The Reeperbahn

As rock and roll made its way to continental Europe in the late 1950s, several nightclub owners in the red-light district of Hamburg, West Germany—the Reeperbahn, named for the street that was its main artery—decided that the new music should supplant the jazz they had been featuring. British sailors had told Bruno Koschmider, owner of the Kaiserkeller, about the music scene in London, and after visiting England he decided to import some musicians, whom he...