Bert Kaempfert

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Bert Kaempfert (1967)
Memorial plaque on Beatles-Platz, Hamburg
Bert-Kaempfert-Platz, Hamburg
Memorial plaque for Bert Kaempfert; Hamburg-Dammtor, Esplanade

Bert Kaempfert (born October 16, 1923 in Hamburg , actually Berthold Heinrich Kämpfert; † June 21, 1980 in Llucmajor , Mallorca ) was a German orchestra director , music producer , arranger and composer . For a short time he also appeared under the pseudonyms Raimondo, Bob Parker and Marc Bones . Alongside James Last, he is the most successful German orchestra leader after the Second World War . As a pioneer of theEasy listening , "music that doesn't disturb", as he himself put it, is now also considered one of the forefathers and a legend of lounge music .

In Germany he had his first major successes in the 1950s with his arrangements of the Freddy Quinn and Ivo Robić hits The Guitar and the Sea, respectively Tomorrow . In 1961, with Wonderland by Night , he became the first German to reach first place in the US singles charts . His compositions Strangers in the Night (sung by Frank Sinatra ), Spanish Eyes ( Al Martino , Elvis Presley ) and LOVE ( Nat King Cole ) became world successes and evergreens .

Life

Berthold Kämpfert was born in 1923 in Hamburg-Barmbeck (in today's district of Barmbek-Nord ) as the son of a journeyman painter. He started playing the piano at the age of six. He studied piano, clarinet, saxophone and accordion at the music school in Hamburg and began his career as a saxophonist in the orchestra with the Danzig Radio Orchestra Hans Busch, where he learned his trade from scratch in a regular training program. There he got his nickname "Fips", which he kept for life. Stationed on a musical train in Denmark during the Second World War , he fell in love with a young Danish woman. His eldest daughter Renate comes from this connection. He founded his first big band Ace of Spades while in captivity in Denmark. After his release he played with this band through British officers' clubs in northern Germany. In 1945 he met the dentist's daughter Hannelore Winkler. She spoke excellent school English and was able to take over the conference . The two married on August 14, 1946 and moved to Bremerhaven. After the birth of their daughter Marion, they moved back to Hamburg; In 1951 daughter Doris was born.

In the late 1940s, Kaempfert began composing and arranging primarily for the NWDR and the Polydor . In 1959 he arranged The Guitar and the Sea for Freddy Quinn and Morgen for Ivo Robić . Both pieces became hits and were also internationally successful in English-language cover versions. Tomorrow reached the North American Top 20. Kaempfert edited the song Muss i denn zum Städtele for Elvis Presley , who was a great success in 1961 under the title Wooden Heart Charts succeeded. At that time, Kaempfert was already showing symptoms of alcohol addiction and consumed the stimulant Preludin in order to cope with his workload of 16 hours a day .

In 1959 Kaempfert produced the instrumental title Wunderland bei Nacht , which no record company wanted to bring out, including Polydor, for whom he had previously arranged pieces. He offered it to the New York producer Milt Gabler , and as Wonderland by Night it brought Kaempfert's international breakthrough after publication on August 22, 1960. For five weeks this hit was number one in the USA, the first number one hit by a German there. The homage to Manhattan developed with over two million copies sold (including a million in the US) to the million seller . The album of the same name Wonderland by Night also reached number one in the US charts - Kaempfert was the second German to succeed after Crazy Otto alias Fritz Schulz-Reichel (1955).

Other titles such as Afrikaan Beat , A Swingin 'Safari and Red Roses for a Blue Lady were very successful afterwards and are still often played and used as background music to this day. By 1966, Billy Vaughn ( A Swingin 'Safari ), Wayne Newton ( Danke Schoen , Remember When ), Nat King Cole ( LOVE ) and Baby Washington ( Only Those in Love ) had hits in the USA with Kaempfert's compositions.

In June 1961 Kaempfert produced recordings for Polydor in Hamburg-Harburg with the English singer Tony Sheridan , who he discovered in the Top Ten Club , and the still unknown band The Beat Brothers - the later Beatles . The first joint single My Bonnie (with The Saints on the back) was released in October 1961, followed by a Polydor LP of the same title in January 1962, and later the single Ain't She Sweet . Kaempfert can be considered the discoverer and first producer of the Beatles, even before their later manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin came into play in 1962.

Bert Kaempfert's instrumental records did not arrive in Germany; in the USA, however, his fifteen big band LPs were sold around 4 million times. His LP Blue Midnight alone (December 1964; 5th place on the US LP hit parade ) sold 800,000 copies there, and only 8,000 in Germany. According to Der Spiegel , Kaempfert earned around 3.5 million marks in the USA in 1965.

The song Spanish Eyes was released as Moon Over Naples in 1965 .

In 1966 he had great success worldwide when Al Martino sang his compositions with Spanish Eyes and Frank Sinatra with Strangers in the Night . The latter title is from the soundtrack to the film A Man Could Get Killed (German title: Willkommen Mr. B. from 1966), but where it was only used as instrumental background music; the English text was written by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder in 1966 . For this piece Kaempfert received his only Grammy nomination - in the category " Song of the Year ". He had to admit defeat to the Beatles, who received the award for their hit single Michelle . Sinatra kept Strangers in the Night in his concert programs until the end and later recorded three more Kaempfert melodies with The World We Knew (1967), My Way of Life (1968) and You Turned My World Around (1974).

After the emergence of disco music in the 1970s, interest in Kaempfert's orchestral music initially declined. Nevertheless, he succeeded again in creating enthusiasm with live and television appearances together with Freddy Quinn or Sylvia Vrethammar by skillfully using the show component of the young color television. In 1979 an album was released, recorded together with Hildegard Knef .

On June 16, 1980 Kaempfert gave his last concert in the sold out Royal Albert Hall in London . Five days later, on June 21, 1980, he died of a stroke in Cala Blava, Mallorca . His ashes were scattered on January 15, 1981 at his request in the Everglades , where he often vacationed with American friends and pursued his greatest hobby, fishing.

"I want to make music that doesn't bother me."

- Bert Kaempfert

Kaempfert wrote around 400 compositions and 750 orchestral arrangements; By the time he died, 150 million records with his melodies had been sold worldwide. He is one of the fathers of easy listening and is considered the only artist who has composed for Frank Sinatra as well as Elvis Presley and the Beatles . In 1993 Kaempfert and his co-author Herbert Rehbein , who had composed many hits with him, were posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame . On the occasion of his 85th birthday in October 2008 in the Hamburg district of Barmbek-Nord , where Kaempfert was born and spent his childhood, the square in front of the work museum was named “Bert-Kaempfert-Platz” .

The Kaempfert sound

Many Kaempfert recordings can be recognized by their typical sound. The rhythm section consisting of Rolf Ahrens ( drums ), Karl-Heinz "Kuddel" Grewe ( double bass ) and Ladislav "Ladi" Geisler ( guitar & bass guitar ) is decisive for this : Ahrens plays almost exclusively with brooms and sets contrapuntal accents with the bass drum , Grewe plays walking bass (similar to Leroy Vinnegar ), Geisler creates the famous "cracking bass effect" with the bass guitar (especially effective in the piece "The Bass Walks"). Brass instruments ( trombones including bass trombones and trumpets ) dominate the melody instruments . In the pieces “A Swingin 'Safari”, “Zambesi” and “That Happy Feeling”, tin whistles or piccolo flutes are used. Strings (violins and cellos) and mixed choirs often appear in the middle sections. The main solo instruments used are trumpet (or flugelhorn ) and trombone. The well-known musicians who have played at Kaempfert include the aforementioned Lucas Lindholm (double bass), Manfred Moch , Charly Tabor , Tony Fisher and Ack van Rooyen (trumpet or flugelhorn), Herb Geller (saxophones and flutes), Waldemar Erbe , Jiggs Whigham and Peter Herbolzheimer (trombone). The sound engineer Peter Klemt also plays an important role in the typical Kaempfert sound through miking and mixing .

With Kaempfert, the choir (with a few exceptions, e.g. Morgen and Wimoweh ) sings no text , but rather long vowels with a few consonants for structuring (“Uamm…, Duuh-duaa…”). As a result, the pieces that have been sung by other performers retain their character as instrumental pieces. Solo passages in the middle section with a high female voice as the climax are also typical.

Kaempfert's compositions are also used in advertising, e.g. B. That Happy Feeling from the album A Swingin 'Safari (1962) in a Coke commercial from 2015.

Discography

Tribute albums

The following is a selection of artists who have recorded an entire album with compositions by Bert Kaempfert or songs made famous by him, such as Red Roses for a Blue Lady .

Awards

  • 1961 BAND OF THE FUTURE, "Cash Box" (music magazine, USA)
  • 1965 ESTRELLA DE ORO for the most successful composition 1964, Venezuela
  • 1965 Award for the LP “Living It Up”, Argentina
  • 1966 Golden Globe for Strangers In The Night, best film song of the year, USA
  • 1975 GOLDEN NOTENSCHLÜSSEL, Germany 1978 Award for the title Footprints In The Sand, Argentina
  • 1980 Two Golden Europe awards for Strangers In The Night and Spanish Eyes, Germany

Awards - Posthumous

documentary

  • Marc Boettcher : Strangers in the Night - The Bert Kaempfert Story. 2003

literature

  • Marc Boettcher: Stranger in the Night - The Bert Kaempfert Story. European Publishing House, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-434-50523-7 .

Web links

Commons : Bert Kaempfert  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Polydor 237 058 (1961): "Always young again, melodies from yesterday for people today"
  2. ^ "E and U are growing together" , Badische Zeitung, April 6, 2009 (Interview with Marion Kaempfert)
  3. ↑ Official biography , chapter 1.
  4. ↑ Bert Kaempfert: Mister Wirtschaftswunder , Die Zeit , December 29, 2010
  5. ^ Bronson, Fred: The Billboard Book of Number One Hits . 3rd revised and expanded edition. New York City, New York: Billboard Publications, 1992, p. 82
  6. ^ Joseph Murrells, Million Selling Records , 1985, p. 143
  7. ↑ https://www.musicvf.com/songs.php?page=artist&artist=Bert+Kaempfert&tab=songaswriterchartstab
  8. ↑ Bert Kaempfert: About Everything . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 1966, pp. 85 ( online - 4 July 1966 ).
  9. ↑ https://www.grammy.com/grammys/artists/bert-kaempfert
  10. ↑ Official biography , chapter 5.
  11. ^ NDR: Bert Kaempfert - inventor of Easy Listening (page 2). Retrieved July 21, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Klaus Walter: Bert Kaempfert. A German Guy Swings  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Portrait on br-online.de (accessed on September 3, 2010)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.br-online.de  
  13. ^ Gala on the occasion of Bert Kaempfert's 80th Birthday ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) at GEMA .
  14. ↑ Barmbeker Wochenblatt, October 15, 2008, page 3.
  15. ↑ Excerpt on Youtube about Bert Kaempfert and his musicians
  16. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22Morgen%22+k%C3%A4mpfert&search_type=&aq=f
  17. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfqg5Kui5B0
  18. ↑ https://www.giga.de/unternehmen/coca-cola/news/coca-cola-eisbaer-werbung-2016-video-lied-und-so-kann-man-gewinnen/
personal data
SURNAME Kaempfert, Bert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kämpfert, Berthold Heinrich (maiden name); Parker, Bob (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German orchestra leader, arranger and composer
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1980
Place of death Mallorca , Spain