The new "single" by Mattiel caught my attention, though I didn't realise it was a cover version. Mattiel appears to have split from her longtime producer Jonah Swilley, so this new one is credited to Mattiel and Troy Stains... which sounds to me like something you'd clean off your wooden horse. No offence, Troy.
The original, it turns out, was a country hit back in the early 80s for Terri Gibbs... and it's just as good / even better (depending on your mileage) as Mattiel's version.
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.
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...
Cathy's Clown was the biggest hit of the Everly Brothers' career, spending five weeks at Number One in the US, seven weeks at Number One in the UK, and selling over 8 million copies worldwide.
Phil and Don argued over who wrote it, though the tune was allegedly nicked from a section of The Grand Canyon Suite by American composer Ferde Grofé. I had a listen and couldn't hear any similarity myself. The Everly's close harmony singing style was particularly influential on The Beatles (who iffypedia says "once toyed with the idea of calling themselves The Foreverly Brothers", but I'm not sure I believe that). There's certainly a similarity between Cathy's Clown and The Beatles' debut single...
All of which brings us to a man who also named himself after a song: John Wesley Hardin. Here he is in 1990 with his own sequel to the Everly Brothers' smash...
