"I want to make music for everyone. It must be enjoyed by all. Otherwise it is pointless."
Includes five bonus tracks: Games People Play, Are We Becoming Strangers, Love Me Happy, Sunset Melody (previously unissued) and Honeymoon (previously unissued).
Sound Engineer: Peter Klemt
Concept & Text: Bert Kaempfert Music, Hamburg
Translation: Angela Schumacher
Design: LOGICON HAMBURG
2/8/2010 - Nils Folke Persson posted to a music group that the songs "Are We Becoming Strangers" and "Love Me Happy" are correctly labeled on this CD and that the titles were mixed up on the original TRACES OF LOVE Lp (both Polydor and Decca) as well as the Polydor and Taragon CD reissues.
Polydor 537 470-2 (deleted)
Biography
Bert Kaempfert's great breakthrough came in 1960 with his No. 1 hit in the USA, Wonderland By Night, which went on to conquer the world. He was the first German bandleader to be awarded a gold record in the USA. DJs in the American music magazine Cash Box voted his orchestra "Band of the Future."
In 1968 Bert Kaempfert won no less than five of the annual BMI awards in New York in the category of "most played compositions" for Lady, Spanish Eyes, Strangers In The Night, Sweet Maria and The World We Knew.
In 1974 "Mr. Invisible" received triumphant applause at his first two live concerts in London's Royal Albert Hall. At the early age of 56, Bert Kaempfert died of a stroke on 21 June 1980. That his music and compositions have a firm place in international music life is emphasized by numerous posthumous awards. In June 1993 he was elected to "The Songwriters' Hall of Fame" in New York - the first German to receive this most prestigious of all international awards.
One Lonely Night
ONE LONELY NIGHT, recorded in Hamburg in October 1968 and released at that time in America under the title WARM AND WONDERFUL, is now being released for the very first time on compact disc. Melodies chosen with great care and frequently played in their day by American radio stations are presented here in an elegant, swinging "continental style" by Bert Kaempfert and his Orchestra. The soloists are Werner Gutterer on the trumpet and Herb Geller on the flute.
The six original compositions by Bert Kaempfert and Herbert Rehbein range from dreamy, tranquil numbers such as Only In Your Arms and Our Street Of Love to the swinging Petula and the snappy, Spanish-sounding Maltese Melody, a work which also inspired Herb Alpert And His Tijuana Brass to enter the recording studio and brought him great success. The remaining titles are all old favorites and top hits in their day.
Frequently heard in films, I May Be Wrong was originally composed for the revue entitled "John Murray Anderson’s Almanac" of 1929 and constituted the only really great success of its writers, Henry Sullivan and Harry Ruskin. Some Of These Days, composed as early as 1910 by Shelton Brooks, gave the career of American singer and actress Sophie Tucker a tremendous thrust: the song became her signature tune and rendered the title for her autobiography.
One Morning In May was composed in 1934 by the great American songwriter Hoagy Carmichael; it was one of his personal favorites and became famous through recordings by Tommy Dorsey and Sarah Vaughan amongst others. Can't Take My Eyes Off You, from 1967, brought the singer Frankie Valli a gold record and also proved a great success for The Letterman and Nancy Wilson. A gold disc was awarded also to Herb Alpert And His Tijuana Brass for his recording of This Guy's In Love With You, composed in 1968, one of the greatest hits ever to have been written during the Sixties by America's probably most successful songwriting duo of Burt Bacharach and Hal David; it was a top-ten hit for Bacharach's favorite performing artist Dionne Warwick.
Included in this CD are three bonus tracks from the album TRACES OF LOVE, produced in 1969. Sunset Melody and Honeymoon (both recorded around 1969/70) are, however, two previously unreleased compositions by the Kaempfert-Rehbein team which were recently discovered in the tape archive.