Search - Coco Schumann :: Rex Casino

Coco Schumann was always into the latest technological developments in the field of music, so he was the first in Germany with an electrical guitar (with a self made pickup) and he played the famous Les Paul while others knew this legendary guitar only from hearsay. Thus he was one of the first who got himself a tape recorder. Again and again it recorded in rehearsals or performances. The tapes were re recorded, erased or got lost somehow. Except for one. And this one takes us directly into the year 1955, into Berlin s Rex Casino. The Rex was mainly visited by members of the ASA, the United States Army Security Agency, a military secret service. Their main activity was to find out what was going on behind the iron curtain. So we can dip into the atmosphere of a Berlin club in the middle fifties, hear the audience in the background, glasses clank and Coco s combo play for dancing and entertainment. Upscale swing, as it was heard back then, played very competent but live and rough though. We can not expect a cut and clean hifi quality, but a rare and authentic document, that makes a direct travel via time into this certain era possible, long before it was common to record concerts on sound carriers. The six recordings from Rex Casino are complemented with subsequent radio recordings so this gives you a direct comparison with a live recording from the latest past.