Down Beat : 07/25/1956
Nat Hentoff : 3 stars

Jutta Hipp at the Hickory House is her first made-in-America LP. With Doctor Van Gelder in attendance, this and a second LP were taped in one night at the room with Jutta’s regular assistants, drummer Ed Thigpen and bassist Peter Ind. As of this LP, all of the reservations expressed in a May 2 Caught in the Act of Miss Hipp still stand. No longer immediately identifiable by her former linear, lyrical musical personality, Jutta sounds here like a promising eclectic marked most by Horace Silver.

It may well be that this diminution of individuality is temporary, and that Jutta may eventually forger her own approach. But as of now, while it’s true her style has become funkier (Billie’s Bounce is the best example on the LP), she has also become rather rigid, pressing nearly every song into the same mold with little care of the individual character of each. For example, she may be Mad About the Boy, but why should she attack him? And there is something depressingly mechanical about her hardness-without-exuberance in Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Jeepers Creepers.

On several of her records made abroad, Jutta had a particularly engaging touch with ballads. Much of that uniqueness has also been lost. Stockholm, while attractive, does not flow much, and Things again represents in large part a pyrrhic victory of a search for style over content. Her accompaniment is good but as Leonard Feather pointed out recently, this is not nearly as integrated, as tripartite as a superior trio can be. Thigpen is fine. Ind is rather stolid in solo. Feather introduces the record and there are several announcements by Miss Hipp. Good sound and a most attractive cover.

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Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

At 11am on Nov. 18, 1955, a nervous figure stepped off the gangplank of the S.S. New York at Pier 88 in Manhattan and gazed around with myopic eyes at the unfamiliar landscape of a strange new country. Jutta Hipp had arrived in America.

It had been almost two years since Jutta and I had last met, in the crowded cellar club in Duisberg; almost two years since we had begun the long correspondence that began with unformulated yearnings, that later materialized into specific plans, into consultations with a New York lawyer at this end, with her family and friends at the other, and into the ultimate news that her visa had come through and her career as a German pianist in Germany could end as soon as she wanted.

It had not been easy for a girl of Jutta’s sensitivity to do in Germany all that she wanted to do musically. The good night club jobs were few and far between. During the two years of waiting there had been trips to Scandinavia and Yugoslavia, and her letters had told of the healthy musical climate of Sweden and the tawdry Communist restrictions of Belgrade.

Small wonder that when she arrived in Manhattan, a decade after her escape from the Russian Zone in Germany and the commencement of her career as a professional pianist, Jutta was bemused. On her first nights in town, a visit to Basin Street, Birdland, Bohemia, to hear Erroll Garner, Miles Davis, Count Basie and a dozen other idols, left he speechless and awe-struck as a teen-aged bobbysoxer. For weeks afterward, she went into a shell, spending long evenings glued before the television set, watching mystery after escapist mystery – and, between mysteries, crossing over to the phonograph to play a record by her new discovery, Horace Silver.

Jutta hardly touched the piano during those weeks; at least, never when she felt anyone might be within earshot. Her nervousness took a month, two months to break down. For the first time, one night at the Bohemia, she met Horace Silver, and was happy that the man was as charming as his music. Friends and fans everywhere besought her to sit in, but she felt neither ready nor willing.

Then came two important developments: the arrival of her Musicians’ Union card and the promise of a job at the Hickory House on West 52nd Street, for more than 20 years the pied-à-terre of countless American jazz stars she had read about. The challenge galvanized Jutta into action, enthusiastic action. It was a matter of days before she was at the keyboard for hours at a stretch.

Jutta realized that she was not the only new pianist on the jazz scene. A number of other new stars, some of them from overseas, some feminine, had stormed the American jazz citadels. But the stimulation of competition, by this time, was scarcely even necessary, for Jutta soon found that the pleasure of working with an American rhythm section had been worth those idle moments of apprehensive anticipation.

Joe Morgen, the indomitable press agent for the Hickory House, was more than just a publicity man; he was a friend, someone in our corner who wanted to do everything in his power to make her name a bright one in American lights. It was with Morgen’s help that she settled down to the threesome you hear on these records, with Peter Ind on bass and Edmund Thigpen on drums.

Ind, born in Middlesex, England in 1928, studied piano and harmony at Trinity College, played piano with local bands around London, and took up bass in 1947. Starting in 1949 he used every opportunity to work on the Transatlantic liners, enabling him to grasp treasured hours in New York at the studio of Lennie Tristano. In April of 1951 he came to New York again, this time as an immigrant. He had worked frequently with Tristano and with Lee Konitz‘ combo before joining Jutta.

Ed Thigpen is, like so many drummers (Sonny Payne and Bill Bradley, for instance) the son of a great swing era musician. His father, Ben Thigpen, played drums in Andy Kirk‘s band for 17 years. Born in Chicago Dec. 28, 1930, Ed was just 20 when he joined Cootie Williams‘ band. After serving in the Army from 1952-4 he worked with Dinah Washington, Johnny Hodges, Tristano and Konitz, Gil Melle, and for several months in 1955 with Bud Powell.

As for Jutta – well, if you don’t know all about Jutta from the notes on her first Blue Note LP (BLP 5056) you should rectify the situation by buying it – not because of the notes, but because of the interesting contrast in style that becomes apparent from a study of those German sides. In those days there seemed to be a Tristano influence, but more recently the impact of Silver has produced in Jutta a more outgoing, hard-swinging approach that is, she is firmly convinced, the true expression of her musical personality. Not that she has stopped growing or will cease to evolve: but the direction her evolution will take is now solidly established.

The informality of her present work, the free-swinging feeling of the trio and the wonderful in-person cooperation of Thigpen and Ind make an “on-the’-spot” recording a logical step for Jutta’s U.S. disc debut. Thanks to the ready assistance volunteered by John and Howard Popkin of the Hickory House, and a masterful engineering job by the indispensable Rudy Van Gelder, two entire LPs were recorded in one highly productive evening at the club, an evening when Jutta and Edmund and Peter felt right, and the audience was with them, and ever set went smoothly and kept moving at just the right tempo.

It would be superfluous to single out any one tune for comment: your reaction will depend on your taste for moods and materials, though I must add a couple of personal notes to the effect that I was especially engaged by Dear Old Stockholm and the Parker Blues Billie’s Bounce in BLP 1515, and by her delightful impression of Avery Parrish (After Hours) and tribute to Horace Silver (Horacio) in BLP 1516. After Hours will be welcomed by the countless GIs who heard her play it at service clubs in Germany, where it was her most popular request number.

Shortly after the release of these sides, possibly even before you happen to read these lines, Jutta will have made her American concert debut as a participant at the Newport Jazz Festival. At this writing she is already in her third month at the Hickory House and has endeared herself, as a pianist and as a person, to those who work around its big oval bar as well as those who have visited there – and they have included scores of admiring American jazzmen from Duke Ellington on down. No, I don’t think there can be much doubt about it now. American is taking to Miss Hipp, and I’m hip Miss Hipp likes America.