Horst Lippmann was a German jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 musician, concert promoter, writer and television director, best known as promoter of the influential American Folk Blues Festival

American Folk Blues Festival

The American Folk Blues Festival was a music festival that toured Europe beginning in 1962.German jazz publicist Joachim-Ernst Berendt first had the idea of bringing original African-American blues performers to Europe. Jazz had become very popular, and rock and roll was just gaining a foothold,...

 tours of Europe during and after the 1960s.

Life

The son of a hotelier, Lippmann played drums in the illegal Frankfurter Hot Club in the 1940s, and wrote for one of the first German jazz magazines, Mitteilungen für Freunde der modernen Tanzmusik (Messages for Friends of Modern Dance Music). After the war he played in the combos of the Hot Club with Günter Boaz. Together with Olaf Hudtwalcker, he was involved in the founding of the German Jazz Federation, and organized and participated in concert tours by the West German jazz clubs. In 1953 he founded the German Jazz Festival at Frankfurt.

In the mid-1950s he formed the Lippmann + Rau concert agency with Fritz Rau, and began bringing jazz, blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 and rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

 stars to Germany for the first time. Between 1962 and 1982 he organized the American Folk Blues Festival, initially by contacting Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 blues musician and songwriter Willie Dixon

Willie Dixon

William James "Willie" Dixon was an American blues musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger and record producer. A Grammy Award winner who was proficient on both the Upright bass and the guitar, as well as his own singing voice, Dixon is arguably best known as one of the most prolific songwriters...

. The festivals were arranged almost annually during the 1960s, performing in England and France as well as Germany and being recorded for television programmes, and brought such musicians as Muddy Waters

Muddy Waters

McKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...

, Sonny Boy Williamson

Sonny Boy Williamson II

Willie "Sonny Boy" Williamson was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter, from Mississippi. He is acknowledged as one of the most charismatic and influential blues musicians, with considerable prowess on the harmonica and highly creative songwriting skills...

, Howlin' Wolf

Howlin' Wolf

Chester Arthur Burnett , known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player....

, Lonnie Johnson

Lonnie Johnson

Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson was an American blues and jazz singer/guitarist and songwriter who pioneered the role of jazz guitar and is recognized as the first to play single-string guitar solos...

, Big Joe Williams

Big Joe Williams

Joseph Lee Williams , billed throughout his career as Big Joe Williams, was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar...

, John Lee Hooker

John Lee Hooker

John Lee Hooker was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark...

, Skip James

Skip James

Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter, born in Bentonia, Mississippi, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....

, Little Walter

Little Walter

Little Walter, born Marion Walter Jacobs , was an American blues harmonica player, whose revolutionary approach to his instrument has earned him comparisons to Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix, for innovation and impact on succeeding generations...

, Buddy Guy

Buddy Guy

George "Buddy" Guy is an American blues and jazz guitarist and singer. He is a critically acclaimed artist who has established himself as a pioneer of the Chicago blues sound, and has served as an influence to some of the most notable musicians of his generation...

, and Memphis Slim

Memphis Slim

Memphis Slim was an American blues pianist, singer, and composer. He led a series of bands that, reflecting the popular appeal of jump blues, included saxophones, bass, drums, and piano. A song he first cut in 1947, "Every Day I Have the Blues", has become a blues standard, recorded by many other...

 before European audiences for the first time. Attendees of early festivals included such influential musicians as Mick Jagger

Mick Jagger

Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....

, Eric Burdon

Eric Burdon

Eric Victor Burdon is an English singer-songwriter best known as a founding member and vocalist of rock band The Animals, and the funk rock band War and for his aggressive stage performance...

, Eric Clapton

Eric Clapton

Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...

, and Steve Winwood

Steve Winwood

Stephen Lawrence "Steve" Winwood is an English international recording artist whose career spans nearly 50 years. He is a songwriter and a musician whose genres include soul music , R&B, rock, blues-rock, pop-rock, and jazz...

.

Lippmann was also known in Germany as a radio personality and as director of television broadcasts.

Further reading

• Rieth, Michael: Horst Lippmann - Ein Leben für Jazz, Blues und Rock. Prefaces by Emil Mangelsdorff
  Emil Mangelsdorff
  Emil Mangelsdorff is a jazz musician who plays alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, clarinet and flute.In 1942 and 1943 Mangelsdorff studied clarinet at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. As a member of the Frankfurt Hot Club his performing of jazz lead him to being imprisoned by the Gestapo...
  
   and Klaus Doldinger
  Klaus Doldinger
  Klaus Doldinger is a German saxophonist, especially well-known for jazz and as a composer of film music. He was the recipient of 1997's Bavarian Film Awards .-Life and work:...
  
  . Heidelberg 2008: Palmyra. (German)
• Rau, Fritz: 50 Jahre Backstage - Erinnerungen eines Konzertveranstalters. Heidelberg 2005: Palmyra. Pg. 18-20, 23-26, 31-34, 36-40, 235-239 (German)

External links

• Lippmann+Rau-Musikarchiv (German)