Jazz legend Klaus Doldinger publishes autobiography: A life full of music

Created: 08/31/2022, 17:53

By: Katja Kraft

Even at the age of 86, Klaus Doldinger never runs out of breath on his saxophone.

© Marcus sleep

Klaus Doldinger is a music legend.

He wrote the theme song for "Tatort", the film music for "Das Boot" and "The Neverending Story" and made jazz big in Germany.

Now his autobiography "Made in Germany" is published by Piper.

Worth reading!

There is a feeling here via QR codes.

Yes, yes, it's a bit annoying at first, always having to have your smartphone at hand when reading Klaus Doldinger's biography "Made in Germany".

But the codes are more than a nice gag.

Behind each code is a link with an audio sample that draws you into the soundscapes of the living music legend.

Can't resist at all.

The - you can hardly believe it - 86-year-old manages to get even people who have nothing to do with jazz enthusiastic about it in seconds.

Doldinger's co-authors, his son Nicolas and the journalist Torsten Groß also know this, and it was therefore a clever idea to intersperse these sound samples from around seven decades every few pages.

Family ties: Klaus Doldinger with his wife Inge (2nd from right), their daughters (from left) Viola and Melanie and their son Nicolas.

© Ursula Düren

The Doldinger is not someone who exudes great pathos with words.

The narrative tone is rather sober, chronologically always in order.

The great jazz virtuoso sticks to a clear structure and does not rely on sudden changes in tempo.

That's lucky.

This is how you can follow the crazy story of this eventful life page by page in a way that is easy to understand.

And on the side gets a little customer in (jazz) music history.

Because Doldinger is part of it (read here: Our big interview with Klaus Doldinger).

This modest Bavarian by choice who has been living not far from Lake Starnberg for decades.

With his Inge.

When it comes to her, it gets very emotional for his standards.

“She was 'the one', basically everything was clear from the first moment, I can't really describe it in words.

Above all, she liked jazz like him.

Love goes through his ear.

Great love: Inge and Klaus Doldinger.

© Weissfuss

It started as a kid.

It is May 1945, the Americans have just marched into Schrobenhausen, where little Klaus is currently living with his parents.

And suddenly there's music in town that you couldn't have marched to in ranks and clicked your heels.

“It seemed to follow a structure, but sounded completely free.

Of course, I couldn't have described it that way at the time, but I could feel it, with every quivering fiber of my body.” It was “the initial spark, without which everything that followed might never have happened”.

With the "Tatort" melody and "Das Boot" he wrote film music history

And what happened there.

When most Germans hear the name Klaus Doldinger, the first thing that comes to mind is the title tune of “Tatort” and the film music for Wolfgang Petersen’s “Das Boot” and “The Neverending Story”.

Everything from him, everything enormously successful.

But who knows that in 1960 he and his band at the time, The Feetwarmers, were invited by Coca-Cola to a trip to the USA, where they - you have to imagine that!

– played in Birdland, the cathedral of jazz, to the crème de la crème of the New York scene?

That he won one amateur music competition after another and got his first record deal.

And it went steadily uphill.

70 years of success, more than 5000 concerts in more than 50 countries.

"I can't really explain all of this to myself," he writes himself. And it does between the lines.

Klaus Doldinger's secret of success: passion!

If you read these memoirs, which are often full of incredible experiences, you will get an idea of ​​the secret of his success.

He never forged career plans, but let everything come his way.

He was always open to new sounds, new people, new experiences.

He not only played it, he lived jazz.

"The music was simply the perfect antidote to this strange mixture of historical oblivion, inhibitions and activity, the narrowness and severity of the 1950s in Germany." Doldinger followed his passion.

This book tells what is possible then.

Klaus Doldinger with Nicolas Doldinger and Torsten Groß: "Made in Germany".

Piper, Munich, 320 pages;

26 euros.