On my record shopping excursion last weekend, one of the LPs I picked up was Engelbert's King of Hearts. Whenever I recognize or remember an artist's name but can't bring their music to mind, that's usually a cue for me to start exploring.* After all, they became famous (or infamous) for good reason, right?
King of Hearts was released in 1973 and consists of lite rock love songs with sweet sentiments like "sun, come on down and dry the tears of the girl in my garden, sittin' with me, poor little thing" (from "My Summer Song"). Humperdinck croons about innocent romance and the album includes a zippy version of "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World". After I listened to this record I thought, Oh, Engelbert's well-known for these harmless pop ballads. How quaint.
Then YouTube informed me of how wrong my assumption was.
I did a quick search on his name and scrolled through the results YouTube offered up. A live rendition of "You Make My Pants" seemed the most intriguing, so I watched. I apologize in advance for the extreme creepiness you are about to witness:
Brings a whole new meaning to "Humperdinck", no? I am aghast. There are so many questions:
- Did I hear him say the concert was being televised?
- Were those women planted in the audience, or really chosen at random?
- Does the act of swabbing your mouth off with a little red handkerchief make you instantly ready to tongue kiss another stranger?
- Why did they have to sit down on the floor?
- Why is he so sweaty?
- How did he get in to those skintight pants in the first place?
- Is the correct order really (1) tongue kiss, (2) handshake, (3) introductions?
If the video didn't already tell you enough about Engelbert, here are some other fun facts courtesy of Wikipedia. His real name is Arnold Dempsey. In a Svengali-like revamp of his image, former roommate (and manager of Tom Jones) Gordon Mills renamed Dempsey after the German composer. He's sold over 150 million records and kept The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" out of the #1 spot in the UK with his signature version of "Release Me".
According to his website he still tours, perhaps with a supply of red handkerchiefs at the ready?
*I know I've been writing about a lot of old school stuff lately, so I want to assure you I do listen to a lot of new music. It's just that ever since I left my post as the Music Editor of SFist, I haven't been getting many promo copies of new records to check out. But I promise, I'll write about newer music next week.