In the Dixielanders from Jena, you often look in vain for the banjo in the rhythm section. Beneath the frontline, the band relies on a combination rarely found on the scene: tuba and guitar. The tuba lays down the root notes with the bouncy two-beat of early jazz, while the guitar strums the chords in the steady four-to-the-bar of swing. The friction between the two creates the earthy yet supple sound the band has cultivated for decades.
The group was founded in 1978 in Jena. For a long time, their passion was focused on late-1920s Chicago Dixieland and cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, a style that only a few bands in Germany still play consistently. After several lineup changes, their focus has shifted toward the swinging thirties and forties. Added to this are touches of Harlem jazz and Sinti swing, which season the program without obscuring its Chicago roots.
The repertoire reveals connoisseurs. Alongside Fats Waller numbers such as „Honeysuckle Rose“ and „I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby“, the band plays pieces heard less often: „Fidgety Feet“ from the Original Dixieland Jazz Band catalog, Jelly Roll Morton’s „Buddy Bolden Blues“, „Willie the Weeper“ and „Limehouse Blues“. Varied tutti and vocal arrangements alternate with extended solos in which every musician gets space to shine. Louis Armstrong’s „Someday You'll Be Sorry“ from 1946 shows just how wide the time span reaches.
The bandleader is drummer Martin Lattner, who also plays washboard and sings. Daniel Hoffmann leads on trumpet and flugelhorn, while Sebastian Dorschner answers on trombone. Jörg Perner alternates between clarinet, tenor saxophone and baritone saxophone, shifting the tone color of the horn section from piece to piece. The brass sound can therefore be bright one moment and earthy the next. Martin Marczinke plays tuba, and Ulf Wilke guitar and banjo.
The band feels just as much at home on the concert stage as in a jazz cellar, on a steamer or on a horse-drawn cart, and it can also play unamplified in the street. In Dresden, it has already been heard on the Marktbühne, in the zoo and on the paddle steamers. If you listen closely, you’ll notice how a baritone saxophone beneath a Chicago trumpet grounds the whole arrangement.
