Michael Wilke

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Michael Wilke (born August 15, 1929 in Bremen ; † January 25, 2017 ) was a German lyricist , composer , music publisher , music producer and author .

Live and act

Michael Wilke was the youngest son of the singer Lale Andersen and the painter Paul Ernst Wilke from Bremerhaven. He spent his childhood from 1931 to 1936 in the children's home Dr. Bossard in Unter-Ägeri in Switzerland and until 1940 in Bremerhaven with his grandmother.

When his mother had achieved some fame and financial security through engagements and record deals, she let him come to Berlin. In August 1943, however, he came to live with friends in Baden-Baden (in view of the constant air raids on the Reich capital). Mother and son experienced the end of the war on the North Sea island of Langeoog .

In 1946 Michael Wilke took up private music studies with Helmuth Vogt in Hamburg, moved to the “Conservatory for Music” in Hamburg Klein-Flottbek in 1949, but had to end his studies in the fall of 1950 because of a complicated splinter fracture of his right wrist. He began an apprenticeship as a music dealer in the large assortment and music publisher August Seith in Munich. In 1949 he became a member of GEMA in the lyricist division, four years later he received full membership of GEMA.

Meanwhile he composed songs for his mother's repertoire, such as B. “Lighthouse light”, “He does not wear bebop pants” and “A brightly painted cradle”. After passing the music dealer examination, he started working for his own music publisher, Edition Pacific, founded in 1952. Was moved Dixieland -music such. B. the "Crazy Dixie", who came to the RIAS on the hit parade. A version of the composition “ When the Saints Go Marching In ” with the German title “Trompeten-Joe” was also published by his publisher, which is protected in America . He also dedicated himself to the so-called upscale light music by well-known and internationally known composers such as George Melachrino , Toni Leutwiler , Ernst Hildebrand , Josef Niessen and Stanley Laudan , whose piano concerto “Rhapsody For Elizabeth” became very well known.

From 1954 to 1964 Michael Wilke was editor-in-chief at Musikverlag Chappel & Co. GmbH in Munich and appeared as a copywriter under the pseudonym Cornelius Crohn. Well-known successes from his pen were: "Play me an old melody", "Oklahoma", "Sailor's Boogie", "Flamingo", "Carioca", "The Lady Is a Tramp" and the like. a. He was also responsible for the production of orchestral materials for the Ralph Maria Siegel music publishers, for the Munich Symphony Orchestra Kurt Graunke and other composers.

From 1971 he worked as a music producer: recordings were made with Hans Schobert , Werner Bähler , Erwin Lehn and Heinz Schönberger . In 1977 he founded the Main Stream Power Band and produced 72 recordings with it in classic big band style, whose LP “A Date With Swing” was nominated for the German Record Prize by the German Phono Academy. In 1978 he founded the record label MWM Records.

From 2010 to 2013 Wilke published his autobiography Künstlerkind in three volumes in a self- publishing house . The first volume includes the memoirs of the years 1939–1946 based on his diaries, the second volume, Jugendjahre, the period from 1947 to 1954, and the third volume, the years thereafter.

From his marriage to his second wife Brigitta in 1963 and 1967, the children Nicholas - today the owners of wilke.tv - and Daniela emerged. Michael Wilke last lived with his wife Renate on Mallorca and temporarily in Penzberg in Upper Bavaria, where he was buried in close family on February 1st, 2017.

Fonts

  • Artist child. German Literature Society, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3940490124 (out of print)
  • Artist child II. Adolescence. German Literature Society, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3862159666 (out of print)
  • Artist child III. Deutsche Literaturgesellschaft, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3920719009 (remaining copies available from his son Nicholas)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lale Andersen Archives
personal data
SURNAME Wilke, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lyricist, composer, music publisher and music producer
DATE OF BIRTH August 15, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 2017