Those folks who know Texas and know the Blues probably know that Christian Dozzler plays a sultry Blues piano and organ and a mean harp. What they may not know is that Dozzler, also known as “Vienna Slim”, is a master of the Boogie Woogie and Blues and also an enormously talented accordionist.
Standing 6 feet 7 inches, Dozzler is a shy man. When he was just 13 years old, he was captivated by the Boogie Woogie from the first time he heard it on the radio. He immediately quit his classical piano lessons and from then on, made it his business to master the Blues and the Boogie Woogie, and to make it his life’s work.
In his first band, Christian played guitar and harmonica as well as the piano and also sang. In a few years, he added the piano accordion.”The accordion is often misunderstood by people, because it appears in almost every folk music in the world. My influence, of course, is the Zydeco music. But I think it is a great instrument to solo on, I often use saxophone or organ phrases in my accordion solos, I think. I come from a rather puristic blues attitude, but my taste has opened up to a much wider spectrum over the years. While many blues musicians of my generation, especially here in the US, have started with rock music and then went back to the roots, I actually started with 1930s piano blues and boogie woogie and then chronologically went up in the blues history with the styles I listened to and tried to play…..But I myself try to play a wide variety of different styles within the blues framework, write much of my own material and avoid overplayed standards that everybody else plays too. In my choice of songs that I cover, I look for the hidden gems: great songs that are not so well known.”
For nearly 10 years until 1993, Christian was the co-frontman of one of Europe’s few blues bands, the reknowned Mojo Blues Band. He left to form his own band, Blues Wave, and for 7 years, toured with them nationally and internationally. He produced his first solo album “All Alone and Blue” and today, Christian Dozzler tours Europe and North American, performing mostly as a solo act. He has since moved permanently to the U.S. from his native Austria and has made the Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas area his home since 2000.
Christian Dozzler was nominated for the Blues Critic Awards in 2008, for “Best Blues Keyboardist” (Piano, Organ, Accordion,Harmonica and vocal). He has been featured on over 40 cd’s and has met and played with many Blues greats and legends. Because of this exposure throughout his career, his musical influences are broad. “But out of the probably 5,000 or more gigs that I’ve played in my life it is hard to pick out a special one. It is always an honor to play with a legend or somebody you have admired for many years, that’s for sure… But I like jamming with other musicians after a festival, or sitting in with other bands that I know and like….. maybe the most fun I had was at an organized jam at the Salmon Arm Festival in Canada a few years ago. It was part of the program and they just sat 6 or 7 individual musicians on a stage in a half circle and watched what happened.”
About being a musician, Christian reflects, “…I like to listen and observe, in every life situation. And that is very important (as a professional musician) in a band context as well. You have to listen to what everybody in the band is doing and intuitively react to it or even anticipate it. How you accompany a singer or soloist is just as –if not more- important than what you do on your own solo. That’s the biggest problem with a lot of “wannabe” musicians, they don’t listen to what’s going on stage, and they just concentrate on themselves. Most of the greatest musicians, at least the ones that I respect, are also good accompanists. Because they do whatever the song needs, not what boosts their ego.”
He says that his experiences in America, as a musician, are far different than abroad. “(In Europe)..there is a respect for the artist on stage. In the U.S.…there is free live music on every corner, blues is an every-day thing that everybody grew up with, and most people cannot even distinguish between good and mediocre musicians or real and fake. They want to be entertained, dance and have a good time, and often don’t even care who the person on the bandstand is. So that’s a completely different approach for the musician…”
Christian Dozzler has seen many changes in the music industry since he became a professional musician. He says, “The CD/album sales have gone down drastically over the last decade or so. It used to be that buying an album was the only way for you to listen to the music at home. Now you can download it, listen anytime on internet radio, watch it for free on YouTube, you don’t need to necessarily own a product anymore. And especially in a niche market like the Blues, this has the effect that it almost makes no sense anymore to produce a CD. In the 90s I used to break even with the production costs within 6-8 months, now it might take 2 years or more.”
But, Christian says that there are more changes underway, “The particular problem that Blues and also Jazz seem to have worldwide is also that our audience is growing too old –like we are. There are not enough young people coming up who are interested in our style of music to fill the gap.” He adds, “I can only hope that more young people, in spite of all the distractions from the internet, cable TV and superficial pop culture, would get a chance to discover the heartbeat of the blues.”
All quotes from “Christian Dozzler: Two Meters of Blues” by Michalis Limnios BLUES @ GREECE
Accordion Americana 