Jutta Hipp

German jazz pianist and graphic artist
Born February 4, 1925 in Leipzig, German Empire
Died April 7, 2003 in Queens, New York, USA.
Hipp learned the piano from the age of 9 and was tutored in the classical repertoire by a church organist. At night, while the rest of her family were asleep and listening to radio stations the Nazis had barred, she began to hear jazz from about the age of 13 (particularly Count Basie and Fats Waller). Initially training for an art career, it appears she only developed a professional interest in music as a means to earn a living after fleeing the Russian sector of post-war Germany (the Soviets had taken control of Leipzig) for Munich, which was in the American sector. Meanwhile, she heard Lennie Tristano (her earliest recordings are perceived to show his influence) and Bud Powell for the first time and she performed and recorded with saxophonist Hans Koller.
In 1954, Leonard Feather, who had heard a tape of her playing, was in Germany and encouraged her to immigrate to the United States, which she did the following year.
Hipp performed at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956 on a bill including Basie, The Modern Jazz Quartet and Charles Mingus (who admired her playing), but she was anxious performing for large audiences. Feather gained her a residency at the Hickory House club for six-months (March-August 1956) while Marian McPartland was away. Her connection with Feather ended acrimoniously that year, it is believed she refused to perform his compositions and received unwanted romantic attention from him, and also lost her booking agent, Joe Glaser. Horace Silver was thought by Feather (dismissively) to have been an influence on Hipp when she was performing in the United States. Around 1958, threatened by eviction from her apartment (or already homeless), she took work as a seamstress and performed only at weekends, leaving the music profession entirely around the end of the decade.
By about 2001, royalties for her Blue Note recordings of $35,000 to $40,000 (accounts differ) had accumulated largely from record sales in Japan and Europe, but the label had not known for decades where Hipp lived, and she was unaware her old records had become prized reissues. With the intervention of one of her few remaining contacts from her music career, Gundula Konitz (the wife of Lee Konitz), it was possible for label manager Tom Evered to visit her and settle the debt she was owed. which Hipp used to pay her medical bills. A former alcoholic (she had used drink as a release for her anxiety in the 1950s), she died from pancreatic cancer.
Mother of Lionel Gräser.