Onkel Pös Carnegie Hall, better known as Onkel Pö, was a music venue in Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

 in the 1970s and the early 1980s.

Pöseldorf

Onkel Pö was originally a jazz venue in Mittelweg in the quarter Pöseldorf in Hamburg, and was opened by Bernd Cordua and Peter Marxen, who had previously opened the Jazzhouse, another jazz venue, in Brandstwiete. The name was chosen as a reference to Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

 in New York. The original venue has been occupied by the music pub Zwick since Onkel Pö moved to Eppendorf.

Eppendorf

Soon after opening, on 1 October 1970, Onkel Pö moved to Lehmweg 44 in Eppendorf

Eppendorf, Hamburg

Eppendorf is one of thirteen quarters in the Hamburg-Nord borough of Hamburg, Germany, and lies north of the Außenalster. In 2007 the population was 23,021.-History:...

, where Ballhouse Eppendorf had been. Bernd Cordua left, and it was run by Peter Marxen on his own.

From 1975, Onkel Pö was one of the venues of the Jazz Festival in Hamburg, which was called New Jazz Festival at the time. To make the festival a success, the musicians, including Albert Mangelsdorff

Albert Mangelsdorff

Albert Mangelsdorff was one of the most accredited and innovative trombonists of modern jazz who became famous for his distinctive technique of playing multiphonics.-Biography:...

, Wolfgang Dauner

Wolfgang Dauner

Wolfgang Dauner is a German jazz fusion pianist, composer and keyboardist born in Stuttgart, Germany, probably best known for his work in the United Jazz and Rock Ensemble and with musicians such as Hans Koller, Albert Mangelsdorff, Volker Kriegel or Ack van Rooyen...

 and Gerd Dudek

Gerd Dudek

Gerd Dudek is a German jazz tenor saxophonist, soprano saxophonist, clarinetist and flautist.Dudek studied clarinet privately and attended music school in the 1950s before joining a big band led by his brother Ossi until 1958...

 played for reduced remuneration.

Among the jazz musicians who played at Onkel Pö were John Abercrombie, Chet Baker

Chet Baker

Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker, Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and singer.Though his music earned him a large following , Baker's popularity was due in part to his "matinee idol-beauty" and "well-publicized drug habit."He died in 1988 in Amsterdam, the...

, Art Blakey

Art Blakey

Arthur "Art" Blakey , known later as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, was an American Grammy Award-winning jazz drummer and bandleader. He was a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community....

, Carla Bley

Carla Bley

Carla Bley, née Borg, is an American jazz composer, pianist, organist and band leader. An important figure in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, she is perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator Over The Hill , as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other...

, Joanne Brackeen

Joanne Brackeen

Joanne Brackeen is an American jazz pianist and music educator.-Biography:She was born Joanne Grogan in Ventura, California. She attended the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, but devoted herself to jazz by imitating Frankie Carle albums...

, Dollar Brand, Michael Brecker

Michael Brecker

Michael Leonard Brecker was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Acknowledged as "a quiet, gentle musician widely regarded as the most influential tenor saxophonist since John Coltrane," he has been awarded 15 Grammy Awards as both performer and composer and was inducted into Down Beat Jazz...

, Gary Burton

Gary Burton

Gary Burton is an American jazz vibraphonist.A true original on the vibraphone, Burton developed a pianistic style of four-mallet technique as an alternative to the usual two-mallets. This approach caused Burton to be heralded as an innovator and his sound and technique are widely imitated...

, Don Cherry

Don Cherry (jazz)

Donald Eugene Cherry was an innovative African-American jazz cornetist whose career began with a long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman. He went on to live in many parts of the world and work with a wide variety of musicians.-Biography:Cherry was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and...

, Chick Corea

Chick Corea

Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer.Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever...

, Gil Evans

Gil Evans

Gil Evans was a jazz pianist, arranger, composer and bandleader, active in the United States...

, Jan Garbarek

Jan Garbarek

Jan Garbarek is a Norwegian tenor and soprano saxophonist, active in the jazz, classical, and world music genres. Garbarek was born in Mysen, Norway, the only child of a former Polish prisoner of war Czesław Garbarek and a Norwegian farmer's daughter...

, Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...

, Steve Goodman, Dexter Gordon

Dexter Gordon

Dexter Gordon was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and an Academy Award-nominated actor . He is regarded as one of the first and most important musicians to adapt the bebop musical language of people like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell to the tenor saxophone...

, Charlie Haden

Charlie Haden

Charles Edward Haden is an American jazz musician. He is a double bassist, probably best known for his long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman...

, Louis Hayes

Louis Hayes

Louis Hayes is an American jazz drummer.-Biography:His father played drums and piano and his mother the piano and he refers to the early influence of hearing jazz, especially that of big bands, on the radio...

, Joe Henderson

Joe Henderson

Joe Henderson was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. In a career spanning more than forty years Henderson played with many of the leading American players of his day and recorded for several prominent labels, including Blue Note.-Early life:From a very large family with five sisters and nine...

, Bobby Hutcherson

Bobby Hutcherson

Bobby Hutcherson is a jazz vibraphone and marimba player. His vibraphone playing is suggestive of the style of Milt Jackson in its free-flowing melodicism, but his sense of harmony and group interaction is thoroughly modern...

, Leo Kottke

Leo Kottke

Leo Kottke is an acoustic guitarist. He is widely known for his innovative fingerpicking style, which draws on influences from blues, jazz, and folk music, and his syncopated, polyphonic melodies...

, Steve Kuhn

Steve Kuhn

Steve Kuhn is an American jazz pianist, composer and trio leader.-Biography:He began studying piano at the age of five and studied under Boston piano teacher Margaret Chaloff, mother of jazz baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff, who taught him the "Russian style" of piano playing. At an early age he...

, Dave Liebman

Dave Liebman

Dave Liebman is an American saxophonist and flautist. In June 2010, he received a NEA Jazz Masters lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts.-Biography:...

, Michael Mantler

Michael Mantler

Michael Mantler is a composer and trumpeter in new jazz and contemporary music.-Career: United States:Mantler was born in Vienna, Austria...

, Pat Metheny

Pat Metheny

Patrick Bruce "Pat" Metheny is an American jazz guitarist and composer.One of the most successful and critically acclaimed jazz musicians to come to prominence in the 1970s and '80s, he is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works and other side projects...

, Alphonse Mouzon

Alphonse Mouzon

Alphonse Mouzon is a well-known jazz-fusion drummer and percussionist, and the Chairman/CEO of Tenacious Records. He also composes, arranges and produces, as well as acts...

, Marvin "Hannibal" Peterson, Tom Shaka

Tom Shaka

Tom Shaka is an American blues singer–songwriter.In the 1970s he moved to Europe, and played in the Hamburg jazz club 'Onkel Pö', with musicians such as Udo Lindenberg, Louisiana Red, David Honeyboy Edwards, Abi Wallenstein and Al Jarreau...

, Woody Shaw

Woody Shaw

Woody Shaw was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, composer and band leader, often referred to as the "last innovator" in the jazz trumpet lineage...

, Archie Shepp

Archie Shepp

Archie Shepp is a prominent African-American jazz saxophonist. Shepp is best known for his passionately Afrocentric music of the late 1960s, which focused on highlighting the injustices faced by the African-Americans, as well as for his work with the New York Contemporary Five, Horace Parlan, and...

, Horace Silver

Horace Silver

Horace Silver , born Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silva in Norwalk, Connecticut, is an American jazz pianist and composer....

, Ralph Towner

Ralph Towner

Ralph Towner is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger and bandleader. He plays the twelve-string guitar, classical guitar, piano, synthesizer, percussion and trumpet.-Biography:...

, Bennie Wallace

Bennie Wallace

Bennie Wallace is an American post bop, swing music and jazz tenor saxophonist born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, probably better known for his work with Monty Alexander and Sheila Jordan during the 1970s. He settled in New York in 1971 and played with Barry Harris, Buddy Rich, Dannie Richmond...

, Mike Westbrook

Mike Westbrook

Michael John David 'Mike' Westbrook is an English jazz pianist, composer, and writer of orchestrated jazz pieces.-Early work:Mike Westbrook grew up in Torquay...

, Yōsuke Yamashita

Yosuke Yamashita

Yōsuke Yamashita is an acclaimed jazz pianist, composer, essayist, and writer from Tokyo, Japan.He is praised by critics for his unique piano style...

, and Attila Zoller

Attila Zoller

Attila Cornelius Zoller was a Hungarian born Jazz guitarist. He won Deutscher Filmpreis for Beste Filmmusik in Germany for the film Das Brot der frühen Jahre in 1962.-Biography:...

. Al Jarreau

Al Jarreau

Alwin "Al" Lopez Jarreau is a seven-time Grammy Award winning jazz singer.- Background :Jarreau was born in Milwaukee, the fifth of six children. His web site refers to Reservoir, Inc., the name of the street where he lived. His father was a Seventh-Day Adventist Church minister and singer, and...

 and Helen Schneider

Helen Schneider

Helen Schneider is an American singer and actress working mainly in Germany.Born the daughter of Dvora and Abraham Schneider , she studied piano before starting to perform as a singer in venues in New England and New York.Between 1978 and 1984, she achieved success as a rock singer in Germany;...

 started their international careers there.

On 12 March 1976, Al Jarreau

Al Jarreau

Alwin "Al" Lopez Jarreau is a seven-time Grammy Award winning jazz singer.- Background :Jarreau was born in Milwaukee, the fifth of six children. His web site refers to Reservoir, Inc., the name of the street where he lived. His father was a Seventh-Day Adventist Church minister and singer, and...

 played for the first of three evenings in Onkel Pö. The concert on the second evening was broadcast live on Norddeutscher Rundfunk

Norddeutscher Rundfunk

Norddeutscher Rundfunk is a public radio and television broadcaster, based in Hamburg. In addition to the city-state of Hamburg, NDR transmits for the German states of Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Holstein...

 (NDR) radio, and Al Jarreau was signed up for a television show, The Al Jarreau Show.

The television talk show in NDR, NDR Talk Show, was recorded in Onkel Pö, but moved back to the studios because Peter Marxen refused to allow Arno Breker

Arno Breker

Arno Breker was a German sculptor, best known for his public works in Nazi Germany, which were endorsed by the authorities as the antithesis of degenerate art....

 in as a guest.

New Wave Bands such as the Talking Heads

Talking Heads

Talking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...

 and the Roundheads performed in Onkel Pö.

Closure

In 1979, Marxen left to take over Forsthaus Hessenstein, a restaurant near Lütjenburg

Lütjenburg

Luetjenburg is a town of the district of Ploen, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is located approx. northeast of Ploen, and east of Kiel.-History:thumb|left|Lütjenburg um 1895...

. His successor, Holger Jass, changed Onkel Pö from the Corner of Jazz to a Corner of Jazz and Rock. Andreas Kiel was responsible for the programme until Onkel Pö closed at 8 a.m. on 1 January 1986. The restaurant which took over the venue was called Legendär , but since 1 November 2006, it is used by the Schweinske chain of restaurants.

Bernd Cordua tried without much success to open various venues with the name Onkel Pö.

Cultural references

The German singer Udo Lindenberg

Udo Lindenberg

Udo Lindenberg is a German rock musician and composer.-Career:Lindenberg started his musical career as a drummer. In 1969 Lindenberg founded his first band Free Orbit and also appeared as a studio and guest musician . In 1970 he collaborated as a drummer with jazz-saxophonist Klaus Doldinger in...

 mentioned the venue in his album Alles klar auf der Andrea Doria with the lines Im Onkel Pö spielt ´ne Rentnerband seit zwanzig Jahren Dixieland... in the song Alles klar auf der Andrea Doria.

British singer Tom Robinson

Tom Robinson

Tom Robinson is an English singer-songwriter, bassist and radio presenter, better known for the hits "Glad to Be Gay", "2-4-6-8 Motorway", and "Don't Take No for an Answer", with his Tom Robinson Band...

mentions this establishment in his song "Atmospherics: Listen to the Radio"

External links

• Programme 1970-1985