Uffe Baadh

Uffe Baadh (a.k.a. Frank Bode) (b. August 7, 1923 Aarhus, Denmark - d. November 22, 1980 Brisbane, California) was a Danish jazz musician who emigrated to the United States in 1947 to play drums in the big bands of Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, and Claude Thornhill, recording with Elvis Presley, Henry Mancini, and others. He was the youngest of four siblings: Grethe [Baadh] Freese, Hans Baadh, Marie Baadh. He married Shirley Goldberg on October 1, 1951, in Virginia, USA: two daughters, Valerie and Lise Baadh, born in California in 1952 and 1957.

His father, William Baadh, was a local doctor in Aalborg and his mother was a housewife. When his parents divorced in 1937, he moved with his mother, Valborg Marie [Dinesen] Baadh, to Copenhagen. His formal music studies trained him in classical percussion as well as jazz, and his ability to read music notation, unusual for drummers at that time, served him well in joining different bands and orchestras. Becoming known for his flamboyant style and lively sound, he played in bands including Niels Foss with singer Freddy Albeck, and Kai Ewans Orchestra in Tivoli Gardens until 1943 when the Nazi Occupation closed Tivoli and set an 8pm curfew, thus closing all nightclubs, joining the jazz greats who created the so-called "Golden Age of Jazz" in Denmark. Here is a recording from 1943, with Niels Foss, Midsummer Swinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0zj8Q0x5z4.

Uffe Baadh registered at a refugee camp in Sweden on December 9, 1943, carrying his cymbals in his jacket. He made his way to Stockholm, working as a dishwasher at a restaurant. He performed on December 26, 1943 in an evening of small-band swing at Stockholm Concert Hall on a set of borrowed drums as a member of a group of Danish jazz musicians, all refugees. In 1944 he toured Sweden with Alice Babs as well as played and recorded with the famous Thore Ehrling Big Band. He joined the Danish All-Star band which broadcast weekly on Saturday nights from , and played with Rolf Ericson (trumpet), Georg Vernon (trombone), Carl-Henrik Norin (clarinet, tenor saxophone), Charles Norman (piano) Thore Jederby (bass) in recording his original composition, Greetings To Sweden [1]Stockholm, Sweden, October 2, 1944. Uffe is reported in a Swedish jazz magazine as the finest drummer in Scandinavia. He joined the Danish Brigade in the spring of 1945, training at a camp in Skåne in the south of Sweden. He returned to Denmark on the first day of Danish liberation on April 5, 1945, in uniform.

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