LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
In 1972, Dieter Reith arranged the music for the Summer Olympics in Munich. But six years earlier — before the Olympic ceremonies and the orchestral commissions — he sat down at a piano in the Black Forest with bassist Peter Witte and drummer Charly Antolini and made a record that swings like a Sunday with nowhere to be. A Happy Afternoon, recorded in August 1966 for the SABA label, captures one of Germany’s most versatile musicians in his most relaxed and swinging mode.
In this episode of Deep in the Stacks, we pull this Black Forest piano trio date from the shelves — eight tracks of American songbook standards and originals cut at the studio that would later become MPS, home to recordings by Oscar Peterson, George Duke, and Baden Powell. Antolini’s brushwork, Witte’s supple bass lines, and Reith’s elegant touch make this one of the great overlooked piano trio records of the 1960s.
THE RECORD
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Dieter Reith
Dieter Reith came up through an unusual combination — music and experimental physics — and by the late fifties he was playing jazz in clubs around Mainz. A pianist, arranger, and conductor of uncommon range, Reith moved fluidly between jazz trio work, big band arranging, and orchestral conducting. His career eventually took him deep into German broadcasting, where he directed the Süddeutscher Rundfunk orchestra in Stuttgart and arranged for Peter Herbolzheimer’s big band. In 1972, he composed and arranged the music for the Munich Summer Olympics opening ceremony.
A Happy Afternoon captures Reith before the orchestral commissions took over — a trio date recorded at Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer’s studio in Villingen, the Black Forest facility that would later become MPS Records and host sessions by Oscar Peterson, George Duke, and Baden Powell. The repertoire mixes American songbook standards — “Days of Wine and Roses,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” “On Green Dolphin Street” — with two Reith originals that hold their own alongside the covers.
Reith’s discography as leader is small but distinctive, with SABA and MPS releases that showcase his refined touch and harmonic sophistication. His legacy lives largely in the arranging and conducting work that followed, but A Happy Afternoon remains the clearest window into what he could do with just a piano, a bass, and a set of drums. Explore more episodes.
SESSION DETAILS
Recorded
August 23–24, 1966
Studio
Brunner-Schwer Studio
Villingen, Black Forest
Producer
Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer
Engineer
Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer
Personnel
Peter Witte — bass
Charly Antolini — drums
WHY THIS ALBUM MATTERS
A Happy Afternoon matters because it documents how thoroughly American soul-jazz vocabulary had crossed the Atlantic by the mid-60s. Dieter Reith was a German pianist with a sideman pedigree in the Cologne and Frankfurt scenes, and this 1966 trio date for SABA shows him channeling Wynton Kelly and Bobby Timmons with European clarity of touch. The session was cut at Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer's home studio in Villingen — the same room that would become MPS Records two years later — with Charly Antolini's wire-tight drumming and Peter Witte's grounded bass holding the form. It's one of the cleaner snapshots of European hard bop before free jazz reshaped the continent's playing, and its long out-of-print status has made original SABA pressings collector targets.
Side 1
Side 2
SABA SB 15 127 ST · Original stereo pressing
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