Ultimate “odd couple” album Baby’s Party on Intakt finds Günther Baby Sommer, a giant of GDR free improv and still firing up, in an unlikely but compelling duo with creamy jazz trumpeter Till Brönner.

Sommer marks his 75th birthday later this month. Speaking of another jazz, another Baby, going way back savour this line-up taken from a caption published in Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans by Louis Armstrong. The place, Lincoln Gardens, Chicago. The band King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. The date thought to be 1 January 1923: “Honore Dutrey, Baby Dodds, Joe Oliver, Lil Hardin, Bill Johnson, Johnny Dodds, Louis Armstrong.”

In the photo, Louis is “kneeling” in front of one Warren ‘Baby’ Dodds, a hero to Sommer as the German is to the European traditions, often a tabula rasa the wished for utopia, of free-jazz.