Is this yet another take on the now hackneyed Svengali legend or just a B-movie scenario? On a visit to post-war Germany powerful entrepreneurial jazz writer Leonard Feather becomes enthralled by local flame-haired cool school pianist Jutta Hipp and promises her a glittering career in America.

She immediately relocates to New York, cuts three albums for Blue Note in less than nine months while some high profile gigs quickly ensue to mixed reviews. However, everything shudders to an abrupt halt when Fraulein Hipp refuses to record any of Feather’s compositions. Subsequently, her career immediately flounders. Aside from a few low-key gigs, she then finds work as a seamstress, hits the bottle, becomes a painter and never records again or ever returns to the Fatherland. End of story.

These radio station recordings (some made before a live audience) were made prior to her leaving for the USA and reveal that, like so many European musicians who learnt their craft from imported American albums, Hipp had yet to formulate her own identity. Though she opens with a run through of Pee Wee Crayton’s ‘Blues After Hours’, it’s quite obvious from further selections that include ‘Gone with Wind’ and ‘Moonlight In Vermont’ that Jutta and her musicians – which include local tenor sax maestro Hans Koller and emergent trombone great Albert Mangelsdorff (together on six titles) had feasted heartedly on the latest recordings by Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz. Search out her Blue Note encounter with Zoot Sims for a much more rounded assessment.