Jürgen Kerth

Jürgen Kerth at Joly's Live Music Bar

Blues-Rock

Guitarist Jürgen Kerth has been performing on stage for over 60 years and was already getting on the authorities’ bad side with his high school band. His style lies somewhere at the intersection of Santana, Johnny Winter, B.B. King, Hendrix, and others. That’s why Kerth puts the often-used title “King of East German Blues” into perspective: “My music should just as much incorporate swing, soul, funk, reggae, and much more.” During the “zone” era, he was voted East Germany’s “No. 1 guitarist” several times.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he also gave numerous concerts in America. To the enthusiastic and astonished Americans, he explained it this way: “When you’re a musician who was confined to one place and couldn’t travel the world, you had to daydream about all your fellow musicians and role models and the legendary concerts, like Woodstock or the ‘Filmore East.’ You want to bring that feeling into your own world.”

He usually performs in a classic trio lineup, though he also likes to bring in the country’s best keyboardists from time to time. (L. Wilke, M. Baetzel, A. Geyer) On bass, you’ll usually see and hear his son Stefan Kerth, Juergen Feuerbach, or Daniel Baetge (from the band clueso), and on drums, Heiko Jung, Ronny Dehn, Marco Thiermann, Tony Natale, Alexander Baetzel, or Lin Dittmann. Every combination of these outstanding musicians, paired with Kerth’s playing style, has its own unique charm.