"I want to make music for everyone. It must be enjoyed by all. Otherwise it is pointless."
Includes four bonus tracks: What's Up With You (previously unreleased), Living Easy, Kiss Here Once With Feeling and Grey Eyes Make Me Blue.
Sound Engineer: Peter Klemt
Concept & Text: Bert Kaempfert Music, Hamburg
Translation: Angela Schumacher
Design: LOGICON HAMBURG
Polydor 533 909-2 (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.
Orange Colored Sky
ORANGE COLORED SKY, surely one of Bert Kaempfert's loveliest albums, is at last available on compact disc. Recorded in November 1970, the album was the first of his productions to use multi-track recording technique (eight sound tracks) and it has everything that the name of Bert Kaempfert conjures up: his typical rhythm with its pithy bass, smooth-as-silk arrangements for strings and chorus, stereo-like entries of the winds from the right and left, and plenty of trumpet solos.
The six new compositions by the team of Bert Kaempfert and Herbert Rehbein range from pleasantly easy-going numbers such as Tea And Trumpets and Friends via the more gentle While The Children Sleep to the shuffle of Wake Up And Live. Also heard on this disc are new and old hits by other composers covering a time-span of 50 years.
Bye Bye Blackbird and Apple Blossom Time are typical "Tin Pan Alley" songs from the '20s: the latter was one of the most popular hits of its day and a great success for the Andrew Sisters later.
The title-number Orange Colored Sky, composed by the accordion-playing band-leader Milton DeLugg, became famous in the 1950s in vocal versions by Nat "King" Cole and Betty Hutton; Cracklin' Rosie was Neil Diamond's very first Number 1 hit in the 1970s; and the rock group Blood, Sweat & Tears landed in the Top 20 with Hi-De-Ho.
Snowbird, perhaps the most effervescent arrangement in this compilation, is a Country and Western number which brought the Canadian singer Anne Murray a gold record in 1970; Bert Kaempfert's recording was immensely popular too and became a real radio hit, being played over and over again both in Germany and abroad.
Three of Kaempfert's loveliest compositions, Living Easy, Kiss Her Once With Feeling and Grey Eyes Make Me Blue, from the LP BERT KAEMPFERT NOW! (1971) are included as bonus tracks on this CD. Only recently a very special discovery was made: What's Up With You, recorded in 1973 and never released - definitely a small sensation for all Kaempfert friends and the world of music!