He belonged to the generation of Albert Mangelsdorff, to that vanishingly small group of German jazz musicians, to whom in the post-war period America, which was arrogantly insisting on its status as a motherland, had to throw an ear – whether it liked it or not.
But while the Frankfurt trombonist, from his birthplace he has never left, fought his way to world fame by continuously honing his hermetic art of improvisation, the clarinettist Rolf Kühn soon left the city of Leipzig in which he grew up to go to the nucleus of jazz, New York , to refine what distinguished him at a young age and what helped him to catch up with the greats of jazz: elegance of phrasing, impeccable intonation, aesthetic tolerance for show business;
Not to mention great musical talent.
But no one would have believed that Kühn, who had been socialized in the Leipzig Entertainment Orchestra by Kurt Henkels and then in the RIAS Dance Orchestra in Berlin, would not only become a member of the Benny Goodman Orchestra for three years in the early 1950s, but also become the “King of Swing” in it to cover absence as bandleader.
He later succeeded his American mentor and role model Buddy De Franco as a soloist in Tommy Dorsey's orchestra.
Up until the early 1960s, Kühn not only played sophisticated, self-written arrangements in large swing orchestras in America, he was also a sought-after soloist in smaller combos at performances in New York's "Birdland", in Chicago nightclubs or at major events such as the Newport Jazz Festival.
Despite all the successes, which the magazine "Down Beat", the central organ of jazz since the 1930s, repeatedly certified with first places in the surveys, the clever Kühn decided in the early 1960s to turn the hamster wheel of the jazz business into New to leave York and return to Europe.
With the reputation of an excellent American jazz career behind him, he quickly reconnected with the jazz and light music scene in Germany, became head of the NDR television orchestra in Hamburg until 1968, went on extensive South American tours with the "German Allstars" around Albert Mangelsdorff and also found a way for his brother Joachim Kühn to leave the GDR and continue his own great jazz career in the west.
Since then, he has repeatedly appeared on stage or in the studio with the pianist Joachim Kühn and released a series of wonderfully melodic recordings that disregarded the genre boundaries between swing, mainstream, cool jazz and bebop, such as "Monday Morning" with numerous avant-gardists such as baritone saxophonist John Surman, bassist Barre Philips and drummer Stu Martin, then "Don't Split" with tenor saxophonist Bob Mintzer or "Creaction" with pianist Chick Corea and a true all-star European line-up.
Of course, the milestones also include the box set with nine records entitled "The Best Is Yet to Come", with recordings between 1975 and 2019 and the many pure duo recordings by the two brothers.
Rolf Kühn was a great independent stylist on the clarinet, which is not one of those brute jazz instruments suitable for revolutions.
The jazz critic Leonard Feather therefore said many years ago that Rolf Kühn had the misfortune to appear on the scene with his instrument at the moment when the clarinet no longer played any significant role in the development of jazz.
In the meantime, however, the world of jazz has also moved on, and people no longer react to the avant-garde as an aesthetic revelation with conditioned reflexes.
Rolf Kühn has recently provided examples of this as well.
In terms of form and harmonic concept, he is at ease with his instrument in meeting many young savages, such as the truly unorthodox,
drummer Christian Lillinger, who is fifty-five years his junior, went far beyond the boundaries of standardized jazz.
However, Leonard Feather was clairvoyant in his judgement: Rolf Kühn is one of the great jazz clarinettists in history thanks to his unsurpassed elegance of intonation and his unerring sense of rhythm.
He died last Thursday in Berlin at the age of ninety-two.