Randall Wulff

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Randall Aldon Wulff (* 1954 in Calgary ) is a Canadian singer-songwriter who has recorded at least two music albums under the pseudonyms Lewis and Lewis Baloue since 1983 and recorded songs for up to ten other albums. The pseudonym Randy Duke can also be assigned to him. Wulff's records were initially ignored and forgotten until the Lewis album L'Amourrediscovered after more than 20 years and republished in 2014 with extensive coverage in North American and European media. The singer's identity only became public when this album was re-released.

Biographical information

The biographical information on Randall Wulff is largely based on the press releases of the record label Light In The Attic (German: Licht auf dem Dachboden) from Seattle , which in 2014 re-released two albums by Wulff from the 1980s. Employees of the label were the only media representatives who had contact with Wulff in 2014. Numerous North American and European media outlets replicated the story spread by Light In The Attic in 2014 and beyond .

According to Light In The Attic 2014

According to Light In The Attic , Wulff was born in Calgary in 1954 as the youngest of four children of Earl and Gladys Wulff. The father was a police officer, the mother a saleswoman. In the late 1970s, Wulff worked with a brother as a stockbroker in Calgary and New York City , where he became wealthy. A contemporary witness indicates that Wulff did not always pay out all profits to his investors or business partners. In the 1980s, Wulff lived mostly in New York and was a frequent guest in nightclubs there, where he also had contact with celebrities. In this context, Christie Brinkley is mentioned, among others , a world-famous photo model at the time who did not rule out meeting Wulff in New York in 2014 when asked. In the early 1980s, he lost contact with some members of his family. In 1983 Wulff left New York spontaneously and traveled to Los Angeles , where his first music album was created. In 1985 he produced a second album under unexplained circumstances; after that his trace was lost. After several years of searching, employees of Light In The Attic found him in the summer of 2014 in an unnamed city in western Canada - probably Vancouver - where he was available for a short interview. He said that he would continue to make music but not be interested in his old recordings; he did not want to earn any money with them and refused a royalty payment from Light In The Attic .

This information did not go unchallenged. During the summer of 2014, some authors criticized the lack of verifiability of the quasi-official representations of Light In The Attic and questioned their accuracy; As an alternative, a journalist brought up the thesis that Lewis or Wulff was just a clever impostor. In a forum there is substantially different information on some details from Wulff's life in the 1970s and 1980s. One publication saw parallels with the fictional music project Cosmic Runner .

There has been no news about Wulff since 2015.

Maxim 2015

In the spring of 2015, journalists from the men's magazine Maxim managed to get in touch with Wulff. In an interview conducted in Vancouver, he added to the information that Light In The Attic had spread. After that, in the 1980s, he lived together for a while in Hawaii with Doris Duke , who was born in 1912 and was at times the "richest girl in the world", and had contact with numerous artists such as David Lean and George Harrison . In the middle of the decade, Wulff returned to Canada to take care of his father who had had an accident. He said nothing about the backgrounds and motifs for his early albums here, as he did before to Light In The Attic . Maxim pointed out that Wulff's information could not be verified.

Rediscovery in 2014

"Mystery"

Wulff's music albums produced in the 1980s had no response on the market and were considered forgotten. The rediscovery of L'Amour at the beginning of the 21st century and its re-release by Light In The Attic in 2014 triggered a hype around the singer, which was intensified by the fact that at that time nothing about him was publicly known and not even secured seemed as if he was still alive. The singer was considered missing at the time. In the early summer of 2014, the German magazine Der Spiegel called it “the ghost in the white convertible”, for another author it was a “mystery in the information age ”.

Process of rediscovery

The worldwide spread story of the search for the singer is essentially based on the information provided by Light in the Attic . The starting point for the development was the accidental discovery of a copy of the Lewis album L'Amour on a flea market in the Canadian city of Edmonton . As a result of positive reviews in specialist forums, the interest in the production among enthusiasts gradually increased so strongly that over 1500 dollars were paid on eBay and similar exchanges in 2012 for a used Lewis album from the 1980s.

In the fall of 2013, Light in the Attic began planning a re-release of the Lewis album L'Amour on CD . In the course of the production process, research began on the person of the singer, which was initially linked to the artist's name. Because of the similarity of the combination of pseudonym and album title, there was at times speculation about a connection to the western writer Louis L'Amour . Lewis' real name became known through the cover photo of L'Amour and its photographer, after which investigations led to Canada, without further information on the whereabouts of the singer was known. Light In The Attic spread this fact when L'Amour was launched in June 2014. Only in August 2014, after another Lewis album with Romantic Times had reappeared and also re-released by Light in the Attic , Wulff was tracked down in August 2014 in an unnamed Canadian city. In a short conversation he did not reveal any information about himself.

doubt

There are doubts about this version, however. The author Mike Bell of the Calgary Herald, for example, thinks the official story is "too perfect and too perfectly crazy" and suspects it was primarily a marketing ploy to help sell the old recordings. One of the reasons for doubt is that several long-forgotten recordings allegedly surprisingly appeared in quick succession.

Pseudonyms

Wulff used various pseudonyms for his music recordings.

  • Lewis: The stage name Lewis, used in 1983, is linked to the last name of Wulff's great-grandmother.
  • Lewis Baloue: So far there is no explanation for the surname Baloue used in 1985.
  • Randy Duke: Randy is a short form of the first name Randall, while Duke has a parallel to the billionaire Doris Duke, with whom Wulff allegedly lived for a number of years.

Discography

Randall Wulff can be assigned two original albums without a doubt: L'Amour from 1983 and Romantic Times from 1985. The label specified was the - actually nonexistent - company RAW Productions in Beverly Hills , whose name corresponds to the first letters of Wulff's full real name and none released further records. The technical production of the albums, including the pressing of the records, was carried out in both cases by the Californian specialty company Rainbo Records. How many copies of the two albums were made in the 1980s is not documented. There are no references to the company that took over any sales. It is also unclear to what extent L'Amour and Romantic Times even came into regular trade. It cannot be ruled out that the finished records may have been brought onto the market with a time delay via stock sales.

1983: L'Amour

Randall Wulff's first album was L'Amour from 1983. With him he used the pseudonym Lewis. According to general, but not uncontested opinion, the album was recorded in the Music Lab Studio in Los Angeles . L'Amour contains ten songs, the author of which is given as "Lewis". Stylistically, the music is described as "enigmatic synthesizer folk" (enigmatic synthie folk) . In addition to the guitar, synthesizers dominate the accompanying music . The cover photo shows a portrait of the singer with his torso bare. The picture is black and white and overexposed. On some copies there is a sticker on the cover, on which the last song of the album is dedicated to the model Christie Brinkley.

L'Amour did not become the subject of reviews until 2014. One author considered it "the best album of 2014, but it came 31 years too late."

1985: Romantic Times

1985 Wulff released the album Romantic Times under the pseudonym Lewis Baloue . The cover photo shows Wulff in a white suit in front of a white Mercedes SL Cabriolet and a jet plane. The songs correspond in style and arrangement to the concept of L'Amour .

More albums and recordings

Shortly after Romantic Times , the album Love Ain't No Mystery was released in autumn 2014 and a little later also Hawaiian Breeze with the vocals of Wulff; the pseudonym Randy Duke is used for him. Both are not original albums. They contain recordings that he made in the Fiasco Bros. Studio in Vancouver in the late 1990s and that were not processed into albums at the time. Her style stands out from the albums of the 1980s. Len Osanic, a producer with Fiasco Bros., had rearranged Wulff's vocals with rearranged accompanying music without consulting him. Love Ain't No Mystery and Hawaiian Breeze were not released by Light In The Attic .

It is widely believed that Wulff recorded a number of other songs in Vancouver in the early 2000s that were never released. One source says material would be enough for 10 albums.

Web links

Links to articles about Randall A. Wulff

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Christoph Dallach: The ghost in the white convertible. spiegel.de, June 24, 2014, accessed on November 27, 2021 .
  2. ↑ Phil Hebblethwaite: 5 strange cases of 'lost' music suddenly being found. bbc.co.uk, February 8, 2017, accessed November 30, 2021 .
  3. ↑ a b Antoine Kharbachi: Dans la grande tradition des crooners maladivement timides. musique-journal.fr, September 24, 2019, accessed November 30, 2021 .
  4. ^ A b c d e Max Rivlin-Nadler: Looking for Lewis. maxim.org, June 30, 2015, accessed November 29, 2021 .
  5. ↑ Charles Taylor: Let Me Whisper In Your Ear. lareviewofbooks.org, July 6, 2014, accessed November 27, 2021 .
  6. ^ A b Sean Michaels: Lewis located: Enigmatic singer found sipping coffee in Canada. theguardian.com, August 11, 2014, accessed November 27, 2021 .
  7. ↑ a b Jeff Hicks: Mystery of long-lost artist has local link. therecord.com, August 15, 2014, accessed November 29, 2021 .
  8. ↑ a b Mike Bell: Legend of Calgary artist Lewis grows as more music discovered from elusive cult hero. calgaryherald.com, July 30, 2014, accessed November 27, 2021 .
  9. ↑ a b Derek Anderson: Lewis - a musical riddle, wrapped in a mystery, wrapped inside an enigma. dereksmusicblog.com, July 23, 2014, accessed November 27, 2021 .
  10. ↑ Doris Duke; 'Richest Girl in World' Is Remembered as Philanthropist. latimes.org, October 23, 1993, accessed November 30, 2021 .
  11. ^ Sarah Geffen: Lewis and Mystery in the Age of Information. pitchfork.com, August 6, 2014, accessed November 27, 2021 .
  12. ↑ Gregory Adams: The Mystery of L'Amour: Weirdo '80s synth dude captures the wallets of record nerds. thetyee.ca, July 24, 2014, accessed November 27, 2021 .
  13. ↑ a b Stephen M. Deusner: Lewis: L'amour. pitchfork.org, May 20, 2014, accessed November 27, 2021 .
  14. ↑ L'Amour on Discogs.com (accessed November 28, 2021).
  15. ↑ Stephen M. Deusner: Lewis: Romantic Times. pitchfork.com, August 1, 2014, accessed November 27, 2021 .
  16. ↑ As it Happens: The mystery of Canadian musician 'Lewis'. www.cbc.ca, August 1, 2014, accessed November 27, 2021 .
personal data
SURNAME Wulff, Randall
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wulff, Randall Aldon (full name); Lewis (pseudonym); Lewis Baloue (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian singer-songwriter
BIRTH DATE 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Calgary , Alberta , Canada