Gerhard Mendelson

Gerhard "Moshe" Mendelson (born February 4, 1913 in Berlin ; † March 14, 1976 in Feldafing / Bavaria ) was a German music producer and record distributor of Jewish descent who was active in Vienna and whose significant share in German hit production is misunderstood. He is particularly the discoverer of the later successful singers Peter Alexander and Peter Kraus and is considered a central figure in the Austrian hit industry in the post-war period.

Career

Nothing is known about his early professional development. According to Der Spiegel, he was a watch supplier for German soldiers during World War II. In May 1946, Gerhard Mendelson founded Austrophon-Schallplatten-Studio GmbH , a recording studio and the Austroton record label . Within a few months he succeeded in organizing the infrastructure that was fallow due to the war, including the pressing plant. The recording studio was located in rented rooms in the Vienna Konzerthaus . Mendelson and his record label "Austrophon-Serie - Elite Special" (Austroton) quickly developed into a center of German-speaking post-war record production.

Typical Austroton logo: Erwin Halletz - Far from home (taken on November 21, 1950)

As an accompanying or instrumental orchestra, he won the Vienna Dance Orchestra under the direction of Horst Winter , a versatile orchestra with well-founded jazz and boogie-woogie ambitions. Winter had already performed in December 1945 in the Wiener Konzerthaus, where Mendelson ran his recording studios. Probably the first production was I love the sun, the moon and the stars with Horst Winter and the Vienna Dance Orchestra (May 1946; Austrophon # 8000, Matrix 601). In June 1946 Herta Mayen sang the evergreen Kauf 'Dir eine Colorful Luftballon (# 8210, 7089) from the revue film The White Dream (October 5, 1943), which was published by Horst Winter and the Vienna Dance Orchestra afterwards , It was always with you so beautiful (June 27, 1946; # 8024, 631) and at night I'm alone / Mungo (October 1946, # 8010, 665). Horst Winter showed his jazz skills in Sy Oliver's Opus One (February 6, 1947; # 8071, W 752) or Hey Ba-Ba-Re-Bop (May 6, 1947; # 8080, 770). Horst Winter and his dance orchestra demonstrated their musical versatility with the title Capri-Fischer (July 1947; # 8084, 779) or the Zu Fett-Polka (December 1948; # 8278, 7309). Clarinetist Erwin Halletz and the Harmona soloists recorded Hello Baby Mademoiselle on February 13, 1948, ' When the Sunflowers Bloom' on May 13, 1948 with Mendelson as producer.

Mendelson got Erni Bieler a record deal in 1947, Evelyn Künneke from Berlin had switched to Mendelson in 1948, where she took, among other things, Der Blaue Montag / Der schönste Mann vom Rio Grande (June 13, 1949), Kleines Herz zu rent (March 9, 1950; 8359, 7478) or with the Great Vienna Dance Orchestra SOS (Herz in Not) (January 26, 1951; # 8447, W 7644). Erwin Halletz & the Vienna Dance Orchestra immortalized When the negroes get a toothache on February 28, 1950. When Mendelson had many Austrian artists audition for recordings in September 1951, Peter Alexander was discovered. Alexander recorded more than 80 titles under the direction of Mendelson between September 27, 1951 ( Only the legs of Dolores / Bye bye my Hawaii are doing that ) and October 1954, before he moved to Kurt Feltz in Cologne in November 1954 and there on January 1, 1955 received a recording deal with Polydor . Feltz and other pop composers like Fini Busch , Heinz Gietz or Werner Scharfenberger were able to supply Peter Alexander with the necessary hit material.

Cooperation with Polydor

The fifties

In the spring of 1953, Mendelson and Polydor began working together with the help of the newly established "Polydor Production Facility South". In return, there was a suitable offshoot in Germany, the Deutsche Austrophon Schallplatten Vertriebs GmbH & Co. KG , which still exists today. At the beginning of 1954 a major tour of Germany was organized by Austrophon artists, during which Peter Alexander, Erni Bieler, Evelyn Künneke, Leila Negra and Erwin Halletz performed and were broadcast live on the radio.

Mendelson discovered Peter Alexander in September 1951, Peter Kraus in November 1956, and his first single was written in January 1957. In June 1957 the first hit parade note (rank 8) was produced with Susi Rock . Mendelson bought the rights to hit US songs in order to produce them with a German text with Peter Kraus. So in less than 8 years, 36 singles were created. That was the main reason why Kraus could never sell more than a million copies with a title, because the singles competed with each other through too short release cycles. Mendelson also discovered the US soldier Gus Backus who was stationed in Germany in June 1959 and produced a total of 51 titles with him, first recordings were German cover versions with the title Ab und zu ( A Fool Such As I by Elvis Presley ) and I'm sad if you go ( Have You Ever Had the Blues by Lloyd Price ).

When the German record market suffered a slump in sales in 1959, Mendelson was able to compensate for the Polydor losses in the hit segment with a new style: teenage music. So was Ted Herold produced from his second single of Mendelson for Polydor, but could only sing what Peter Kraus did not want to sing, or should. The first recording date was for Wunderbar wie Du kisses again today / Only the very first love is so beautiful on November 7th and 8th, 1958. Herold's greatest success, Moonlight , was also made in Vienna (April 14th, 1960). In 1959 he produced the first titles for the Austrian Lolita ( Stern der Tropennacht / Treu I want to stay with you ; both recorded on June 11, 1959). A total of at least 11 titles were created under his studio direction in 1959, including 6 for Gus Backus and 4 for Lolita. For the singer an A-side had already been determined with La Luna , but Mendelson was urgently looking for a song for the B-side and asked Fini Busch: "Write something on the back, it doesn't matter." He wanted to get the record out as quickly as possible, and so Seemann came about at short notice (your home is the sea) . Within a week, “Seemann” was preferred at the airplay and made it to second place, while La Luna landed behind in 30th place. With 2 million records sold worldwide, it was Mendelson's first million seller and should remain his greatest production success. In 1960, 18 titles produced by Mendelson appeared, including 9 for Backus ( Brown Bear and White Dove ; September 1960, # 16; Da spoke the old Indian chief ; December 1960, # 3) and 8 for Lolita.

The sixties

Mendelson had the pop singer Connie Francis , who was very successful in the USA, sang in German in Vienna, but her German-language singing was barely understandable. So he sent the recordings to Hamburg, where producer Bobby Schmidt continued to work on the title Love is a strange game . To do this, he cut out the unusable first verse, making the song one of the few German hits in which the verse begins with a key change a semitone higher after the first chorus . After its release in July 1960, the first German-language version of Connie Francis became her first number one hit in Germany. The music production, however, did not cause any difficulties, because the American record company MGM Records provided their German distribution partner Polydor with the original playback . Connie Francis ' first single, produced by Mendelson in Vienna, was once come again (composed by Werner Scharfenberger) / Always and everywhere (Erwin Halletz), was released in August 1961 and only reached rank 16. After Francis returned to Vienna in April 1962 was produced by Mendelson, the producer stayed in January / February 1963 for German-language recordings with Connie Francis in Las Vegas . Mendelson's further recording dates in Paris were scheduled for July 6 and 7, 1963.

In 1961 Mendelson was responsible for at least 22 titles as a producer, including 10 for Gus Backus ( The Man in the Moon ; August 1961, # 1) and 7 for Lolita, in 1962 he produced 23 hits, including 10 for Backus and 7 for Lolita. In that year, the title hot sand with Mina came on the market, which was created on February 5, 1962 in Studio III and sold 700,000 in Germany, 1.3 million copies worldwide, took first place in the German hit parade for 9 weeks and by Mendelson was produced. Shortly after Seemann , he was able to record his second million-dollar hit.

In the years that followed, Mendelson's productivity decreased noticeably. In 1963 he produced 8 tracks exclusively for Gus Backus, and in 1964 only 2 tracks for Backus. Between September 10 and 14, 1964, Mendelson oversees the recording sessions for 4 music tracks for German-language hits that Lesley Gore later sang about in New York. He built Dominique in 1965 as a German protest song interpreter . For this purpose, he resorted to Donovan's hit Universal Soldier , which was Germanized by Max Colpet as The Eternal Soldier and produced this song composed by Buffy Sainte-Marie with Dominique - but without any measurable success.

The seventies

He didn't reappear as a producer until 1971, when he oversaw 11 tracks exclusively for Freddy Quinn . The Eternal Soldier was covered by Juliane Werding in 1973 . The last artist Mendelsohn worked with before his death was the Bavarian blues singer Willy Michl . Mendelson produced his first two albums Blues goes to Mountain (1974) and 1975 Blues & Ballads .

Others

There was a certain division of labor between Mendelson and Kurt Feltz, because Mendelson oriented himself on wild west hits and teenage melodies, Feltz in Cologne on the southern European and wanderlust trend. Mendelson produced most of the titles for Gus Backus (51), followed by Lolita at 29. Mendelson, together with his wife Helene and Günther Brabbée, ran the “Concert Directorate Europe” and various other companies in the music industry. Mendelson benefited in Vienna from low production costs because they were tax-favored. When the Vienna Ministry of Finance lifted the tax exemption for music productions, Mendelson had to leave Austria due to high tax back payments. This ended the subsidized era of German hit productions in Austria for the time being. Today, Austrophon-Schallplatten-Studio GmbH has its headquarters in Leopoldstadt, Vienna . For example, the LP diving - Prokopetz * / DÖF - Codo ... Düse Im Sauseschritt for DÖF was recorded here on June 3, 1983 as part of the Neue Deutsche Welle .

literature

• Erwin Barta / Reinhold Westphal, Hello! Swing-Swing !: light music from the forties and fifties in the Wiener Konzerthaus , January 2004.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wer ist tu , Der Spiegel 40/1963 of October 2, 1963, p. 104 f.
2. ↑ Peter Kraus, I Love Rock'n 'Roll , 2006, p. 73.
3. ^ Bettina Greve, Sternenhimmel: Polydor - The Chronicle of a German Record Brand , 2001, p. 107.
4. ^ Bettina Greve, Sternenhimmel: Polydor - The Chronicle of a German Record Brand , 2001, p. 108.
5. ↑ Karin Sommer: The Sailor, the Sugar Baby and the Schützenliesl: What would the German hit be without Fini Busch? ( Memento of the original from August 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in: at times. History magazine for Munich, No. 2, Musikalisches München, May 1998, pp. 32–33. 
6. ^ Joseph Murrells, Million Selling Records , 1985, 144.
7. ↑ Gerhard "Bobby" Schmidt was once the drummer in Kurt Edelhagen's band
8. ^ Bettina Greve, Sternenhimmel: Polydor - The Chronicle of a German Record Brand , 2001, p. 122.
9. ↑ German News Notes , Billboard magazine of 18 July 1960 p. 9
10. ↑ That was the basis of the US million dollar Everybody's Somebody's Fool by Connie Francis
11. ↑ Germany , Billboard magazine from August 28, 1961, p. 23.
12. ↑ Germany , Billboard magazine of January 26, 1963, p. 28.
13. ↑ Der Musikmarkt, 30 Years of Singles Hit Parade , 1989, p. 20.
14. ^ Austria , Billboard-Magazin of October 27, 1962, p. 29.
15. ↑ Colpet actually planned the German version for Marlene Dietrich
16. ↑ Harry Fuchs, Austropop - History of the Origin, Framework Conditions and Relevance of a National Popular Music Culture , 2007, p. 54 f.