Who wants to deal with Austrian pop history of the 1960s and 70s should always give the Viennese blues and jazz musician Karl Ratzer a special position. At an age when average teenagers were just starting an apprenticeship, he already led the jet-set life of a rock star as lead guitarist for the wicked Rhythm-N-Blues renegade The Slaves (1964-1966). A little later he adapted the sounding stage name "Charles Ryder" and conquered the cultural pages of the local feuilleton as the light figure of the local psychedelic underground. Ratzer's band projects brought a progressive zeitgeist to sleepy Vienna and were synonymous with musical innovation in those years: The Charles Ryders Corporation (1967-1968), C-Department (1969-1971), Gipsy Love (1971-1972). At the same time, they put an introverted young man in the spotlight who seemed authentic both as a proletarian underdog and as a virtuoso child prodigy. At the age of 22 he finally moved to the USA, where he gradually gained a foothold in an internationally networked jazz scene and worked with several world stars of the genre.
