Jutta Hipp

Did You Know?

• Hipp first encountered jazz around 1940 through a friend who took her to a meeting of the Hot Club, where gatherings sometimes occurred during bombing raids.
• She began collecting jazz records and resumed piano lessons, modeling her playing after Teddy Wilson, Fats Waller, and Art Tatum.
• A street in Leipzig, Jutta-Hipp-Weg, was named after her in 2011.

Early life

Jutta Hipp was born in Leipzig to Karl Julius Hipp and Hulda Elisabeth Grassmann, a middle-class Protestant family. She began piano at age nine and studied painting at the Academy of Graphic Arts in Leipzig. During the Nazi regime, jazz was disapproved of, but Hipp listened to it at clandestine gatherings and during bombing raids, transcribing tunes from forbidden radio stations. In 1946, she refused to produce communist propaganda posters, so her family fled to the American Zone in West Germany, settling in Munich. At 21, she became a displaced person and suffered malnutrition. In 1948, she gave birth to a son, Lionel, fathered by a black American soldier; because Black GIs could not acknowledge paternity with a white woman, she placed the child in a home due to prejudice and her need to perform in army clubs.

Musical career (1946–1957)

Hipp became a professional musician in 1946 out of necessity, as painting could not support her in post-war Germany. She began performing in American officers' clubs in Tegernsee and Munich. From 1951, she worked with saxophonist Hans Koller, touring and recording; his admiration for Lester Young influenced her style. By the early 1950s, her playing reached a professional level, and she was voted best pianist in Germany in 1952 and 1954. In 1953, she formed her own quintet, which drew inspiration from Lennie Tristano's cool jazz. The quintet performed at the inaugural German Jazz Festival in 1953. Hipp led this group until 1955.

Jazz career in the United States (1955–1956)

Leonard Feather helped Hipp immigrate to the United States in November 1955, promoting her as the 'First Lady of European Jazz'. In March 1956, she performed at the Hickory House in New York for six months, an unusually long engagement. She played with Zoot Sims, Ed Thigpen, and Paul Motian, and Duke Ellington and Lennie Tristano came to hear her. Through Feather, she signed with Blue Note Records, becoming the first European jazz musician and second white female musician on the label; three albums were released in 1956. Hipp shifted from cool jazz to a hard bop style influenced by Horace Silver. Her professional relationship with Feather ended after she refused to record his compositions, leading him to sue her for breach of contract; Hipp also mentioned Feather making advances toward her while she was engaged to Attila Zoller. Without a manager, her career stalled.

Return to graphic arts and employment as a seamstress (1958–2003)

As earning a living as a musician became difficult, Hipp took a stable job. She worked in a clothing factory, then from 1960 for 35 years at Wallachs clothing company, preparing men's pants for alterations. She abandoned music and returned to drawing, photography, and painting, settling in Queens. Her watercolors depicted landscapes, village scenes, and figures; only one, 'The Pianist', relates to music. She drew portraits of jazz musicians including Lester Young, Horace Silver, and Thelonious Monk. In 1995, the German magazine Jazz Podium reproduced her painted caricatures. Hipp never returned to Germany and became a US citizen in 1999. She died of pancreatic cancer in 2003; her ashes were scattered in Long Island Sound.