Real Schraeg

ROCK 'N' ROLL

When a fellow takes out his tooth these days, the prime requirement is that she be a jazz bomb. He, for his part, is expected to make sure the coals are right for picking up the tab. Sometimes, of course, the heap plays sour, but more often the music is really served--served like a cloud, in fact. And if the sinatra is a keg, every number is liable to get real oblique.

Neither in San Francisco beatnik saloons nor Manhattan dives could this inspired narrative have been heard last week, but it echoed through Munich jazz cellars. U.S.-style rock 'n' roll, with its clog-shoe tempo and its far-out jargon, is sweeping Germany and leaving the language in Teutonic tatters.* Along with the new lingo, a new generation of singers (or shouters) have appeared, all of them alarmingly young. Where U.S. rock 'n' rollers are well along in years (19-25), Germany's top practitioners are in their early teens, and at least one solid rock has been hurled by a five-year-old. Explains Hanna Wurmser, 17, vice president of Munich's Hot Club: "Those are our voices. In Germany all the elders work, work, work. Makes it kind of lonely for us. But there's always Presley and Wild Bill Haley. It gets you; it lifts you. Soon you believe you can do it too."

Most ardent believer is a brash, well-formed 15-year-old Berlin schoolgirl named Cornelia Froboess--known only as Conny--who has sold 1,450,000 records on the Electrola label this year, earned royalties of $60,000 (of which her father-manager doles out pocket money at the rate of 26-c- a month). Sighing with all the delicate modulation of a stricken heifer, she belts out Tin Pan Alley tunes and ersatz German approximations with equal gusto. Conny just finished her first movie, commands a following of 56 adoring fan clubs with about 10,000 members. She travels about Germany with a retinue that includes a tutor and a private secretary.

In Conny's wake, a flock of single-named moppets have assaulted the recording studios. Among them: twelve-year-old Gabriele (Clonisch), whose Schokoladeneis (Chocolate Ice Cream) has already sold 250,000 copies, although she started singing into her businessman-father's dictating machine only a few months ago; and nine-year-old Brigitte (Reisberger), who has a big hit called Lieber Pappi, Mach Mai Sonntag (Dear Daddy, Take a Day Off). Recording firms these days will audition any subadolescent, and with good reason: teen-agers account for the bulk of German record buying. Mourns Munich Disk Jockey Werner Goetze, a ripe 33: "With their clannish addiction to dress, slang and beat, they have become Germany's new, powerful, cultural fifth column, whose god is Elvis Presley, whose idols are their own stars, and whose encyclopedia is the comics."

* Translation key: Tooth (Zahn) is a pretty girl. Jazz bomb (Jazz Bombe) is a good dancer. The coals are right (Die Kohlen stimmen) means there is enough money. Heap (Haufen) is a band. Served (bedient) stands for tops. Cloud (Wolke) means roughly a gasser. Sinatra is any singer, and keg (Fass) is a first-rater. Oblique (schraeg) is real gone.

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