Charlie & His Orchestra
Propaganda Swing

Lutz Templin must have been a quiet old man.

There in Stuttgart, at the end of the '60s, probably no one wondered who he was. He had been a musician and artistic director at Polydor, but now, for the most part, he tried to go unnoticed. So, when he passed away in '73, few noticed.

Too bad.

That obscure old man took an incredible story to his grave: that of "Charlie & His Orchestra," the most bizarre band ever to emerge from that cauldron of freakery that was the 20th century, of which our Lutz was the leader.

Lutz "Stumpie" Templin started treading the boards of a stage early on: it was the '30s, and there was a lot of Jazz being played in Berlin. Lutz was the first saxophone in one of the best orchestras in the country, James Kok's; and with him were characters like the pianist Primo Angeli, the trumpeter Rimis Van den Broek, and above all, Fritz "Freddie" Brocksieper, the best drummer around at the time.

But these were also years when the air was turning bad: jazz was no longer so favored, and especially, the fact that Kok was of Jewish origin was becoming a problem. So Lutz took the opportunity to give him the boot, and in '35, the "Lutz Templin Orchestra" was born, and Deutsche Grammophon had no more problems signing it to a contract.

Lutz was not a real Nazi but could sense the air: jazz was "Entartete Musik" - degenerate music - but it was secretly listened to by the same leaders. In Germany, there was still a true passion for jazz.

In short, it was enough to follow some "little rules," like not using the mute, limiting the swing to about 20% of the repertoire, eliminating drum breaks and overly syncopated rhythms, using violins and violas together with saxophones, and other tricks, to get by easily.

The truth was that, as Alfred Rosenberg had long been shouting: "with Goebbels minister of propaganda around, they play the music of the blacks like never before."

Now Rosenberg barked like this, mainly because he hated Goebbels: that clown boasted of being the principal "maître à penser" of National Socialism while that title only belonged to him - Alfred Rosenberg - the author of "The Myth of the 20th Century," the only true intellectual of the Reich!

But the fact was that, poor Alfred, was really just a dull bookworm; if Goebbels humiliated him, it was not just because that little book of his had pissed off a lot of people at the Vatican but, primarily because Joseph, unlike him, had a "vision" and was much shrewder.

Take the so-called "battle of the ether" or radio waves: the artistic/psychological war that Goebbels unleashed from 1940 to 1943, intending to bombard the allies through short waves, trying to undermine their morale while at the same time raising that of the Axis troops.

Goebbels had a real passion for "pop" culture (one day, maybe, I'll tell you the incredible story of the toys that, under his supervision, were created to indoctrinate children into racial hatred and the Reich's discipline, from a very young age) and understood all too well the sense of the old Latin motto "panem et circenses."

In short, "the lame devil" was sure that songs, if used in the right way, could be powerful propaganda tools.

But one had to be skillful, the first attempt, "The British Soldier's Song," was a solemn fiasco. But Joseph was not the type to give up at the first difficulty.

So he came up with "Germany Calling," an English-language radio program aimed at sapping the allies' morale with propagandistic and ironic (if not heavily insulting) messages, and information on the Reich's military might. Every Wednesday and Saturday at 9 PM, the infamous "Lord Haw Haw" began his broadcasts with the phrase: "Germany calling! Here is the Reichssender Hamburg, Bremen station."

Lord Haw Haw's monologues had to be accompanied by "songs" that parodied American swing and conveyed propagandistic messages.

Goebbels needed musicians who knew how to play the "music of the blacks," so the name Lutz "Stumpie" Templin and his orchestra was suggested to him.

Now they needed a singer.

They found this Karl Schwedler, a guy from Duisburg who had shown unexpected talent for crooning while working for the American section of the Foreign Ministry's broadcasting department, and he also spoke good English, no matter if with a heavy German accent.

"Charlie and His Orchestra" was born.

Charlie's orchestra recorded over 270 tracks.

A powerful organizational machine gathered around Lutz and Karl: the Ministry of Propaganda spared no funding, Charlie's orchestra grew to have over thirty members, and Lutz was free to travel around Europe in search of records for inspiration, while Karl lived in luxury like a real star.

The idea was for the big band to play swing by performing classic US songs with the words changed to antisemitic and anti-Churchill themes.

The lyrics started out identical to the original and after a few lines, veered menacingly.

"St. Louis Blues," the classic by W.C. Handy, suddenly went: «A negro on the London docks sings 'I hate to see the sunset because the Germans bombed this city'». Similarly, in "You're Driving Me Crazy," Walter Donaldson's masterpiece, it went: «Here is Winston Churchill's latest pain, 'Yes, the Germans are driving me crazy/I thought I was clever, but they shot down my planes'».

And more epithets and insults at Churchill, who was a fat megalomaniac, scared of German bombs, and at Roosevelt, a puppet in the hands of Jews and communists.

All of this many years before Allan Sherman and the guys at Mad Magazine made musical parodies a true literary form.

But do not think that all of this was just a strange kind of joke of History, do not dismiss it as a "strange but true" type of thing. It was damn serious. Suffice it to say that, at the end of the War, William Joyce, the most famous among those who gave voice to Lord Haw Haw, was executed as a war criminal.

It is estimated that about a quarter of British radio listeners heard at least once those tunes that came from Germany. Michael H. Kater in "Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany" states that [Charlie and his Orchestra] - «came to represent the most bizarre phenomenon in the history of Nazi popular culture and Third Reich propaganda».

Goebbels really believed in it, "Charlie's orchestra" kept playing until the last months of World War II, even when - as bombs were falling on Berlin - it was moved to Stuttgart, even when there was very little to propagate anymore.

The Americans tried to learn the trick: Captain Glenn Miller and his "Allied Air Force Orchestra" would entertain the allied troops starting from '42, and in '44, the "German Wehrmacht Hour" was launched, a series of broadcasts in which some announcements and some pieces were sung in German. Never in those tracks was any German leader denigrated, and the announcer Ilsa Weinberger could emphasize: «isn't it wonderful to hear musicians to whom no restrictions have been imposed? They can play what they want and address everyone, Americans, Germans, Russians, Chinese, Jews».

The message was clear.

After the War ended, however, the "Lutz Templin Orchestra" (at least the name had to be changed!) continued to play for the American troops. There was a need for good Jazz!

Thus Lutz made it through and remained - as we have seen - in Stuttgart for the rest of his days. Karl Schwedler, on the other hand, first worked as a croupier then went to America where traces of him were lost.

The story of "Charlie and his orchestra" occasionally pops up, but it has been mostly erased. I think it's a shame.

Get this "Swing Propaganda" and (provided you understand English well enough to follow the lyrics and know some of the originals) I guarantee you one of the most "disorienting" listening experiences you might have.

A thing from the theater of the absurd, a quirk that not even the Marx brothers accompanied by Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, a thing that not even "Iron Sky" (if you have never seen it, look it up!) or "the Illinois Nazis"!

It makes you laugh even if it doesn't make you laugh.

I mean, to me, this record lifts my spirits because it's the clearest demonstration that these people were immune to irony, incapable of satire and spirit. In short, can you imagine a humorous Nazi?

Nazis are too stupid to be funny (at least voluntarily).

For this reason, they will never win.

"There is no comic outside of what is properly human" (Henri Bergson).