Bert Kaempfert - Biography
By J Poet
Bert Kaempfert was a German pianist, bandleader, arranger, recording artist, producer and songwriter. He produced the first Beatles recordings as backing musicians for Tony Sheridan on “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” “When the Saints Go Marching In,” “Ain't She Sweet,” and “Cry for a Shadow,” but didn’t like the band enough to sign them. As a songwriter he penned some of the most popular pop tunes of the 20th Century including “Strangers in the Night,” “Spanish Eyes,” “Danke Schoen,” “Wooden Heart,” “L-O-V-E,” and “Swingin' Safari,” which became the theme song of the American TV show The Match Game. He seldom toured with his studio band until his later years when he assembled a group to play his charts of big band standards. He died suddenly at his estate on Majorca in 1980.
Kaempfert was born in Hamburg to a poor family, but when he was six years old he was hit by a taxi and won a 600-deutschmark settlement, a fortune in 1929. His parents let him use the money to buy a piano and attend Wilhelm Witt’s music school in Wilhelmsburg. Later he went to the Hamburg Conservatory where he studied big band arranging, clarinet and accordion. He was playing professionally with the Hans Busch Orchestra when he was 16. Kaempfert was drafted into the German Navy during WW II and played in a naval band, but was captured and spent the rest of the war at a POW camp in Denmark where he put together his first orchestra, Pic Ass (Ace of Spades.) After the war, Pic Ass toured American officers’ clubs on the continent. He worked for a while as an arranger and music writer for the British Forces Network, leading his own Berthold Kämpfert Orchester at night. He also started composing music.
In 1952, Polydor signed him as an A&R man, producer and composer. In 1959 he produced “Die Gitarre und das Meer (The Guitar and the Sea)” for Freddy Quinn; it became one of the first German post war pop hits. His own recording of “Mitternachts Blues (Midnight Blues)” was a #6 single and a hit on the Armed Forces Network in Europe. He also produced “Morgen” for Ivo Robic, still one of the biggest hits in German music history and another international success. When his own record label seemed uninterested in Kaempfert’s music, he went to New York and signed with Decca. His first album April In Portugal (1959 Decca) was more dance oriented than the rest of his albums, with Ladi Geisler’s punchy bass (he damped the stings after plucking them to kill the sustain, giving the bass a fat, percussive attack) an innovative part of his sound. The expansive arrangements took advantage of the new stereo recording system with dazzling spatial effects. His second album, Wonderland By Night (1960 Decca) was named after Kaempfert’s first international instrumental hit. He was now a pop star.
When Elvis Presley was stationed in Germany in 1960, his people contacted Kaempfert to write songs for his movie G.I. Blues and he gave them “Wooden Heart,” a rewrite of the folk song “Muß i denn zum Städtele hinaus.” It was a worldwide hit for Elvis and made #1 in the US in a cover version by Joe Dowell. In 1961 Kaempfert produced a single for a British singer named Tony Sheridan and hired a band he’d seen at the Top Ten Club to back him up. The band was The Beat Brothers - Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Stu Sutcliff and Pete Best. He didn’t think the band was ready for the big time and didn’t sign them.
Meanwhile his own recording career was in high gear. His instrumental albums - The Wonderland Of Bert Kaempfert (1960 Decca), Dancing In Wonderland (1960 Decca), With A Sound In My Heart (1961 Decca), Afrikaan Beat (1962 Decca) named after another Kaempfert hit, That Latin Feeling (1963 Decca), Blue Midnight (1964 Decca) and The Magic Music Of Far Away Places (1964 Decca) – sold well all over the world. In 1965 Kaempfert scored the Sandra Dee, James Garner film A Man Could Get Killed. One of the melodies from the score was given English lyrics by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder and as “Strangers In The Night” it was an international hit for Frank and Nancy Sinatra as well as Ivo Robic. “Strangers” became a pop standard with over 500 covers to date. The instrumental version is included on A Man Could Get Killed Soundtrack (1966 Decca) and Strangers In The Night (1966 Decca.) (A lawsuit over the authorship of the music - Ralph Chicorel and Kaempfert’s friend Herbert Rehbein claim they’d written or contributed to the tune - dragged on for years and was finally settled out of court with no public announcement of the outcome.)
Kaempfert composed other pop hits in the 60s. Wayne Newton launched his career with “Danke Schoen” in 1963, “L-O-V-E” became Nat “King” Cole’s last hit in 1965, Dean Martin scored in 1967 with “I Can't Help Remembering You,” “Lady” was a #1 smash for Jack Jones in 1967 and Sammy Davis Jr. hit with “Lonely Is The Name” in 1968. Kaempfert seldom took his band out on the road, but his studio work produced classics like The World We Knew (1967 Decca), The Kaempfert Touch (19670 Decca), Orange Colored Sky (1971 Decca), Fabulous Fifties and New Delights (1973 MCA), To The Good Life (1973 MCA) and The Most Beautiful Girl (1974 MCA.)
Kaempfert divided his time between the studio in Hamburg and his holiday homes in Mallorca and the Florida Everglades. In the mid-70s, he started touring regularly with his orchestra. Live In London (1974 Polydor UK) captured the band at its on stage best, and they also made Moon Over Miami, (1975 MCA) Kaempfert '76 (1976 Polydor), Tropical Sunrise, (1977 Polydor) and Swing (1978 Polydor), a tribute to the big bands that originally inspired him. In June of 1980 he capped a British tour with a sold out show at the Royal Albert Hall. He returned to Mallorca to plan a new album and an extended world tour, but died suddenly on June 21.
In 1993 Kaempfert was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. His entire recorded catalogue is still in print, a tribute to the timelessness of his sound. The three disc sets Bert Kaempfert Originals Box Set Vol. 1 (2004 Universal Germany) and Bert Kaempfert Originals Box Set Vol. 2 (2004 Universal Germany) give you most of what you’ll need. The 15 volume German Polydor set Good Life Music updates 17 classic albums with sparkling digital sound. Titles include Blue Midnight, Strangers In The Night, Orange Colored Sky, Swing, Tropical Sunrise, That Latin Feeling, Love Letters, One Lonely Night, Free and Easy, A Swingin’ Safari, Safari Swings Again, The World We Knew, Love That Bert Kaempfert, The Kaempfert Touch, Yesterday and Today and Forever My Love.
