You are here

About This Site

This site provides a comprehensive discography for Bert Kaempfert, the late German composer, arranger and orchestra leader. The Bert Kaempfert page is a fan tribute site and is not affiliated with Polydor Records or Bert Kaempfert Music.

The bulk of the discography is being constructed from Bert Kaempfert: The complete Discographie, a large database of every known Kaempfert recording that was compiled by Hans-Jürgen van der Heide (Germany), Karl-Walter Dorninger (Austria), Friedrich Düll (Germany) and Nils Folke Persson (Thailand). I'm slowly scanning CD covers and will seek assistance from fans in the near future.

About Bert Kaempfert

Eventually, I hope to create a separate biography page at this site. For now, please consult the Wikipedia article on Bert Kaempfert.

About Doug

Ingo Stein, Warren Pischke, Doug Mitchell and Ken Conlin
Kaempfert fans Ingo Stein, Warren Pischke, Doug Mitchell
and Ken Conlin at Ray Conniff recording sessions in 1999

My musical interests lie mainly with Billboard Top 40 hits from the 1950s through the 1980s. In the late 1970s, I became fascinated with the big-band sound of Ray Conniff's early instrumental records.

In 1996, fellow Conniff fan Ken Conlin (who has since created internet station Humboldt 101) sent me a homemade compilation of Kaempfert tunes and told me to give it a try. While some of it was a bit lush for my tastes, certain recordings stuck with me and I began buying the early Taragon reissues.

Although I'm not a fan of everything he recorded - and I don't listen to it every day - I am hooked on the music enough to collect all of the works of Bert Kaempfert.

About Technology

I met Richard Stallman in 1984 and learned of his newly launched GNU Project. He was a panel participant at Wang Institute's Distinguished Lecturer Series representing very unusual, and controversial, ideas regarding the problems of software piracy and licensing. He thought everything should be free; I thought he was nuts.

Today I can't imagine working without free tools and have fully embraced open source software. All of the software used to host this site is free:

  • Linux, a Unix-like operating system
  • Apache HTTP Server
  • PHP, a server-side scripting language
  • MySQL, a relational database management system
  • Drupal, a content management framework

The only cost for this site - besides my time - is for hosting. However, thanks to virtual machines, I don't have to pay much.