Fritz Schulz-Reichel born 4 July 1912

Fritz Schulz-Reichel (July 4, 1912 – February 14, 1990) was a German jazz and pop pianist and composer.

Fritz Schulz-Reichel was born in Meiningen, Thuringia, Germany. His father was a classical musician, and he began playing piano at the age of six. He developed an unusual technique where he played the melody of a tune with the left hand and the rhythm with the right hand. 

When the young Fritz came to Berlin in 1934 he got his first permanent engagement with the dance orchestra of the Romanian bandmaster James Kok , which was continued by Erhard Bauschke after his emigration in 1935 . Schulz-Reichel then played in the band founded by Kurt Hohenberger in 1937 and with Herb Flemming . From 1939 he accompanied Rosita Serrano and in 1942 he played with Herbert Velmer in Oslo; At that time - at least abroad - he was already considered the best German swing pianist.

When he wasn't performing in clubs in Berlin or Paris (where he was elected an honorary member of the Hot Club of France for his improvisational abilities), he wrote songs in a pop vein. In March 1943, he was called up. A year later he was wounded on the eastern front by splinters of shell in his right hand, but the doctors managed to maintain his playing ability. During the war years he played with Otto Stenzel and the orchestra of the Berliner Varietés Scala and with the Swing-Kapellmeister Heinz Wehner in the German show, which was broadcast from Oslo for soldiers. After the end of the war, Schulz-Reichel was able to return to his profession in Berlin as early as July 1945

From 1946 he participated in the former Soviet zone of occupation in the Radio Berlin dance orchestra, accompanied Walter Dobschinski, Johannes Rediske and Helmut Zacharias . In the same year he also composed his first successful hit If I see you, then I start dreaming, which followed, among others, in 1949 in the Café de la Paix in Paris, 1951 on Saturday at four and 1960 two lovers in Paris .

From 1952 he became really popular as "Schräger Otto". He was largely oriented towards the style of ragtime and Honky-Tonk pianist Winifred Atwell , which was very popular in Great  

Britain at the time ; in contrast to her, however, he played the post-war German evergreens in a ragtime-like rhythm and not on a grand piano, but on a piano with the middle string slightly out of tune (he also used pushpins to record some titles) into the felt of the sledgehammers), so a distinctive - unmistakable - quirky - sound emerged that reminded something of a bar piano from the turn of the century.

There were extensive tours to America, Australia, South Africa, not to mention performances in neighbouring European countries. And so the airline PAN AM named one of their Boeing Clippers 727 'Schräger Otto' after their famous guest (and good customer).

                            

In 1955 he was also very successful with his album of  "Crazy Otto" in the USA. The album reached number one on the charts - Schulz-Reichel was the first German to achieve this before Bert Kaempfert. With Glad Rag Doll and Smiles, the versions of two 
hits from the 1920s, he also had two successes in the single charts, which reached number 19 and 21 respectively. He won a Golden Gramophone in 1957 for selling a million albums in a knees-up pseudo-ragtime style.

A medley of German melodies titled The Crazy Otto in the style of Fritz Schulz-Reichel by American ragtime pianist Johnny Maddox stayed in the US charts as number 2 for a full 14 weeks in the same year and the first was sold over a million times Ragtime recording at all. Both Reichel and Maddox were subsequently known as "Crazy Otto", to some confusion.

In the 1960s Schulz-Reichel succeeded with a series of records, each with supplemented titles of the type: "In the bar ..." or "In a bar ...", presenting danceable medley's well-known songs as high-quality "bar music" The pub piano sound described above is only used in a few titles (e.g. in the Charleston medley of the album In der Bar next door).

In 1965 he had his own show called “Man should be able to play the piano.” He also recorded  more commercially oriented albums and worked as a soloist with several radio orchestras, composed a number of film scores, appeared in numerous films and regularly appeared on television entertainment programs in the 1960's and early 1970's. He continued to perform live and on film, and remained a popular jazz favourite in Germany for many years. He died in Berlin February 14, 1990.

(Edited from Wikipedia & Bear Family)