Imported Export

The difference between bop and Dixieland musicians, Jazzman Eddie Condon once cracked, is that bop men flat their fifths, whereas Dixielanders drink theirs.

Pia Beck, 30, a Dutch pianist who is sometimes called "the Flying Dutchess.'' cannot tell a fifth from a fipple flute, but that does not keep her from bopping along on the cool side of the street and leaving the sunny side to Dixielanders. When Pia took off after a vocal chorus in English last week at the Tijuana, a Baltimore nightclub, listeners cried. "Hey, this chick's not from Europe--she's from Brooklyn!"

Big, blonde and bustling, Pia is one in a series of foreign jazz pianists--including a blind Scotsman (Joe Saye). an Argentine (Enrique Villegas). a German (Jutta Hipp) and a Japanese (Toshiko AkiyoshH --currently performing in the U.S. These pianists represent a reimported export, and Netherlander Beck is a fine sample of how exportable and reimportable jazz is. If Bach fugues can be learned outside Germany, there seems to be no reason why New Orleans riffs cannot be learned out side the U.S. "I dig jive," says the girl from Holland, "but the most important thing is not to goof when you dig."

Like many of the early American jazzmen, Pia is a musical illiterate, unable to read or write a note. While growing up in The Hague, Pia heard a lot of jazz. "I don't know why," she says, "but I always liked that jazz rhythm." At eight, she sat at the family piano and syncopated familiar waltzes and minuets. From recordings of Louis Armstrong. Benny Goodman, Count Basic and other U.S. masters, she learned how to play around a melody, but when she went to study music--reading and correct technique--under the director of a Dutch conservatory of music, Pia could learn nothing. After three lessons the director told Pia. "What you do with your hands and arms is all wrong, but you're a natural. Go away! I don't want to spoil it."

Pia soon stretched her natural talent to songs in seven languages (plus bop talk) and music on seven instruments (piano, accordion, vibraphone, guitar, bass, ukulele, clarinet).

Since the war. she has toured Europe, North Africa. Australia. Indonesia. From Baltimore, she and the rest of her trio (American guitar and bass players ). after a stop at Washington. D.C.. will go to Chicago's jazz emporium, the Blue Note. Chicago is an exacting town for jazz musicians, but buxom Pia Beck is not worried. "I can always go back to Holland." she says. 'T send a thousand cats a night over there."

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