BERT KAEMPFERT
IN CELEBRATION OF HIS 80TH BIRTHDAY

Dear Marion, dear Doris, Hanseatic dignitaries, ladies and gentlemen…

If, as a German person in the United States, you respond to the question “What do you do?” with “I’m a composer,” you can be sure that the next question, quick as a flash, will be: “And do you know Bert Kaempfert?” For everybody in the US knows that, while there may be a few people in Germany who have made music or who are still making music, there’s only one who’s really well known: our Fips! And I’m not talking about the ’60s or ’70s! I’m talking about today!

Now, I’d have liked to have been able to reply to the second question with: “Yes, he was a friend of mine,” but, because we lived in different places and worked in different fields, I normally only met Bert Kaempfert at GEMA meetings – where we then of course talked shop a lot, amongst other things.

I have, though, been an ardent admirer of this great man all my life and have never had any difficulty admiring him, since I am not a member of Germany’s “club of the envious” which is very heavily subscribed to. Back in the ’50s I was already following Kaempfert’s work as an arranger for, amongst others, the Sikorski music publishers. I once even retranscribed an edition comprising all the parts for an S.O. – “S.O.”, amazing as it may sound today, stands for “Salon-Orchester” [palm court orchestra] – a printed version, in other words, which Berthold Kämpfert (as he was then called) had created. And I did this transcription, which involves combining all the individual parts into one single score, because I was keen to know how such an edition was constructed. And it was indeed well constructed, professional and had swing, for Fips could groove like the very devil. The title of the piece was Schade, gestern warst du süß wie Schokolade.

A few days ago I was looking at another arrangement of Berthold Kämpfert’s from that period: Cocktailparty mit Lotar Olias. From 1957. What you discover here in this combination of solid craftsmanship, musical honesty and skilful transitions is something you rarely find these days.

Yes, Berthold Kämpfert had simply learned his craft from the bottom up. At the so-called “town piper school”, which we music students in those days superciliously looked down upon. Which, though, was quite wrong, as we were later forced to acknowledge. The people who qualified from the municipal music schools – that was the proper name for the “town piper schools” – were actually superior to us in many ways as far as light music was concerned. They could sight-read better, had a broader repertoire, and generally knew more: they were, after all, way ahead of us in terms of practical experience since they played in front of audiences from very early on (Kaempfert at the tender age of 16). In short, there is no better training for a songwriter than to have “stripped”, which was the term we used when referring to performing in public. After all, what did they play? The really big hits, the world-famous numbers and – not to be sneezed at – the indigenous pop songs. The music that was often termed schmaltzy by the envious (the ones from that club with its lots of members). And you can learn a lot from these successful songs. The form. The content. And why people are so fond of this or that particular piece.

And that’s how our Fips (he got this name because he was the youngest in Hans Bund’s orchestra: thin and titchy, or “fipsig”, as we say here in Hamburg) moved from making music to writing music down. He wrote arrangements for countless artists, created printed arrangements for music publishers, and arrangements for singers on tour. He wrote his fingers to the bone. And he wrote his way to the top.

Then the first arrangements for records and productions. Mitternachts-Blues by Franz Grothe. A hit. Arrangements for his own sextet. For Freddy Quinn Die Gitarre und das Meer, and, above all, Unter fremden Sternen (“Fährt ein weißes Schiff nach Hongkong”), with, for the first time, authentic rock percussion! For Cindy Ellis, whose career came to an end before it had really begun. For Ivo Robic, that discovery from Yugoslavia, and the international hit Morgen by Peter Moesser. Also arranged with an international touch. America pricked up its ears. The original production made it to the top of the US charts. Sung in German! Then came the international hit Wonderland By Night. With a fascinating introduction. America pricked up its ears even more. They had seldom heard anything like this from Germany. And now the Kaempfert sound, the Bert Kaempfert Orchestra began to establish itself.

Everyone knows his truly disarmingly beautiful arrangements: Red Roses For A Blue Lady, Bye Bye Blues and Three O’Clock In The Morning. And – members of the “club of the envious” please note and underline in red: Bert Kaempfert had the idea of using a choir as an additional instrument to lend a softer touch to a big band even before Ray Coniff! The “cracking bass”, as it was also called in the States, became his trademark. But, above all else, it’s that leisurely calmness, that “well-rested” quality, indeed that sheer, so to speak epicurean, harmonic pleasure that distinguishes Kaempfert’s music and made it so successful internationally.

“ When you always have to do with other people’s music, you sometimes think: Actually you could do that, too.” An original Bert Kaempfert quote. But – if you’ll pardon my saying so – I thought exactly the same thing at the beginning. Probably everyone does. And Bert Kaempfert transformed his thoughts into action.

And from his pen, brilliant from the outset, flowed Afrikaan Beat, A Swinging Safari and Happy Trumpeter as well as the piece, initially an instrumental, called Moon Over Naples (on Heliodor!), which later became one of Bert’s greatest long runners under the title of Spanish Eyes. In Germany alone (thanks to the vigilant GEMA) it topped the band charts for years; it was the most-often (voluntarily) played piece in live music.

And finally the astonishing, eminently outstanding international success of Strangers In The Night. Included in the film A Man Could Be Killed as an instrumental piece, it was recognized as a melody by American publisher Hal Fein, who immediately marketed both versions, with Frank Sinatra finally taking the laurels.

I call him, our Bert Kaempfert, the sorcerer of sequences when I tell my students about him and try to explain what makes his compositions so lastingly successful. A sequence is a melodic phrase repeated at different pitches. Hänschen klein – to explain it in a musical layman’s terms – is one of the simplest sequences, with the phrase consisting of three notes, which is then repeated one note lower. A sequence is particularly easy to remember because the rhythm does not change when it is repeated. Our Fips knew that.

Yet what is a sequence without a touching melody? And the melody, as Charles Mingus said, “comes from God”. Puccini believed there was “no real music without melody”, and Mozart said “melody is the essence of music”. Composer Bert Kaempfert, however, was blessed with an abundance of melodic ideas: melodies just dropped into his lap. He only had to put them on paper, that is, write down the notes, and that again was something he was particularly good at.

And he came out with songs like Danke Schoen (his personal favourite), The World We Knew (Over and Over) and the unique L-O-V-E, often, too, in cooperation with the equally brilliant Herbert Rehbein, not infrequently called the “high priest of strings”. All the artists of standing played and sang Bert Kaempfert, from Herb Alpert to Al Martino, from Sammy Davis to Shirley Bassey – almost 200 famous names in all.

There is now, we are told, to be a street or square in Hamburg named after Bert Kaempfert. Of course he’s been deserving of this for a long time now. Yet I’m reminded of an occasion when I met Einzi Stolz, the widow of the great Robert Stolz. She said to me in all seriousness: “Christian, you must make sure you have a street named after you: only then are you somebody”, to which I replied, “My dear Einzi, I’d rather live a bit longer first.” I think it’s a good idea to wait to perform such honours until post mortem. But it doesn’t have to take twenty-four years.

One thing that unites Bert Kaempfert and myself – besides a predilection for aquavit and a fondness for swinging music – is the fact that, although I was born eleven years later, my birthday is only one day after his, that is, on 17 October. There must indeed be something about astrology: Libra would seem to be indeed a musicians’ star sign.

And so we have gathered here today in remembrance of a very, very great man, a very modest man, a composer and a music producer, someone who applied himself to one of the most peaceful of art forms this planet has to offer and one which most people can most readily understand – the art of music.
Fips – we, your colleagues, GEMA as the beneficent society for us music authors and, above all, your fans, be they young or old, think of you with admiration and great esteem. We love you!

Let me close with the words of his two daughters: “Our father is not dead. He lives on in his music, for us, for our children and grandchildren, and for everyone who loves his music. As long as his music is still being played somewhere in the world, Bert Kaempfert’s not dead – he’s very much alive.”

Professor Christian Bruhn
Hamburg, 16 October 2003