I wonder if the first time I ever heard the name Bert Kaempfert, it was in the lyrics of the big 1999 hit by Canadian tongue-in-cheek indie band Barenaked Ladies. Here, this week's Bert shares the limelight with other notable names such as Harrison Ford, LeAnn Rimes, Akira Kurosawa and Sting. You know you've arrived...!
(By the way, that song reached Number One on the US charts. Guess how long it spent there?)
Sadly, Bert K died 19 years before the Barenaked Ladies claimed, "Bert Kaempfert's got the mad hits", so he had no idea how much his name would live on. But what were the "mad hits" from this German orchestra leader, multi-instrumentalist, music producer, arranger, and composer?
Well, for one, here's a tune made famous by Wayne Newton in the States... though arguably made much more famous by one Ferris Bueller in 1986...
Those of you who are familiar with that movie (and if not, why not?) will recall that Ferris follows up with his take on The Beatles' version of Twist & Shout. And Bert K had his own Beatles connection, hiring the Fab Four to back Tony Sheridan in 1961 for their first commercially released recordings... which led to their discovery by Brian Epstein.
Bert K was also one of the songwriters responsible for turning German folk song "Muss i denn" into this two minute pop smash...
Here are a few more mad hits Mr. Kaempfert had some kind of involvement with...
And here's one we used to play in wind band...
Mad hits indeed. But perhaps the maddest of them all was probably my dad's favourite song. Whenever I hear this tune, written by Bert K, I can hear my dad whistling it in his workshop.
The lyrics were added later by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder, and it became a huge hit for old blue eyes... even though he called it "a piece of shit" and "the worst fucking song that I have ever heard." The Chairman thought it was about a love affair between two men, you see. Unthinkable!
Although Bert Kaempfert is still credited as the composer, a number of other interested parties would later claim ownership of this tune, though a Parisian judge decided in 1971 that there was no case for plagiarism because many songs were based on "similar constant factors".
Perhaps the greatest legacy of Strangers In The Night is that it gave Sinatra the opportunity to scat-sing "doo-be-doo-be-doo" as the record fades out... thereby giving a name to the world's best-loved ghost-chasing Great Dane...
Zoinks!
Bertie approves.
Next week... Scotland's answer to Bob Dylan.