Die Lustigen Egerländer

From 1975 to 1977 George A. Borgman lived in the Bavarian town of Unterleinach outside of Würzburg.  He was a member of the US Army living off-base. His love of music naturally attracted him to the local musical fare.

Fortunately, he found that in the local orchestra called Die Lustigen Egerländer. They would play at the local Oktoberfest usually held in a big tent like structure in Oberleinach the next town over. The group would play traditional German folk tunes, marches, swing, and the current popular music of the time.

In 1976, George, who had a reel-to-reel tape recorder, offered to tape one of the band's events. Recently, I discoved the dupe cassette tapes of this event and have transferred them so that they can be heard online.

The audio quality is the typical live-performance sound, recorded with home stereo quality recording equipment of the day, but it does give a glimpse into the sound of a German band from 39 years ago. The quality suffers more because it was transfered to Radio Shack cassette tapes some years later.

The tapes seem to be only slightly edited leaving in most of the talk and toasts and "dankes."

Siegfried Herglotz at the keyboards, singing. 

George hired Siegfried to give his son piano lessons. In 1977,  he was made director of the Youth Brass Band of the Volunteer Fire Department of the area. 

An interesting side note is that the city of Puerto de la Cruz on the Canary Islands, invited Die Lustigen Egerländer for their week long Bavarian festival in 1973. They continued to play their over the years culminating in a 40th Anniversary performance in 2013!

Here is cassette tape number one from the 1976 live recording.