piano, ring modulator and Hohner Electra-Clavinet C, accompanied by the American drummer Fred Braceful with Eberhard Weber on acoustic bass, cello and guitar - a sort of Euro-Sun Ra concoction, for want of a better parallel, of early jazz-rock alongside swirling abstract freeform psychedelia. The record shop owner said he had bought it on spec when first opening the shop in the mid-70s - this was now 1982! - it had been in the racks all that time and he thanked me, having wondered if anyone would ever buy it! The front cover consists of a surreal photograph of a man's naked torso, his head replaced by a large illuminated light bulb tied with a neckerchief, his right arm stuck into some kind of industrial machine-like aperture which, when turned over, reveals the fingers attached to an electric cable on the other side. Later I picked up a copy of Jean-Luc Ponty's 1967 LP Sunday Walk (MPS) - his second under his own name, I believe - with Dauner on acoustic piano, N-H Orsted-Pederson bass and Daniel Humair, drums - straight-ahead contemporary jazz of the kind Dauner's contemporary Gordon Beck was then coming up with in his own right; and the Beck comparison has some salience - Dauner is as good as anyone in that what might be taken at first hearing to be a talented equivalent of Chick Corea at the time, although the more accurate comparison goes to the 'Frisco pianist Denny Zeitlin, whose own Carole's Garden is Track 2 on Side 1.

[Ian Thumwood]

This clip is almost comical it is so dated but it does take me back to when I was first getting in to jazz o the early 1980s when this kind of stuff was considered to be contemporary. The United Jazz & Rock Ensemble was the first time I was aware of the Contemporary Music Network putting gigs on in Southampton. 9Does anyone else remember the distinctive posters promoting the gigs? ) I was too young to go to this gig as I may have still be at school but when you hear clips like this it does make you appreciate exactly what Wynton Marsalis was rebelling against!

European Jazz in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a strange place and it now seems really strange that players like Kenny Wheeler, Albert Mangelsdorff and Charlie Mariano ever got roped in to this stuff. As a teenager more interested in the likes of Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, etc at this time, I viewed any reference to "rock" with suspicion and by the time I had discovered bands like Weather Report, they had become really passe by the mid 1980s and the critical opinion had very much switched back to more acoustic styles of jazz. Every time I hear this kind of stuff I wonder if I would have been really in to it had I been 5 years older. It struck me as a teenager as being much too 1970s and nearly forty years later , if anything, it seems even worse. In it's way, it is a preposterous as some of Kenton's music in the 1970s.

The question I always wanted to ask myself was whether these musicians genuinely saw this as the future for jazz or indeed lie playing tis stuff. Kenny Wheeler's work in the 1980s onwards seemed to revert back to (his unique vision) of the jazz mainstream. I am perplexed as to whether this was an attempt to pander to popular tastes and an economic necessity given the paucity of a more traditional jazz scene at the time. The common perception of the 1980s is on New Neos, the NY Downtown scene and the emergence of a generation of players who saw a way of forging ahead with acoustic jazz which seemed to pick up the baton after it was dropped in the pursuit of fusion. You forget this demi-monde of "Euro-jazz" with it's alternative vision of the music favoured by the likes of labels such as ECM. I am thinking about the likes of Eberhard Weber's "Colours" which must have sounded fresh and exciting at the time but which now seems little more than a curious diversion. Listening to the recent "live" gig recorded in 1982 by the likes of Land / Hutcherson / Fuller, the music must have sounded like something from another era if you were listening at the time whereas I think it had nothing to prove and sounds all the better for it in 2020. The EJ&R Ensemble sounded pretentious at the time but the clip above is pretty indicative as to why jazz needed to be "saved" by the likes of Marsalis.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Just for SA here's a contemporary video of "Output". That piano line sounds more like Coltrane's "Olé" to me. Someone on one of the other related websites said that Mangelsdorff (off the record) regarded UJRE really as rent money and gave him some freedom to pursue his own interests. No idea is that is true.

Anyway, back to the "future"....http://youtu.be/jW_Fg4BlQew

[Serial_Apologist]

Just for SA here's a contemporary video of "Output". That piano line sounds more like Coltrane's "Olé" to me. Someone on one of the other related websites said that Mangelsdorff (off the record) regarded UJRE really as rent money and gave him some freedom to pursue his own interests. No idea is that is true.

Anyway, back to the "future"....http://youtu.be/jW_Fg4BlQew

That particular link is quite different from the LP. The next track that comes on of an entire hour-long album is closer, but again Dauner seems to have been all over the place at that point. BTW I think that opening tune is Corea's "Spain".

[Ian Thumwood]

That particular link is quite different from the LP. The next track that comes on of an entire hour-long album is closer, but again Dauner seems to have been all over the place at that point. BTW I think that opening tune is Corea's "Spain".

Did you get to the end of the clip with the monkey noises ? lol

[Serial_Apologist]

Did you get to the end of the clip with the monkey noises ? lol

I did indeed.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I did indeed.

Watching these videos and indeed others from this era and type of jazz, I began to wonder if playing the "rockier" end of the spectrum gave rise to premature (male) hair loss? Jazz of the fifties and early sixties equals mostly good hair. Jazz of the seventies into eighties, bald crowns, receding hairlines, thinning, dry, blow away, wispy and "gone".

This is not scientific fact but an observational assumption based on YouTube.

[Ian Thumwood]

Watching these videos and indeed others from this era and type of jazz, I began to wonder if playing the "rockier" end of the spectrum gave rise to premature (male) hair loss? Jazz of the fifties and early sixties equals mostly good hair. Jazz of the seventies into eighties, bald crowns, receding hairlines, thinning, dry, blow away, wispy and "gone".

This is not scientific fact but an observational assumption based on YouTube.

Well, this logic doesn't ' seem to have applied to Pat Metheny. However, I think the clip of the EJ&RE seemed to include some of the least "rock" looking of any musicians. Looking back, it seems weird to see a jazz group trying to sell itself with it's supposed rock credentials. To think that Kenny Wheeler was in this band is amazing - is there any jazz musician who ever looked less "rock n' rock?"

The early 1980s is a strange place in European jazz. I don't think Marsalis really caught on until about 1982/3 over here and you still had bands in the early 1980s pursuing a rock / fusion road. Barbara Thompson and Geoff Castle's "Paz" quickly come to mind as does Bill Bruford's Earthworks. By the time I was in to contemporary jazz around 1983-5, this stuff was still being played although none of my friends who were in to jazz ever admitted listening to this kind of stuff. By the late 1980s I always felt that fusion was totally out of fashion and can remember the ridicule the likes of Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinal got from still playing this stuff. The one record I do remember my mate loaning me was Wayne Shorter's "Phantom Navigator" which I felt sounded extremely naff at that time. I think that Shorter's best work has always been with acoustic groups and I have some sympathy with Keith Jarrett's distain for keyboard which he described as being "toys."

I appreciate where SA is coming from with the early fusion of late sixties / early seventies but as a jazz-keen teenager on that decade fusion always seemed a busted flush and not something to be taken seriously. By that point it even had a bit of a stigma about it amongst fans. I have to say that I don't mind Paraphernalia but have always felt it was lightweight fluff that often sounded like it belonged on the soundtrack with the test card. It is not something I ever considered seriously even though I enjoyed it when Humphrey Lyttelton often played their LPs on Monday nights. Fusion often seemed like the kind of stuff you would listen to if you wanted something more challenging than rock but found purer forms of jazz impenetrable. At least Barbara Thompson had the ability to write really well for her ensemble. The appreciation of fusion has always been a generational thing. In my case, it was very much the music of yesterday and the kind of jazz the musicians I was interested at that time were trying to escape from. As the clips of Dauer show, some of this stuff sounds very dated these days but I suppose it was nearly fifty years ago. Looking back from their time, they would have been thinking the same about Louis Armstrong!

[Joseph K]

I think that Shorter's best work has always been with acoustic groups and I have some sympathy with Keith Jarrett's distain for keyboard which he described as being "toys."

Weird how this distain for electric instruments has never been an issue for guitarists.

[Serial_Apologist]

Weird how this distain for electric instruments has never been an issue for guitarists.

I once asked Django Bates - himself very much a Keith Jarrett man - what he felt about Jarrett's comment about "toys", remarking on the imaginative use to which he put two keyboards played simultaneously on those Cellar sessions of late 1970; and he agreed that he thought it a great pity that Jarrett had held that view of them. I think Jarrett had said that he just played them out of love and respect for Miles, knowing that was what he had wanted.

[Ian Thumwood]

The use of keyboards on Miles' late 60's work is largely based on the use of fender Rhodes and an organ, from recollection. The Rhodes has become something of a jazz staple. More recent innovations on keyboards have often resulted in synths being used as substitute strong sections or to flesh out arrangements. This is problematic for me because the music quickly dates as keyboards become obsolete. I have loads of records where electronic keyboards are used and indeed there are more recent records where the dreaded use of programming has crept in. The ironic thing for me is that in the past jazz musicians might have used genuine strings or recruited a big band and no one would have grumbled. The results would not have dated quite so much.

I would argue that Bates is one of the few jazz musicians who has thought really hard about employing keyboards but I still consider it a risk.

[Serial_Apologist]

The use of keyboards on Miles' late 60's work is largely based on the use of fender Rhodes and an organ, from recollection. The Rhodes has become something of a jazz staple. More recent innovations on keyboards have often resulted in synths being used as substitute strong sections or to flesh out arrangements. This is problematic for me because the music quickly dates as keyboards become obsolete. I have loads of records where electronic keyboards are used and indeed there are more recent records where the dreaded use of programming has crept in. The ironic thing for me is that in the past jazz musicians might have used genuine strings or recruited a big band and no one would have grumbled. The results would not have dated quite so much.

It doesn't bother me particuarly, to be honest, one reason being that it can instantly evoke the period - which is not so different from any other period of jazz re instrumentations. To be even more honest it can even be quite nostalgic ; those of us who lived through a certain period often lived that period through its musical soundworld, in part.

I would argue that Bates is one of the few jazz musicians who has thought really hard about employing keyboards but I still consider it a risk.

Dave McRae was another: Nucleus; Matching Mole; Mike Gibbs, etc etc. - amazing range of tones from relatively primitive keyboard instruments. Herbie Hancock once remarked on his own adaptations of Hohner and Rhodes pianos - adding wah-wah pedals and ring modulator controls etc - led the leading manufacturers to incorporate them in subsequent models; he actually became their adviser over such things. This for me is one of the excitements of early jazz-rock: the addition and combination of new expressive timbres, which, after all, was really following the example of composers like Debussy at the turn of the 20th century; and I think I read somewhere that Hendrix had earlier played a similar role vis-a-vis electronic guitars. I can agree that the wholesale (literally!) adoption of these thereby standardised models became signage for new fashions - the drum machine being an obvious culprit: Surman: "Jack (DeJohnette) uses one, but being a great drummer we can excuse him!". Tony Oxley never would buy off-the-shelf electronics, preferring to design and model his own. We are of course talking about fusion here, but in other more experimental areas of the music the lines are not so clearly drawable: for instance in the ways in which rhythmic patterns obtained from drum machines of apparently superhuman complexity have offered acoustic drummers, such as Steve Arguelles and Mark Sanders in the jazz area, along with countless others like Pat Thomas combining samples with live performers in hip hop/jazz/improv crossovers, new ideas they probably wouldn't have discovered otherwise. The technology fed back into the human and the spontaneous.