1960: Hartwig Bartz, his square head shaved short, his Henriquatre beard sharpened, leaves the stage.

The young fans, who are leaning against the central column of the vaulted cellar and craning their necks because they only really hear the jazz when they can see it, reverently make room for the drummer and the members of the quintet on their short walk to the long bar The band and their entourage disappear into the narrow corridor with niches in the back right, where you can hardly see.

In the basement it is now clear to everyone: What happens there is none of your business.

An eternity passes.

Then they come to the new set, the drummer Bartz with Peter Trunk, the genius on the double bass, united in oysterlike silence.

Bent Jædig, the Dane in Frankfurt's jazz exile, with saxophone and flute, follows Günter Kronberg, who has a hard time with his baritone.

Finally, almost a little shy, the man with the golden trombone appears: all familiar with the secrets of hard bop.

They now play with such drive that Albert Mangelsdorff – really gifted with languages ​​on the trombone, otherwise truly not a word creator before the Lord – invents a weird superlative for the explosion of jazz: insane.

That's exactly how the many listeners feel.

In these days, at the beginning of the sixties, something is emerging here that has been announced for almost a decade and will determine jazz in the country for a long time to come:

the Frankfurt Sound, one style, one expression, one term.

Its reputation extends far into the United States.

To Be or Not to Bop

1988: Dizzy Gillespie, the trumpeter from South Carolina, plays in the basement.

Stars like him cannot be paid for in small clubs.

Eugen Hahn, the good spirit of the cellar, hired him anyway.

For three sets in a row: Admission forty marks per show.

When it gets high, a hundred visitors fit in the basement.

Now there are three hundred and fifty, not counting the queues that wind their way up the nineteen steps to Kleine Bockenheimer Strasse.

The popularity is not a miracle: Dizzy Gillespie is a jazz legend.

Along with Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk, he was part of the shock troop that started the bebop revolution at New York's Minton's Playhouse ages ago.

It's also not surprising that he accepted the offer to perform here.

Because now the basement is considered the German Minton's Playhouse, the place where the tournaments take place and the lances are broken.

Word gets around quickly, even as far away as Harlem, the Southside and East St. Louis.

Years ago, Dizzy Gillespie asked the existential question of jazz: To be or not to bop.

That was understood everywhere: jazz as a way of life, artists as the vanguard of social change.

But Dizzy didn't intend to conflate lush art and lush life: "I don't go on stage and say, let's play eight bars of social protest." Now he blows his adventurous horn and strings magnificent sounds of diminished staccato chains together.