Horst Winter

Winter, a swing-era clarinetist shaped by Artie Shaw's example, assembled his debut orchestra and cut his earliest discs in Berlin during the 1930s. While World War II raged, he waxed sides for Germany's Tempo label alongside Willi Berking and Meg Tevelian. Once hostilities ceased, he settled in Vienna and took Austrian citizenship. He assembled the Vienna Dance Orchestra in 1946; the ensemble earned widespread popularity by entertaining, among others, American soldiers throughout the postwar occupation. The band maintained a lengthy, well-received run at Vienna's Wintergarden roughly between 1947 and 1950. Following the example of his musical model Shaw, Winter withdrew from jazz performance in the mid-1950s.