Mail from Dieter Hahne
Dieter Hahne grew up in Hafnergasse in Villingen. He experienced his initial awakening to jazz in 1969 at a concert with the Dieter Seelow / Peter Mayer Formation at the Villingen Jazz Club (of which he later became chairman for several years). He joined MPS in 1972 through his musician friend Achim Frey to work in the advertising department, headed by Hans Pfitzer in the public relations department. This gave him a deeper insight into the workings of an independent record label. A small side note: Manfred Eicher, founder of ECM-Records, also began working for MPS-Records in February 1969, where he worked as a driver and dispatcher in the Munich distribution center.
But back to Dieter Hahne: in February 1975, things got a little too tight for him in the Black Forest and he signed on with the legendary West Berlin-based record company FMP (Free Music Production), founded in 1969 by the musicians Peter Brötzmann, Peter Kowald, Alexander von Schlippenbach and Jost Gebers.
Berlin 1972, from left to right: MPS employee Lisa Boulton, MPS publicity manager Hans Pfitzer (half hidden), Peter Herbolzheimer, Dieter Hahne, unknown person with sideburns (please send any relevant information to us) and Dieter Reith. From the MPS guest book Berliner Jazztage, which was given to us by Hans Pfitzer together with his MPS memories. (Photo German Hasenfratz © MPS-Studio e.V.)
Hahne has remained loyal to Berlin, and today he is once again in charge of FMP’s back catalog, which is currently being reactivated under new management. I got to know and appreciate Dieter in the course of the book “Jazzin’the Black Forest”, which I published in 1999.
Dieter Hahne and Gunter Hampel at the book presentation ” MPS – Jazzin’ The Black Forest” by Crippled Dick Hot Wax in June 1999, the first event in the new Villingen Tonhalle (photo © Jochen Hahne).
When we founded the association for the preservation of the MPS studio in 2022, this contact was fortunately intensified again, and we see each other from time to time on the Spree as well as on the Brigach. A few days ago, the letter carrier delivered a parcel from Dieter with a nice surprise: an original MPS T-shirt from 1973 for the “Rhythm & Sounds” tour with Volker Kriegel’s Spectrum, Sugarcane Harris Group, Albert Mangelsdorff and Peter Herbolzheimer Rhythm Combination & Brass. At the time, Dieter was instructed by his MPS boss Hans-Georg Brunner-Schwer (HGBS) not to let the drug-addicted Sugarcane Harris out of his sight on the tour; after all, the MPS founder had put down 40,000 US dollars as a deposit so that the tour could take place. Sugarcane Harris was an outstanding violinist who recorded with the Mothers of Invention, among others, and even played on Zappa’s epochal “Hot Rats” album (alongside Jean Luc Ponty, among others). For MPS it was created by Joachim Ernst Berendt He recorded one single and eight albums for the label. It contains wonderful tracks on which he worked with musicians such as Robert Wyatt, Harvey Mandel, Volker Kriegel, Wolfgang Dauner and many others.
The T-shirt is now finding its way into our ever-growing archive and we are still considering how we can preserve it in a museum-like manner so that it doesn’t fall victim to the Black Forest moths. We are allowed to publish the corresponding letter from Dieter here, have fun Tøni Schifer
Visiting the MPS Studio 2024 – two former MPS employees: Achim Frey and Dieter Hahne. Both worked in the advertising department headed by Hans Pfitzer. (Photo @Tøni Schifer/MPS-Studio e.V.)
Berlin, January 12, 2025
Dear Viktoria,
Dear Tøni,
I had another one of my rare fits of energy and was rummaging around in some old stuff on the wall unit and came across something that would certainly be in good hands in the MPS archive.
TRARA!!! Two T-shirts from the MPS promotion tour 1973 “Rhythm & Sounds”!
The edition was limited to 100 pieces. These T-shirts were only made for the musicians involved and for the tour crew. I wore it a few times during the tour – but of the musicians, I only saw Peter Herbolzheimer wearing it once, when he got on the tour bus in the morning. His belly looked pretty scary in the T-shirt. I’m keeping the slightly larger one and sending you the smaller one for the MPS archive (this tiny little T-shirt must have been left over at the end – who could it have fitted anyway?)
Shortly before the tour, Sugarcane Harris was still in the MPS studio and recorded two LPs: “Flashin’ Time” and “Keyzop” (…the Keyzop LP sleeve has the wrong recording date!). The guys had a day or two off before the MPS promotion tour and I asked them if they would like to perform at the Jazz Club, because, as you know, I was head of the Villingen Jazz Club at the time. They all said yes, only Volker Kriegel chickened out and went home. The concert took place on Sunday afternoon, September 30, 1973. I had more or less conjured the gig out of a hat and there was hardly any advertising. I only managed to get an announcement on the radio youth magazine “Pop-Shop” (one of the most popular programs on German radio at the time) on Südwestfunk. KAWUMM!!! And that was already too much of a good thing. Webergasse was full of people. The interested parties came from Constance to Karlsruhe. After we had around 120 visitors in the Jazzkeller, I went outside and told the waiting crowd that we couldn’t let anyone else into the club, which was met with a huge whistling concert. We then locked the door.
Concert announcement Sounds Magazine 1973.
The cost-intensive promotional tour – financed by MPS and BASF – was hosted and organized by Lippmann & Rau. The motto “Rhythm & Sounds” came from Ulli Rützel from BASF) Hans Pfitzer (my boss in the MPS department for public relations, promotion, LP sleeve production) and I took the train to Frankfurt and we sat in front of the desk of the great Fritz Rau. We were later joined by Horst Lippmann, who then drove us to the station – and invited us for coffee on the way.
I then accompanied the tour. My special job was to look after Sugarcane Harris to make sure he didn’t get hold of heroin, because he was a junkie at the time. Shortly before the tour, he was arrested in Los Angeles for heroin possession and served time in prison. It was no longer possible to take Sugarcane off the tour program, because the advertising was already in full swing and he was ultimately the driving force behind the tour. He was incredibly popular at the time, especially through his collaboration with Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. So they bailed him out of jail on 40,000 dollars – if I remember correctly – so that he could do the tour.
Poster of the tour (© Archive MPS-Studio e.V.)
Oh man – this insane job almost killed me. Instead of injecting heroin, Sugarcane drank like a hole as a substitute. After the concerts, he would go to the pubs at night until the early hours. Of course, I had to go with him (otherwise he could have got hold of drugs somehow), I drank along with him and always dropped him off at his hotel room door late at night. Once I even spent just an hour or two in the bathtub. On the one hand, to wake up again and on the other, it wouldn’t have been worth going to bed anyway. On the last day in Munich, I was half dead on my feet. Because I had lost sight of him in Munich after the concert at the Deutsches Museum. The violinist Nipso Brantner (see MPS “The New Violin Summit”) was backstage and suddenly the two of them had disappeared. I then wandered through Schwabing at night, drenched in sweat, looking for Sugarcane and Nipso and then picked them up in the jazz club “domicil” (lucky you, Mr. Hahne!).
Don Sugarcane Harris in Berlin (© Archive MPS-Studio e.V.)
Sugarcane Harris has released 8 albums and one single on MPS. He was a brilliant musician and also recorded for Frank Zappa, among others. It’s wonderful to listen to “Willi the Pimp” on the legendary “Hot Rats” album. (Photo German Hasenfratz / MPS-Studio e.V.)
HGBS and Hans Pfitzer were also present at the final concert in Munich. HGBS had his chauffeur drive him back to Villingen at night in a Rolls Royce or one of his other show-off cars. I went to Villingen with Pfitzer the next day.
Hans Pfitzer(✝) was head of the advertising department at MPS-Records. He left us his archive of memories, photos and memorabilia. We are very grateful to this humorous and likeable gentleman. Here visiting a concert with Mario Batkovic in 2024 (Photo © Töni Schifer / Archive MPS-Studio e.V.).
The next day, I was back in the office and was told “Hahne should come to the boss!” HGBS thanked me and pushed an envelope across his desk to me. Back at my desk, I opened the envelope and found a hundred-mark bill inside. I just stared stupidly and could have howled out loud. It was worth a whole 100 marks to HGBS that I had saved him 40,000 dollars. Because if Sugarcane had got hold of heroin – and been caught by the police – the German authorities would have detained him and the bail would have disappeared never to be seen again. Not to mention the fact that I worked overtime without end during the tour. But neither HGBS nor the stiff, humorless administrative ignoramus Wollschläger from the accounting department cared about that. I always doubted whether he could even spell the word JAZZ and whether he had ever listened to a piece of jazz.
Yes, yes – it was back then!
Best wishes to you both,
Dieter
P.S. When the MPS LP “Haiku” by Don Elliswas released in 1974, there was a giveaway for the media friars: a trumpet valve mounted on a base with an engraving – probably “Don Ellis – MPS – Haiku” (I can’t remember exactly). I also got hold of one of these back then and I know that I took it with me to Berlin. But I can’t find it anymore. I don’t know where it went. Otherwise I would have sent it along!
MPS advertisement in HIFI STEREOPHONIE issue 9/1973 (© Archive MPS-Studio e.V.)