Engelbert Humperdinck (singer)
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Engelbert Humperdinck (singer) |
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Madras, India
Genre(s)
Easy
listening, pop
Instrument(s)
Vocalist
Years active
1956-present
Engelbert Humperdinck (b. Arnold George Dorsey, May 2, 1936, Madras, India) is a well-known Anglo-Indian pop singer who rose to international fame during the 1960s, after adopting the name of the famous German opera composer as his own stage name.
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One of ten children of a British Army officer and his British wife, Arnold George Dorsey's family migrated to Leicester, England when he was ten, and a year later he showed an interest in music and began learning the saxophone. By the early 1950s, he was playing in nightclubs, but he's believed not to have tried singing until he was seventeen and friends coaxed him into entering a pub contest. His impression of Jerry Lewis prompted friends to begin calling him Gerry Dorsey, a name he worked under for almost a decade.
His budding music career was interrupted when he served in the
British military in the mid-1950s, but he got his first chance to
record in 1958,
when Decca
Records gave him a chance. His first single, "I'll Never Fall in Love
Again," was anything but a hit, but Dorsey and the label would reunite
almost a decade later with far different results. Dorsey continued
working the clubs until 1961,
when he was stricken with tuberculosis. He regained his health
but returned to club work with little success, until, in 1966, he teamed with
an old roommate named Gordon Mills who had become a
music impresario and the manager of
Aware that Dorsey had been struggling several years to make it
in music, Mills suggested a name change to the more arresting Engelbert
Humperdinck, borrowed from the composer of such operas as
Even in a year dominated by psychedelic rock music, "Release Me"'s success may not have been that surprising, considering Frank Sinatra's chart comeback that began a year earlier, and stablemate Tom Jones's success with a ballad or two in the interim, both of which probably opened some new room for more traditionally-styled singers. "Release Me" was believed to sell 85,000 copies a day at the height of its popularity, and the song became the singer's signature song for many years.
Humperdinck's deceptively easygoing style and casually elegant
good looks, a contrast to stablemate Tom Jones's energetic attack and
overtly sexual style, earned Humperdinck a large following,
particularly among women. "Release Me" was followed up by two more hit
ballads, "There Goes My Everything"
and "
The hits kept coming---he charted with "Am I That Easy To Forget," "A Man Without Love," "Les Bicyclettes del Belsize," "The Way It Used To Be," "I'm A Better Man," and "Winter World of Love" before the 1960s ended and the 1970s were truly underway; he scored with such albums as The Last Waltz, The Way It Used To Be, A Man Without Love, and Engelbert Humperdinck. So did his own television program, though it didn't last as long as Jones's program did, being cancelled after six months.
As top 40 radio became less hospitable to his kind of balladry and a few Broadway influences found their way into his music, Humperdinck concentrated on selling albums and on live performances, developing lavish stage presentations that made him a natural for Las Vegas and similar venues. He wasn't entirely a stranger to hit singles, however---"After the Lovin'," a rhythmic ballad recorded for Mills's MAM Records (and released through Epic, a CBS subsidiary, in the United States), became one of the biggest hits of his career in 1976 and earned the singer a Grammy Award nomination for the album of the same name.
It was a conscious effort to update his music and his image. "I don't like to give people what they have already seen," Humperdinck was quoted as saying in a 1992 tourbook. "I take the job description of 'entertainer' very seriously! I try to bring a sparkle that people don't expect and I get the biggest kick from hearing someone say 'I had no idea you could do that!'" He also defended his fan mania, which helped him continue to sell records when radio play dried up for him. "They are very loyal to me and very militant as far as my reputation is concerned," Humperdinck had told Sherwood. "I call them the spark plugs of my success."
But he later revealed that he had little if any say in the selection of songs for his albums, a fact that had sometimes brought into question whether he was his own or his manager's or record label's pawn. As his career moved on, however, Humperdinck began gaining more creative freedom, and his albums accordingly brought several kinds of songs into his reach beyond syrupy ballads. But he kept romance at the core of his music regardless, and he's long since been tagged by fans as "the King of Romance."
By the 1980s, approaching his fiftieth birthday, Humperdinck continued recording albums regularly and performing as many as two hundred concerts a year---yet managed somehow to maintain a strong semblance of family life. He and his wife, Patricia, raised four children, all of whom are said to have become involved, eventually, in their father's career, even as the family alternated between homes in England and in southern California.
He was awarded a star on the
Humperdinck—who changed his name legally to his stage name at the height of his career (though he's known in Germany and Austria merely as Engelbert; the composer's heirs had sued him over his stage name adoption)—hit the top 5 British album charts in 2000 with Engelbert At His Very best, and returned to the album top 5 four years later, after he appeared in a John Smiths advertisement.
In August 2005, Humperdinck auctioned his Harley-Davidson motorcycle on eBay to raise money for the County Air Ambulance in Leicestershire, where he spent so much of his British youth. [1]
Engelbert Humperdinck bought the famed
His only daughter,
Eddie Izzard has an entire section about Engelbert Humperdinck as part of his Dress to Kill routine where Izzard speculates on other possible stage names for Humperdinck including Zangelbert Bingledack, Wingelbert Humptyback, and Slut Bunwalla.
Humperdinck appeared in a Christmas commercial for the office
supplies store
Humperdinck performed the introduction music "Little Boxes" on Season 2, Episode 3 of Showtime's comedy series Weeds in 2006.
Chris LeDoux mentions Humperdinck in his song "Honky Tonk World", released in 1994. It includes the line, "Don't even think that your Engelbert Humperdinck record's gonna turn her on." Ironically, the song was covered by Humperdinck on his 2006 album "Totally Amazing".
In an episode of Arthur, "The World of Tomorrow; Is there a Doctor in the House?" Binky travels to the future and greets someone named Thruster whom he mistakes for Buster. When Thruster asks his name he replies, "and my name is Engelbert Humperdinck." to which Thruster refers to him until he travels back.
Engelbert and Jimi Hendrix were on the same package tour as the Walker Brothers and Cat Stevens in 1967 and surprisingly the two got on quite well.
| Year | Title | US Chart Position | UK Chart Position | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 1967 | "Release Me (And Let Me Love Again)" | #4 | #1 | |
| May | 1967 | "There Goes My Everything" | #20 | #2 | |
| August | 1967 | " |
#25 | #1 | |
| January | 1968 | "Am I That Easy to Forget" | #18 | #3 | ¹ |
| April | 1968 | "A Man Without Love (Quando M'Innamoro)" | #19 | #2 | |
| September | 1968 | "Les Bicyclettes de Belsize" | #31 | #5 | |
| February | 1969 | "The Way It Used To Be" | #42 | #3 | |
| August | 1969 | "I'm A Better Man" | #38 | #15 | |
| November | 1969 | "Winter World Of Love" | #16 | #7 | |
| May | 1970 | "My Marie" | #43 | #31 | |
| September | 1970 | "Sweetheart" | #47 | #22 | |
| May | 1971 | "When There's No You" | #45 | – | ¹ |
| September | 1971 | "Another Time, Another Place" | #43 | #13 | |
| March | 1972 | "Too Beautiful To Last" | #86 | #14 | |
| August | 1972 | "In Time" | #69 | - | |
| December | 1972 | "I Never Said Goodbye" | #61 | - | |
| June | 1973 | "I'm Leavin' You" | #99 | - | |
| October | 1973 | "Love Is All" | #91 | #44 | |
| November | 1975 | "This Is What You Mean To Me" | #102 | - | |
| October | 1976 | "After The Lovin'" | #8 | – | ² |
| June | 1977 | "Goodbye My Friend" | #97 | - | |
| December | 1978 | "This Moment In Time" | #58 | – | ¹ |
| March | 1980 | "Love's Only Love" | #83 | - | |
| July | 1983 | "Til You And Your Lover Are Lovers Again" | #77 | - | |
| March | 1988 | "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You" | – | #93 | |
| January | 1999 | "Quando Quando Quando" | – | #40 | |
| May | 2000 | "How To Win Your Love" | – | #59 |
¹ #1 Adult Contemporary hit for 1 week
² #1 Adult Contemporary hit for 2 weeks
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