Immediately after the war, jazz clubs (then often called hot clubs) were founded in many cities in West Germany, not as venues for live music, but as clubs where jazz fans met, exchanged ideas about jazz history and current releases, and, if they were making music themselves, organized the irregular jam sessions.

At the Jazzinstitut, we have numerous documents about these jazz activities of the 1940s and 1950s. A good example of how the clubs were structured and what their goals were is given in the three-year report from Würzburg for the years 1948 to 1951. At the same time, the example of Würzburg is quite symptomatic of similar clubs in the American zone at the time.

Bebop, quarrels, few women  

It began in May 1948 with record nights and lectures, initiated by the local Amerika-Haus, organized by fans, but also supported by the American occupiers, who made possible concerts by American musicians from the Army as well as jam sessions with American and German musicians.

Auf Anregung des Amerika-Haus-Chefs gründete sich im Mai 1949  der Würzburger Jazz-Club als „selbständige Interessengruppe, die losgelöst vom Amerika-Haus ihre eigenen Entscheidungen treffen kann“. Es gab zahlreiche Vorträge über alle Stilrichtungen des Jazz (das Logo des Vereins ist bezeichnenderweise ein stilisierter Dizzy Gillespie-Kopf), bald aber auch Zwist im Vorstand, darüber hinaus heftigen Streit mit der neuen Leitung des Amerika-Hauses, der auch von einem eigens eingeladenen Vertreter des Hot-Club Duisburg nicht geschlichtet werden konnte. Und schließlich gerieten die Jazzer auch noch mit Vertretern der Musikhochschule aneinander, die den Jazz „mit Geflügelzüchter- und Jodlervereinen verglichen“, ihn als eine „Geschmacklosigkeit“, gar eine „Gefahr“ darstellten.

At the end of the annual reports there is an overview of the different aspects of a jazz club in those years: about the course of the club evenings, about the structure of members and visitors (age between 16 and 28, 15 percent female visitors), about available private collections of records, books and magazines, about future goals.

Immediately after the founding of the German Jazz Federation in May 1952, the Jazz-Club Würzburg became a member of this association, which wanted to bundle the interests of the many West German clubs. We have attached four letters from the correspondence with the DJF, which provide further insight into the club life of those years.

Enjoy a trip to Würzburg in the late 1940s, early 1950s!

Annual reports 1948/49, 1949/50, 1950/51
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Download the above annual report as a PDF file:
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Correspondence with the German Jazz Federation, 1952-54
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