The Berlin school, Kling Klang in Düsseldorf, the Amon Düül/Utopia commune in Munich, a lively jazz rock crowd in Stuttgart: Germany’s music scene in the early 1970s must have been mind-boggling. In this climate, a rather tame blues rock outfit called Joy & The Hit Kids rebranded itself as Joy Unlimited and started playing technical, folky prog rock, releasing three heavy concept albums before dissolving in 1976.
“It was a very progressive time,” Roland Heck recalls, speaking from his home in Grasellenbach, a small village in Southern Hesse, halfway between Heidelberg and Frankfurt. He was one of the key figures in Joy Unlimited, playing acoustic and electric pianos and vibraphone. His counterpart was Gerd Koethe on flutes and saxophones. The two of them work together as a producer tag team until this very day. “Musically, we tried different things we weren’t taught at the university.” The “university” was Mannheim’s music school where they met the other band members between 1966 and 1970: Albin Metz on bass, Dieter Kindl on guitar, Hans Herkenne on drums, a couple of rotating others and an incredibly talented blues and soul singer called Joy Fleming. Heck remembers Fleming’s stunning Aretha Franklin covers bringing grown men in Mannheim’s G.I. clubs to tears.
As Joy & The Hit Kids, they had been playing mostly cover songs. But then the climate changed and the band evolved. “That era felt like departure. Nobody wanted to be middle of the road anymore.” In 1970, they renamed themselves Joy Unlimited to reflect their progressive ideas. Still, their first album under the new name, Overground, sounds like a tame blues rock record from today’s perspective. It was only when they received a commission from a theater in Bonn to write and produce music for a ballet that they took off artistically. The resulting album, Schmetterlinge, was released in 1971 on legendary Krautrock imprint Pilz, run by “cosmic courier” Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser as a subsidiary of the chemical producer BASF.
Joy Fleming, who had been the singer of the band since its inception in 1966, departed after Schmetterlinge, and embarked on a solo career. She remained active for many years as a jazz, blues and soul singer. Fleming was replaced by American singer Ken Trayler on the follow-up record Reflections, again conceptualised as ballet music. Trayler sang on half of the record, the rest consisting of Krautrock-y instrumental tracks. “Ken was a fantastic singer, but also a rather simple-minded, naive type. After that record, he just took off to the States for personal reasons and we never heard from him again.”
by Stephan Szillus, December 22, 2015
Tracks
1. Reincarnation (Gerd Kothe, Ken Traylor, Roland Heck) - 4:38
2. Ocean Of Ruins (Gerd Kothe, Han Herkenne, Ken Traylor) - 5:06
3. King Richard's Court Jester (Dieter Kindle, Roland Heck) - 2:34
4. Colossus Of Steel And Iron (Albin Metz, Gerd Kothe, Klaus Nagel) - 2:29
5. Crystal Palace (Albin Metz, Han Herkenne, Roland Heck) - 4:09
6 .Motion Is Movement / Hate Nine And Ten - 5:46
a.Motion Is Movement (Dieter Kindle, Ken Traylor, Klaus Nagel)
b.Hate Nine And Ten (Klaus Nagel, Han Herkenne)
7. The Search For Father Time (Gerd Kothe, Roland Heck) - 6:47
8. Silently Sung (Dieter Kindle, Han Herkenne, Ken Traylor) - 4:03
9. Question (Albin Metz, Dieter Kindle, Ken Traylor) - 4:30
10.Believe Me (Han Herkenne, Ken Traylor) - 5:26
11.Peters Zeitmaschine (Albin Metz, Roland Heck) - 2:50
12.Navigationen (Albin Metz, Gerd Kothe, Klaus Nagel, Roland Heck) - 2:10
13.Mosaik (Gerd Kothe, Klaus Nagel, Roland Heck) - 3:37
14.Fracesco's Horse (Gerd Kothe, Han Herkenne, Ken Traylor) - 4:23
15.Sister Christine (Han Herkenne, Ken Traylor, Klaus Nagel) - 3:47
16.One Small Step (Gerd Kothe, Han Herkenne, Ken Traylor, Klaus Nagel, Roland Heck) - 3:36
17.Highway Affair (Dieter Kindle, Han Herkenne, Ken Traylor) - 2:36
18.Early Morning Moanin (Ken Traylor, Roland Heck) - 3:18
19.Proud Angelina (Dieter Kindle, Han Herkenne, Ken Traylor) - 2:58
Bonus Tracks 10-19
Joy Unlimited
*Ken Traylor - Vocals, Electric, Acoustic Guitars
*Han Herkenne - Drums, Percussion
*Albin Metz - Percussion, Bass
*Roland Heck - Organ, Piano, Vibes, Marimba, Percussion, Vocals
*Dieter Kindle - Bass, Guitar, Percussion
*Gerd Kothe - Tenor, Soprano Saxophones, Flute, Woodwind
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