HR-Bigband/Frankfurt Radio Big Band - Waitaminute
Like the lonely long distance runner splitting the finish line tape, we've reached the final post for 2025, rejoindering yesterday's about a colleague of today's, born 24 hours earlier.
In the twelve years doing this, it's rare I've come across people with the exact same birthday or born exactly a day apart when it comes to related figures like these. The closest analog to it I can get in my Indica-sized mind in this moment is that Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett from Genesis were born on consecutive days in 1950.
Surely there are others but I'd have to look it up. And time is short, for we have funky German orchestras to absorb and shake our rumps.
Today's guy, what can I say? I love his music since the day I heard it back whenever it was, the 1990s? I don't recall, must be the Indica blearing... I mean rearing... its head again.
I've covered Peter Herbolzheimer before, but since he and Dauner joined the world on back-to-back days in 1935, and this is a milestone b'day for both, I couldn't not get all Steely Dan and do it again.
His music, if I had to pin it down, is like the James Brown 1968 band -- the one that's in the famous Boston footage from the night MLK was killed -- crossed with Count Basie in a particularly textural, danceable frame of mind.
It boils down to the melodies with almost anything, and he was a master of weaving a melodic motif through a piece in a really yummy, almost sumptuously culinary way.
There's also something swinging and very noirish about his stuff, like a lot of it would work in a darkly comic, black-n-white gumshoe potboiler about a lovably alcoholic private eye investigating the murder of a heiress's poolboy. Half the tunes, you could swear you heard them in a Starsky and Hutch episode somewhere in 1975, like an Antonio Fargas cameo of the mind.
OK, clearly in that picture he's laughing at my ridiculous, probably chemically-enhanced metaphors, so let's get to the German radio complex and into the show before I qualify for medical studies that determine how much vape pen the brain can take before imploding like a supernova in reverse over here.
HR-Bigband/Frankfurt Radio Big Band
The Music of Peter Herbolzheimer 70
HR-Sendesaal
Frankfurt, Germany
3.26.2021
01 My Kind of Sunshine
02 That Ol' Bus Smell
03 Waitaminute
04 The Meaning of the Blues
05 Mr. Clean
06 Con Alma
07 Like a Soft Breeze
08 Hi-Jack
09 Don't Speak Now
10 Blues In Latin
Total time: 59:07
Heinz-Dieter Sauerborn - saxophones and woodwinds
Günter Bollmann, Richard Hellenthal, Christian Jaksjö & Robert Hedemann - trombones
Frank Wellert, Thomas Vogel, Martin Auer & Martin Auer - trumpets & flugelhorns
Sebastian Scobel - piano
Martin Scales - guitar
Hans Glawischnig - bass
Jean Paul Höchstädter - drums
Alfonso Garrido - percussion
Jörg Achim Keller - conductor
320/48k audio extracted from a Blu Ray YouTube Premium file of a webstream of the event
converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited and slightly remastered by EN, December 2025
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HR-Bigband/Frankfurt Radio Big Band
The Music of Peter Herbolzheimer 80
HR-Sendesaal
Frankfurt, Germany
6.12.2021
01 Modus 2
02 Sweet Lorraine
03 H&H
04 Groovin' On Dr. John
05 Better Days Ahead
06 Et Altera Pars
07 Filibuster
08 Just Like That
09 La Fiesta
10 Começar de Novo
Total time: 1:02:08
Heinz-Dieter Sauerborn, Oliver Leicht, Tony Lakatos, Steffen Weber & Rainer Heute - saxophones
Frank Wellert, Thomas Vogel, Martin Auer & Axel Schlosser - trumpets & flugelhorns
Günter Bollmann, Simon Harrer, Christian Jaksjö & Robert Hedemann - trombones
Martin Sasse - piano
Martin Scales - guitar
Hans Glawischnig - bass
Jean Paul Höchstädter - drums
Erik van Lier - conductor
320/48k audio extracted from a 4K YouTube Premium file of a webstream of the event
converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited and slightly remastered by EN, December 2025
both concerts' spectral analysis is lossless to 20 kHz, making them equivalent to a preFM source
both shows are in the same folder, 762 MB FLAC/direct link
both shows are in the same folder, 762 MB FLAC/direct link
These sets -- performed in livestreams but minus an audience in the hall -- are almost a perfect representation of PH's universe, so it's pretty much an HR-Bigband Plays Herbolzheimer's Greatest Hits live record in everything but name.
That's it for this year, but we have yet another German funkmaster on tap for tomorrow and 2026, because who doesn't dig a tasty Teutonic Triple Play? I know Peter Herbolzheimer -- born this very day 90 years ago -- is up there with these cats digging that we remember them like Auld Lang Syne with a backbeat and a brass section. Happy New Year, everyone!--J.
12.31.1935 - 3.27.2010