A Happy Afternoon — Dieter Reith Trio (SABA, 1966)

Reith was born in nineteen thirty-eight and started piano lessons at age seven. He studied music and experimental physics, and by the late fifties he was playing jazz in clubs around Mainz. Featured tracks: On Green Dolphin Street, How About a Blues Deep in the Stacks is a daily jazz podcast from Kissa Kissa in Brooklyn.

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In nineteen seventy two, Dieter Reith arranged the music for the Summer Olympics in Munich. By then he was one of the most in demand studio musicians in Germany, pianist, arranger, conductor. But six years earlier, before the Olympic ceremonies and the orchestral commissions, he sat down at a piano in the Black Forest with two musicians and made a record that swings like a Sunday with nowhere to be. This is Deep in the Stacks. Today's album, A Happy Afternoon, by the Dieter Reith Trio. Reith was born in 1938 and started piano lessons at age seven. He studied music and experimental physics, and by the late 50s he was playing jazz in clubs around Mainz. His career eventually took him deep into German broadcasting. He would go on to direct the Süddeutscher Rundfunk Orchestra in Stuttgart and arrange for Peter Herboldzheimer's big band. But A Happy Afternoon, recorded on August 23rd and 24th of 1966 for the Saba label, captures him in a different mode entirely. The trio featured Peter Whittier on bass and Charlie Antellini on drums. Antellini was already building a reputation as one of the hardest swinging drummers in Europe, a Swiss-Italian musician whose power and precision made him a first-call sideman across the continent. The session was cut at Hans-Georg Brunner Schwehr's studio in Villingen, the same Black Forest facility that would later record Oscar Peterson, George Duke, and Baden Powell under the MPS name. The repertoire is American Songbook, Henry Mancini's Days of Wine and Roses, Bart Howard's Fly Me to the Moon, Jules Stein's Just in Time, plus two originals, the title track and How About a Blues. Eight tracks, no filler. Reith's touch is elegant but never cautious, and the trio locks into a conversational swing that makes the whole album feel unhurried and alive. Open with On Green Dolphin Street, Reith takes the standard and finds his own way through it. Antellini's brushwork is the engine underneath, keeping the time loose but never lazy. That conversational quality runs through the whole record. For something with more heat, try How About a Blues. It's the longest track on the album, and the one where Antellini really opens up. The trio pushes the tempo without ever rushing. He anchors the trio with a deep, walking pulse that gives Wreath room to stretch, and the Sabia recording quality is stunning for 1966. Brunner Schwer's studio captured every detail of this trio with a clarity that still sounds modern. This is a piano trio record with no agenda beyond swinging, and that turns out to be more than enough. A Happy Afternoon by the Dieter Wreath Trio, a Black Forest piano session that proves the best jazz has no passport. I'm Danny from Kissa Kissa in Brooklyn. Go put on a record, we'll see you tomorrow.