The Modern Soul Septet (later Modern Soul Band) was one of the hottest and most popular dance music groups in East Germany from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s.
In its early years, this band played a very unusual, raw, authentic, and freaky brand of soul beat and jazz rock for East Germany, which thrilled many music lovers and dance enthusiasts. The Modern Septett became one of the most booked dance bands in the country and recorded numerous tracks for the radio.
For the state-owned Amiga label, the sound was simply too raw and hard for the time, and so only two tracks, “Unsre Stadt” on the compilation “Dann bist du da” and “So muss es sein” on a DT64 music studio split single, were able to establish themselves in this first creative period. By the mid-70s, the Modern Soul Band had arrived in the midst of fusion jazz and, thanks to their steadily growing popularity, finally received their first LP production in 1976. A truly successful live recording from Gotha with a slightly different band line-up and an absolute must for every collector of East German soul and jazz.
A brief review:
It happened in East Berlin in 1968. After his co-founded beat band “Music Stromers” was banned from performing at the popular youth club “Freundschaft” in Berlin Friedrichshain, Hugo Laartz decided to put together a new band after several jam sessions. Despite its historical obscurity, the address on Fredersdorfer Strasse was no ordinary youth club, but THE club for fresh American soul beat in the heart of East Berlin. Not far from the Ostbahnhof train station, it attracted not only dance-loving African students who smuggled the latest soul records from West Berlin to the East…no, it attracted the crème de la crème of the musical student body from all over the country. Ulrich Gumpert jammed alongside Hugo Laartz, Günter Dobrowolski alongside Eugen Hahn, Jochen Gleichmann alongside Andreas Altenfelder…
Later, Conny Bauer, who had just left the Manfred Ludwig Septett Görlitz and had recently arrived in Berlin, also joined the group at this location.
This completed the circle, and soon a new powerful and creative band was formed. This group had something that no one else had at the time: a genuine German rock soul singer: Klaus Nowodworski. With his powerful voice and stage performance, he gave the group a very special status in the country. At that time, there was nothing comparable, so Luise Mirsch from the youth radio station DT64 regularly invited them to the studio to promote the new group and provide the youth radio station with the latest soul music. But these recordings remained undiscovered for a long time on the old shelves of bandleader Hugo Laartz, because the fast-paced nature of musical styles and the focus on concert performances was already omnipresent back then, especially since the group soon merged with the Klaus Lenz Band.
Sound Essence is more than proud to now present these unique soul, beat, and jazz rock gems from East Germany to music lovers and collectors.
