In 1960, four years after the venerable Blue Note Records signed pianist Jutta Hipp to their label, she stopped performing music entirely. Back in her native Germany, Hipp’s swinging, percussive style had earned her the title of Europe’s First Lady of Jazz. When she’d moved to New York in 1955, she started working at a garment factory in Queens to supplement her recording and performing income. She played clubs around the City. She toured. Then, with six albums to her name and no official explanation, she quit. She never performed publicly again, and she told so few people about her life in music that most of her factory coworkers and friends only discovered it from her obituary. For the next forty-one years, Jutta patched garments for a living, painted, drew and took photos for pleasure, all while royalties accrued on Blue Note’s books.
Hipp was Blue Note’s first white female and European instrumentalist on a roster composed largely of American men of color. Hipp’s records had never been big sellers in the United States. Her identity was obscure even to ardent jazz fans. But her four Blue Note records sold well in Japan. Japan is a hotbed of jazz fandom — when it comes to jazz there, the more obscure the better — and her cult status earned her and Blue Note a lot of money. Hipp just wasn’t getting any of it. When she quit performing, she severed contact with the label, as well as with most of the people who could have told Blue Note where to send her checks.
In 2001, Tom Evered, then Blue Note’s general manager, did some research on the money the label owed to Hipp and was surprised by what he found. In order to get Hipp what she’d earned and to clear the company’s books, Evered got her phone number from Gundula Konitz, the wife of influential saxophonist Lee Konitz. The Konitzes were among the few people she kept in touch with from her jazz days. When he reached Hipp, he told her he had good news: There were around $35,000 in her royalties account, and he wanted to cut her a check.
The line fell silent. Seconds passed. Then, in her heavy German accent, she said, “Mein Gott.”
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