Kabarett der Komiker; Bernard Etté 013584a

Bernard Etté (September 13, 1898,

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...

- September 26, 1973,

Mühldorf Mühldorf am Inn (Central Bavarian: ''Muihdorf am Inn'') is a town in Bavaria, Germany, and the capital of the district Mühldorf on the river Inn. It is located at , and had a population of about 17,808 in 2005. History During the Middle Ages, ...

) was a German

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

and light music violinist and conductor. Etté was the son of a

hairdresser A hairdresser is a person whose occupation is to cut or style hair in order to change or maintain a person's image. This is achieved using a combination of hair coloring, haircutting, and hair texturing techniques. A Hairdresser may also be refe ...

and studied music formally at the Louis Spohr Conservatory in

. He initially worked with Carl Robrecht as an instrumentalist, playing piano and banjo in addition to violin. In the early 1920s he assembled his own ensemble, which took up a residency in Berlin and performed on radio in the early 1920s. The group also recorded in the 1920s, often with traveling American musicians."Bernard Etté". '' The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz''. 2nd edition, ed.

Barry Kernfeld Barry Dean Kernfeld (born August 11, 1950) is an American musicologist and jazz saxophonist who has researched and published extensively about the history of jazz and the biographies of its musicians. Education In 1968, Kernfeld enrolled at U ...

. During the 1930s, as the

Nazi party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

rose to power, Etté shifted away from jazz to light music, leading a large orchestra; during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he played for wounded soldiers on behalf of the

Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt The National Socialist People's Welfare (german: Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, NSV) was a social welfare organization during the Third Reich. The NSV was originally established in 1931 as a small Nazi Party-affiliated charity active loca ...

in 1940 and for prison overseers at

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

in 1944. After the war, he moved to the United States and attempted a new career, but was unsuccessful in adopting to new stylistic trends. He returned to Germany, leading bands for luxury retreats in the

East Frisian Islands The East Frisian Islands (German: ''Ostfriesische Inseln'', West Frisian: ''Eastfryske eilannen'', stq, Aastefräiske Ailounds) are a chain of islands in the North Sea, off the coast of East Frisia in Lower Saxony, Germany. The islands extend fo ...

and schlager and

operetta Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs, and dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, length of the work, and at face value, subject matter. Apart from its s ...

backing bands in central Germany. By the end of the 1950s he had quit actively playing music, and lived out his last years in an old folk's home.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ette, Bernard German jazz bandleaders German conductors (music) German male conductors (music) German violinists 1898 births 1973 deaths 20th-century violinists 20th-century German male musicians German male jazz musicians