1940-1945

Øivind Bergh’s Bristol orchestra, Hotel Bristol, Oslo, 1940-1941. From the left: Finn Westbye, Sverre Bergh, Thorleif Østereng, Maritza Litauer, Øyvind Gulbrandsen, Bobben Hagerup, Alf Malm, Øivind Bergh, Erwin Dahlgren, Leif Bolin, Egil Staal.

World War II started in Norway by the German invasion on April 9th 1940. Situated in the outskirts of Europe, this neutral country found itself thrown into the political turmoil, but never really as part of the battlefield on a Central European scale. The effects of war were comparatively mild on Norway, but these were nevertheless times of renunciation and sacrifice, where a single dead or mutilated was one too many. The German occupation created patriots and traitors, heroes and profiteers, some were forced to flee the country while others suddenly found work after years of unemployment. With the occupation came prohibitive laws and other limitations, restrictions and suppression of free speech, but on the other hand this also gave birth to periods of very lively cultural activities. For better or worse.

The German campaign - the real war - lasted for two months. Several towns and villages were bombed to pieces. The armed forces of southern Norway gave up its resistance in the beginning of May, in the beginning of June the allied forces in the north did likewise which meant that Norway was definitely occupied by Gennany.

The King and his Cabinet had fled to England. Remaining politicians and officials tried to enter into negotiations with the German occupants, but these efforts broke down in the fall of 1940. After this, the Norwegian Nazi party was made the only legal political party, supporting the Germans. From then on Norwegian society was systematically reorganized after German and Nazi principles.

With this settlement of affairs getting established, everyday life went back to whatever degree of normality could be achieved under the circumstances. For jazz musicians the war came at a very inconvenient time, in the middle of what seemed to be a golden age for jazz music. The time of, and immediately after, the military campaign was to mean no more than a temporary halt for a lively entertainment life. From the autumn of 1940 activites were again increasing, towards a continuation of the flowering for jazz, dance and entertainment music.

Immediately before the occupation, there was great activity as to the formation of rhythm clubs and swing clubs around the country. The campaign meant the end for some of these, but from the autumn of 1940 new clubs again surfaced. In 1941 there were approximately 25 jazz clubs in operation. The increasing activity also inspired the enthusiasts into inaugurating their own jazz magazine. The magazine, carrying the neutral name Musikknytt (Music news) hit the market in February 1941 - parallel to activists in the accordion movement starting their own magazine Rytme (Rhythm).

The beginning of 1941 was, however, destined to give members of the rhythmical movement their share of problems. In the early part of winter came signals of a cam
paign for norsification of the language. From now on it was rytmemusikk (rhythm music) instead of swing, strengemusikk (string music) instead of string swing. At tile same time censorship was imposed on all lyrics to be presented in concert or theatre performances. On top of this came the demand for registration of all societies and clubs.

Jazz people had every reason to fear that their clubs would be put under unreasonable control or even banned from the scene. Most of the clubs from then on entered a stage of undercover or secret existence. When word spread that women's sewing societies were exempt from the rules of registration, some of the Oslo jazz clubs disappeared overnight - to reemerge as sewing circles..

The process of norsification did not move along as smoothly as the authorities had envisioned. During the summer of '41 the various regulations were more strictly enforced, and from August on the word swing finally disappeared from newspaper columns - even if some major "blunders" ocurred from time to time. The word jazz could be handled more freely. As late as in 1944 advertisements could be seen for a jazz orchestra under the leadership of Heinz Webner - a German swing musician who had been sent to Norway in 1941 to organize a jazz/dance orchestra for the Nazified broadcasting company.

Despite the restrictions imposed in 1941, most places still had a vital and active jazz community. In the early days of summer heated arguments about jazz appeared in several newspapers - in Drammen, Oslo (Aftenposten), Kristiansand and Porsgrunn. In Kristiansand (the newspaper Fædrelandsvermen) the only way to deaden the polemics turned out to be the closing down of the entire readers' column!

In the autumn of 1941 a new and important decree appeared. Listening to the radio was from now on forbidden for all non-Nazis, and radios were confiscated all over the country. One result of this was an immediate need for more live music. 1942 was to be an even more active year for musicians playing jazz, cabaret or entertainment music.

Rowland’s orchestra, January 1941. Gordon Franklin, ts, Arvid Gram Paulsen, as, Robert Normann, g, Kjell Bjørnstad, Frank Hansen, Lyder Vengbo, tb, Rowland Greenberg, tp, Fred Lange-Nielsen, b.

The most pronounced jazz musicians were young people less occupied with the war than with music. Of these, the most central personality was trumpeter Rowland Greenberg, who was only 19 at the beginning of the 1940 's. That winter (39/40) he formed a quartet of the finest swing musicians of the day, saxophonist Arvid Gram Paulsen, pianist Lulle Kristoffersen and drummer Pete Brown - all 18 years of age. The band existed for two years, either as a quartet or as a basis for bigger units fronted by Rowland.

The heaviest competition on the rhythm front was to be found within the string swing. circles. Springing out from Freckly Valiers group of the 1930's, there existed from the winter of 39/40 a quartet simply called String Swing, later on norsified into Robert Normanns Strengekvartett (lit. String Quartet). Guitarist Robert Normann (b. 1916) emerged as one of the greatest talents in the history of Norwegian jazz - amply demonstrated in many recordings from war-time Norway. The string quartet lasted for two years - with band members Finn Westbye (rhythm guitar), Arild Iversen (violin), and Fred Lange-Nielsen (bass and vocal).

The first year of the occupation found Normann working at the restaurant Lidoen. in Oslo, where a jazz interested audience were given the opportunity to enjoy attractions like Jack Butler (American trumpeter in Norway 1939-40) and from 1941 on the talented 20-year old violin player Frank Ottersen.

Oslo Swing Club: Jack Butler with Ole Wegger, g, Fred Lange-Nielsen, b and Stein Lorentzen, dr.

Among the capital's other restaurants, swinging sounds could regularly be heard at "Humlen" (The Bumble-Bee, feat. Alf Søgaard's orchestra), "Regnbuen" (The Rainbow, feat. Yngvar Wang's orchestra with tenor saxophonist Harald Barwin), and at the Bristol Hotel Øivind Bergh's orchestra with clarinet soloist Kalle Engstrøm).

Early in 1941, the first of these, "Humlen", was taken over by the Germans and refurnished to function as their "Löwenbräu". For drummer Alf Søgaard this meant having to look for other ways of earning a living. Being a man of initiative, he went all the way into assembling an 11-piece big band for concert and recording purposes. This turned out to be a good idea; trombone player Trygve Fjelddalen organized an even bigger unit - 14 pieces - and in the autumn of '41 Fred Thunes followed suit with several big bands of up to 20 pieces.

The appearance of big bands was not restricted to the Oslo region. As early as the summer of 1940 a 14-piece jazz orchestra could be heard in Hamar. This made it one of the larger units - as the typical Norwegian big band of the time usually consisted of 11-12 musicians (2-3 trumpets, 1 trombone, 4 reeds, 4 rhythm).

During the first year of the occupation permanent bands of this size could be found in Bergen, Kristiansund, Stavanger, SandefjordlLarvik, and in Sarpsborg. Rhythmicans in Stavanger turned out to be the most durable of these, and kept it going, albeit periodically, throughout the whole of the occupation. The others were intermittently active up to 1942/43. Other big bands of a certain permanence existed in Porsgrunn/Skien (1941-43), Hamar (from 1942), Narvik (1942-43), Drammen (1942-43), and Horten (1943-45).

Most of these bands were non-touring "rhythm orchestras", familiar only to local audiences. One orchestra did, however, make a name for themselves on the national scene as well: the Bergen Rhythm Orchestra with their much talkedof Bergen Brass. In August 1942 the band toured Haugesund, Stavanger and the Oslo area - a rare feat for a 12-piece band not originating from Oslo.

The capital occupied a very central position in the jazz picture, but new activities
were also popping up in other parts of the country - some places more lively than others. if one were to emphasize a few special ones, the choice would be as follows (with names of prominent orchestra leaders and soloists in brackets): Trondheim (Jonny Rostad, Sunda Wentzel, Harry Benjaminsen, Max Moxnes, John Kongshaug), Bergen (Mikal Kolstad, Arthur Wichstad, Øivind Ingebrigtsen), Stavanger (Harry Larsen, Finn Vaaland, Finn Torgrimsen), the Porsgrunn area (Fritz Austin, Ivar Reinholdt) and Hamar (Gunnar Elfstedt, Egil Alex Hansen, Henry Gulbrandsen).

The summer of 1942 was to become the temporary climax of the rhythm era. At that time more than 30 clubs were operating - swing music was everywhere. But the authorities' restrictive policies went on with undiminished force. As early as the preceding autumn, the editors of the magazine Musiknytt had found conditions so difficult that they had to cease publication. At the beginning of 1942 American records (on German labels) were still imported, but melody titles in English were strictly forbidden - with the result that Rowland Greenberg's newest recording (Jan. 15th 1942) never got released in Norway while the occupation lasted. In March 1942 came a ban on all public dances. From this year on official jazz performances also seemed to take on a more polished character. In the city of Porsgrunn news came of local Nazis having taken direct charge of the concert programme in order to hamper the free expression of swing sentiments.

Nazi ideologies were on the offensive. A Great Court of Culture. took place in the autumn of 1942, and the Nazis openly denounced jazz, Jews, plutocrats and bolsheviks. Classical musicians were told to keep away from public concerts. This led to a period dominated by private house concerts - even if there were diverting opinions among musicians as to whether this was the right policy to follow.

Jazz musicians were not organized in the same way as their "serious" colleagues. and were part of more everyday. musical life. Pure rhythm concerts became scarce, however - and rhythm musicians eased into the world of merry entertainment, in amusement parks, cabarets and stage shows. From early 1942 Lulle Kristoffersen was in charge of the orchestra at singer Jens Book Jenssen's cabaret, and from the autumn of '42 Alf Søgaard conducted the orchestra at the newly opened "Edderkoppen" (The Spider) cabaret theatre. This latter orchestra gave steady work opportunities to Gram Paulsen and Frank Ottersen, among others.

Frank Ottersen.

In the winter of 1942/43 the successful German war machine met with disaster. Its forces got stuck at El Alamein and Stalingrad, and people saw a hope of the war coming to an end. But the problems abroad led to even more severe restrictions at home. After the final defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, the Norwegian officials introduced mandatory enrollment in national work forces, several restaurants were closed, and restrictions on the remaining press became even more severe. Most of the communist and social democrat papers had been stopped as early as 1940, and in March 1943 time had come for the major liberal paper Dagbladet. In the remaining papers jazz coverage was slight and mostly in the negative. The magazine Norsk Musikkliv. (Norwegian Musical Life) had stopped writing about jazz in the autumn of 1942, their coverage was taken over by another magazine, "Rytme"- which eventually ceased publication in the autumn of 1943.

After the winter of 1943 restrictions - and sabotage - increased in Norway. At the same time jazz disappeared - for the most part - from the surface. Some musicians fled to Sweden. Others kept up their activities - and every now and then they found proof that times were different. In 1943 both Rowland Greenberg and Nils Jacobsen (president of The Norwegian Rhythm Club Association) were taken to the slammer after showing jazz movies illegally at an Oslo cinema theatre.

But there were brighter moments as well. In defiance of the cheerless times a studio group calling themself Syv Muntre (The Merry Seven) made a couple of important recordings. Among the musicians were Gram Paulsen, Robert Normann, Fred Lange-Nielsen and a young pianist named Carsten Klouman. in the late fall of 1942 they recorded the legendary "Sigarett-stomp" (a norsification double-entendre, as a direct non-jazz translation meant cigarette butt), and the following year the 20-year old tenor saxophonist Bjarne Nerem had his recording debut with the band.

Violinist Frank Ottersen also went into the recording studio around this time - and went on playing concerts with his string trio and other combinations. His boss, Alf Søgaard, organized big band meetings both in 1943 and 1944, and the last summer of war he even took his orchestra on the road. Hopes of better times to come made the pace quicken somewhat again, and idealist Nils Jacob Jacobsen was constantly feeding local rhythmicans with news and new charts, written out by helpful Oslo musicians.

In the official part of rhythmic culture a central part was played by the new Nord1and Varieté. This theatre had been opened in November of 1943, and was first and foremost meant for German soldiers and their Norwegian cohorts. Music was taken care of by Fred Thunes' Norwegian big band and Heinz Wehners 20-piece jazz orchestra. Thunes went to Sweden in the spring of 1944, and in the autumn Wehner was sent to the East Front. The remaining German "Kapellmeister" - pianist Willi Ernst - was given charge of rhythms the last winter of the war, in the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation band Radiorytmikerne.

At that time German soldiers had totally demolished the northernmost part of Norway, when they, with the Russians at their heels, applied the scorched-earth politic as withdrew (1944). Prison camps were increasingly filled up with noncriminal patriots, f. i. Rowland Greenberg and Fred Lange-Nielsen, who were interned at Grini prison camp outside Oslo 1944-45. Around the new year of 1945, everybody had come to understand that it was only a matter of time before the war would be over. Swing music was given slightly freer reins, musicians started practising again - everybody was preparing for a time to come when jazz would pour out to the joy of a musically starved population in the outskirts of a world war.

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1945-50

War ended in Norway on May 8th 1945. Exultant Norwegians poured out into the beautiful May weather with blackout curtains tucked under their arms. Peace had finally come! On the 17th of May 1945, Norwegians probably celebrated their happiest national day ever.

The national day also became a day of liberation for jazz, particularly in Bergen. In that city, trombone player Mikal Kolstad had already gathered a 17-piece outfit for an outdoor concert, an event for which the musicians had prepared all through winter. In other towns old rhythm musicians also emerged during the first weeks of peace - in war-ridden Narvik, in Arendal and Harnar. It was rhythm music time.

In Oslo the first indications of a new flowering season for jazz came in late May, when representatives of war-time "sewing circles" met to found Oslo Hot Club. The new circle of idealists were primarily occupied with small-band jazz of the outgoing kind. Consequentially, the term "swing" was considered not quite right (swing was danceable big band jazz), "jazz" itself was an unfocused general definition, and the term "rhythm" brought back memories of the German occupation. "Hot jazz" had been used to describe real jazz already in the early 30's, so once again, hot was what it was all about. In the middle of June, representatives from 11 different towns met to form The Norwegian Hot Club Association. Subsequently, new clubs were formed all over the Country - Norway had entered a vehement "hot club period"..

21 -year old Tore-Kjell Melgård was to become the first chairman both of the association and of its Oslo branch. He also became editor of the activists' new jazz magazine "Synkope" and was thereby to become the most central person of the newly organized jazz community.

Rowland Greenberg.

In Oslo, jazz musicians reappeared with the opening of the hot club. Some jazz and dance band musicians occupied permanent chairs in the cabaret orchestras which had been operational all the time, and some dance halls had reopened (even if the ban on public dances had not formally been lifted!), but the hottest action took place around Rowland Greenberg, Bjarne Nerem, Carsten Klouman, Hein Paulsen and their fellow musicians, on the optimistic freelance market.

With the arrival of peace, jazz enthusiasts expected a veritable avalanche of jazz records, films, and visiting American musicians. It did not turn out quite like that. A world war had been on, crucial raw materials for record production were scarce, currency problems made American magazines difficult to obtain, people waited in vain for jazz films that never appeared because theatre owners wouldn't pay the price demanded by the film companies. Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie never came.

Large military ensembles visited the country, however, with the odd participant jazz musician. When the American military jazzband The Globe Trotters set up in the Studenterlunden park of central Oslo, 5.000 people stood around eagerly listening to the long-awaited sounds.

During summer, local musicians answered back with their own big band sounds. in Oslo, Rowland Greenberg, Will Arild Hermansen and Pete Iwers led 12-15 piece out fits, in Horten trumpeter Joban Mathisen got his two-year old big band project together, in Larvik the "Rhythm Orchestra" appeared, and in Sarpsborg the local "Rhythm Club" reemerged in the fall. Of the prominent small bands, the most permanent one belonged to Rowland Greenberg. From summer on to the end of the year, Rowland's Swing Band was permanently engaged to play at the clubs of the allied forces.

The first inspiring visits by civilian jazz bands from abroad came in the autumn, naturally enough from Sweden and Denmark. Swedish Expressens Elitorkester (Expressen being a major Swedish newspaper) and Thore Ehrling's 15-piece orchestra visited Oslo, while Danish bandleaders Peter Rasmussen, Leo Mathisen and Kjeld Bonfils also paid visits to the jazz-hungry outside the capital.

Parallel to these encouraging events, the hot club community experienced a serious blow. The fact that central activist Tore-Kjell Melgård moved to Sweden cannot possibly be the sole reason why Oslo Hot Club met with problems and collapsed together with several other clubs, that newspapers stopped writing about Norwegian jazz, or that the magazine Synkope got rather commercialized.

To find the real reasons, one has to consider the general state of affairs within Norwegian society as a whole. The intoxicating effects of peace had offered the population fun, happiness and hot music for a while, but the hard facts had to be met and dealt with: Society was facing serious and difficult tasks. A good number of Norwegian towns and villages had been destroyed, most places had their share of war wounds, production was down, there was scarcity of almost everything. The entire population had to take part in the restoration.

On top of this came all the lawsuits against traitors and local Nazis. The nation was split up into friends and enemies, heroes and traitors, to a degree that hardly bore any reasonable relation to the relatively mild effects of World War on Norway. This string of legal procedures created lasting wounds in many Norwegian families. Several jazz and dance band musicians had played in "dubious" places, but they were defended by most of their colleagues, both then and later. The Norwegian Musicians' Union demanded an investigation "in compliance with democratic principles of justice", but ended up being expelled from the Norwegian Artists' Council!

1946 represented a "downer" for Norwegian jazz life. The hot club wave had died out; nearly all the clubs had disappeared; in April '46 came the final issue of the jazz magazine Synkope.

Nevertheless, the period was not totally devoid of hope - industrious jazz fans did not give in that easily. By the beginning of 1946, restrictions on record sales had been lifted, the programme "Radio Hot Club" appeared in the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (January-April 1946), and a few new clubs actually opened - the last of these being Molde Hot Club in March '46. A society club named "Swing" had been formed in the autumn of 1945, and as it turned out, the club would offer stable work opportunities to jazz musicians throughout the decade, under the name of The Norwegian Swing Society. There were attempts to start new big bands, under the leaderships of Alf Søgaard, Hans Backe, Pete Brown, and Leiv Flisnes. In Fredrikstad a 14-piece swing orchestra was organized, and in Hamar trumpeter Øivind Stømer led a radio orchestra which steadily increased from 7 to 12 pieces. From Denmark came Svend Asmussen, Leo Mathisen and Kai Ewans, from England Nat Gonella and Ted Heath, and the most celebrated visitors came from the USA: Don Redman and his orchestra (September'46) - without doubt the biggest jazz event of the entire decade. The period came to an end with Alice Babs and her orchestra in Trondheim April '47.

One proof of the bad times can be seen, however, in the fact that only one recording session of Norwegian jazz took place during the first two years of peace. In May 1946 Pete Brown and his big band went into the studio, and soloists like Robert Normann, Bjame Nerem and alto saxophonist Per Nilsen were thereby luckily documented for posterity.

The dreary conditions made the outside world an attractive place for musicians. In September 1946 Pete Brown went to Denmark and later on to Sweden to stay there for the rest of the decade. Around the same time Rowland Greenberg accepted an extended engagement in Stockholm, which meant the start of a continuous shuttle between Norway, Sweden and England until 1949. Trondheim-based tenor player Max Moxnes emigrated to Canada in 1946, Lulle Kristoffersen took his seat in the Swedish "folk parks" from the summer of '47, and Bjarne Nerem started his first Swedish sojourn that same autumn.

1947 was the definitive low point of this part of Norwegian jazz history. Most people busied themselves with the cold war, developments in Eastern Europe, anti-communist feelings, Norway entering NATO - there wasn't much room left for jazz. In October '47 Alf Søgaard made an attempt to bring back to life the triumphant tours of the war years with a 10-piece orchestra. It failed.

But impatient jazz fans started feeling the itch towards doing something about it. A new generation of jazz musicians was ready to hit the scene, possessing an abundance of initiative and eagerness to play. In Bergen, 18-year old tenor saxophonist Finn Jobannessen organized a big band which was to play a central part in that city's jazz life between 1947 and 1951. In Trondbeim, a group of young musicians formed around guitarist Harry Waagen - and went on to become dominant forces in the city's jazzlife all through the 50's.

In 1948 people felt that the jazz drought had lasted long enough. In readers' columns contributors demanded regular jazz programmes on national radio. The newspapers themselves also started taking an interest in the music, and by the autumn of 1948 things slowly started to move again. Rowland Greenberg was home for a quick visit, and formed a small, interesting touring band. Violinist Frank Ottersen fronted an orchestra also attracting jazz audiences. And last, but not least: Oslo Jazz Circle was formed, a jazz appreciation society which is still in operation today.

The Oslo Jazz Circle members threw themselves into many areas of musical life doing jazz recitals for public radio, arranging concerts, and going public with their opinions whenever an opportunity arose. They played a vital part in nursing the fragile seeds of a new jazz community, which by now had become a many-faceted one. Jazz was no longer pure small band swing music - locally nicknamed "trefoil jazz" from the trio Roy Eldridge/ Chu Berry/Teddy Wilson. Two other styles had at last found their place in the Norwegian jazz picture: bebop and trational jazz.

After the war, the emergence of new stylistic trends in American jazz had taken very long in reaching the minds of Norwegian jazz enthusiasts. Also, the different stylistic terms were applied in a somewhat confusing way. In early 1948, Rowland Greenberg, stylistically solidly founded in swing music, was given the task of launching bebop in Norway!

The first reports of Norwegian bebop can be found in Swedish newspaper columns from the autumn of '48 - in reviews of trumpeter Kjel1 Jobansen's orchestra. Tenor soloist in that band was Mikkel Flagstad (18) - who is considered to be the first local musician who seriously took to studying and performing the new music. In October and November 1949 he led his own Be Bop Band in Oslo.

As bebop finally made its arrival, three traditional bands were also formed in the Oslo area: West End Dixies, Dixie Serenaders and New Orleans Hot Dogs - all in 1949.

Thus, the last year of the decade was characterized by musical variation and optimistic activity. For the most dominating player of the 40's, this year also presented a very special event: Rowland Greenberg's participation in the 1949 Paris jazz festival - alongside names such as Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. In the same year, Bjarne Nerem returned from Sweden to form an "all-star band", playing an extended engagement in one of the many new dance halls. Concert arrangers competed heavily in the fields of temperance and non-stop dancing - and jazz was the music preferred by tile dancers. One of the most active producers was Lasse Gerlyng, president of the Norwegian Swing Society. In 1949 he tried to attract youthful audiences to his establishment by presenting jazz played from three stages simultaneously. At one of them was a 14 piece band led by pianist Egil Momn-lversen. Being able to keep a big band working several nights a week might hopefully be an indication of better times lying ahead ...

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Bjørn Stendahl & Johs Bergh.
Translated by Per Husby.