Here bandleader Lutz Templin and drummer Fritz Brocksieper brought together key swing figures of the late 1930s, including singer Karl Schwedler ("Charlie"), clarinetist Kurt Abraham and trombone player Willy Berking.
[1] During this period Alfred Rosenburg, the head of the NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs, and Goebbels would pose conflicting opinions about jazz.
Rosenberg would argue that Jazz contradicts the ideology of the Nazi party, imposing his power to work alongside local leaders.
[2] In April of 1940, Goebbles was permitted to bring Berlin's best jazz musicians into the music-propaganda program, where Charlie and his Orchestra was born.
Schwedler was permitted to travel to neutral and occupied countries to collect jazz and dance music, which helped the band and propaganda ministry to produce more recordings.
[4] By 1943, bombardment by Allied planes took a toll on German broadcast operations; the studio, employees, and musicians were moved to southern Germany to perform on the Reichssender Stuttgart radio station.
[1] The purposes of the band were to encourage German sympathies, draw attention to World War II Allied losses, weaken British and American resolve, belittle Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, convince listeners those leaders are pawns of Jewish interests, demean Black and Jewish people,[5] and convey German dictator Adolf Hitler's messages in an entertaining form.
American swing and popular British songs were initially performed true to the originals until the second or third stanza when pro-German lyrics and monologues would be introduced.
Cornelius Ryan's nonfiction book about D-Day, The Longest Day, includes a snippet from Schwedler's cover of Louis Armstrong's 1930s hit "I Double Dare You": “Little Sir Echo”[7] “Makin’ Whoopee”[8] “Blackout Blues” - Based on St. Louis Blues[9] Singles & EPs Compilations Starting in the 1980s, there were imports of records into England, which Bob Hertwig, a music store owner in Hamburg accredited to the British fascination of World War II.