"Of course, sometimes they played the role of the big shot..."

"I was then a musician and my band and I played for the American soldiers right from the beginning. It was a great job, since they were very generous.

And then, as it started to get close to Christmas, they told us `On the 24th of December, you have to play. That's the big day for us Americans.' - `No way. We're not playing,' I said. `That's the big day for us too. This year for the first time since the end of the war, we're all home and together and we're not playing.' - `You have to play.' - 'No. We're not playing.' Of course, sometimes they played the role of the big shot.

So, then comes December 24th. We - our band - had agreed that we're not playing. But what happens at 6 o'clock in the evening. A truck pulls up with a driver, Americans, and they want to pick us up. And I said, `No. The band's not here and, anyway, we said that we weren't playing.' And they had to go home empty handed, without the band. Of course, they were a little bit mad afterwards, but...the typical American is a very relaxed sort of guy and they didn't take it that hard."

Josef W., born in 1924, then a Jazz musician in Salzburg (Boltzmann- Institut/Steinocher-Fonds Interview Archive, Salzburg)