Swing in Berlin: James Kok Virtuosen - Harlem, 1935

James Kok Jazz Virtuosen – Harlem, Instrumental Fox-trot (P. Riffa), Grammophon 1935 (Germany) NOTE: Arthur James KOK (b. 1902, Czernowitz, Romania - 1976, Berlin) – He was a Romanian clarinet, alto saxophone & violin player and arranger. Kok learned to play music from his father, a violinist. He attended the Prague Conservatory and moved to Berlin in 1923 to avoid military service in his homeland. In 1920s Kok founded his first own band in Berlin, which remained active through 1933, toured throughout germanophone Europe, and recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. His orchestra was almost continuously engaged at the elegant Moka Efti casino in Berlin. In May 1935, the 3rd Reich Chamber of Music withdrew his work permit due to “ambiguities in Kok’s Aryan proof“. He left Germany in 1935 and his orchestra, now without Kok, elected Erhard Bauschke as the new leader. For the 1935 summer season, the new orchestra was announced in Berlin as “purely Aryan line-up“. James Kok arranged a new ensemble in Romania, which tou