Remastered, 180-gram pressing

Album download included

A woman from Leipzig. By the age of 13, Jutta Hipp had completed her classical piano studies. With the war in full flow she embarked on an art degree and got to know all the jazz greats of the day: Emil and Albert Mangelsdorff, Joki Freund, Hans Koller, whose admiration for Lester Young would wonderfully complement her own relaxed performance style.

A redhead with striking good looks, hypersensitive and outrageously talented — she quickly became an object of attention in the early 1950s. The great Leonard Feather wrote Dear Jutta and promised her a great career in the U.S.A. So in late 1955 she left for New York. Alfred Lion signed her to Blue Note; three recordings in just eight months followed; she became an object of awe in the clubs — the Frauleinwunder. And then it was all over as quickly as it had started. She fell out with Feather, withdrew from the jazz scene altogether, ran into financial difficulties and turned to drink. In 1958 she found a job as a seamstress in Queens, took photographs and painted in her spare time. She retired in 1995 and devoted herself to making traditional dolls. She died in 2003 at the age of 78, reclusive, alone. She had never been back to her native Germany.

Her volume of work is slender and erratic. The Koblenz recordings from November 1952 reveal a precocious talent: entirely at ease in the standards, creatively original with the tunes and headstrong in improvisation. Dieter Zimmerle's studio recordings with her quintet were made just before she left for the U.S.A — and what a legacy it turned out to be! What Is This Thing Called Love? asks Cole Porter of all the great jazz soloists. Jutta Hipp had an answer. But she never told anyone.

Track Listing
Side 1
Blues After Hours
Errol’s Bounce
Gone With The Wind
You Go To My Head
What Is This Thing Called Love

Side 2
Sound-Koller
Come Back To Sorrento
Daily Double
Indian Summer
Everything Happens To Me
Sepentinen