Decca 74 101
Producer: Bert Kaempfert
Track listing: Wonderland By Night / Vie En Rose / Happiness Never Comes Too Late / On the Alamo / As I Love You / Dreaming the Blues / Tommy / The Aim of My Desires / This Song Is Yours Alone / Drifting and Dreaming / Stay With Me / Lullaby for Lovers
January 16, 1961
5 weeks mono (nonconsecutive)
Although Bert Kaempfert, along with Enoch Light and Lawrence Welk, was one of the premiere instrumental band leaders in the early ’60s, today he is perhaps best known for his work with three of the biggest acts in the history of popular music: Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and the Beatles.
Before the German-born multi-instrumentalist experienced success in America as an artist, Elvis recorded the Kaempfert song “Wooden Heart” for G.I. Blues . Kaempfert’s influence would continue with Wonderland By Night.
Long before George Martin worked with the Beatles, Kaempfert worked with them, producing the group’s first session in 1961, in which the Beatles backed Tony Sheridan. The date yielded Sheridan’s “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” and “When the Saints Go Marching In” and the Beatles’ “Ain’t She Sweet” and “Cry for a Shadow.” (Those recordings, except for “When the Saints Go Marching In,” later turned up on the Beatles’ Anthology 1.) In 1966, Sinatra’s English translation of a Kaempfert tune became a huge hit called “Strangers in the Night.”
Kaempfert’s own rise to the top began in 1959, when he was hired as a staff producer for Polydor Records in Germany. The move paid off for the label, as Kaempfert produced such hits as “Morgen” by Ivo Robic and “Die Gitarre and Das Meer” by Freddy Quinn.
As a recording star in his own right, Kaempfert first began to experience success with a song called “Wunderland bei Nacht,” the instrumental theme of a film about Germany. Kaempfert traveled to New York in late 1959 to secure a publishing deal. Soon after, Decca Records made an agreement with Polydor to distribute the bandleader’s releases in America.
When “Wonderland by Night” began to show potential as a hit, Decca worked feverishly to assemble an album. As a result, many of the tracks that rounded out the album, including the Kaempfert original “Lullaby for Lovers” and his version of the standard “La Vie En Rose,” were filler.
“We had to take whatever he had in his catalog to come up with 12 selections and put the album out,” says Milt Gabler, the head of artists and repertoire for Decca Records. “Everything was recorded in Europe and we had to take what he had for the LP.” The instrumental hit was particularly appealing to more mature listeners, hence the need to issue the album as soon as possible. “People wanted an LP,” says Gabler. “Kids bought singles, but not adults.”
On January 9, 1961, “Wonderland by Night” topped the Hot 100. A week later, with the single still in the top spot, the album of the same name hit the summit of the mono album chart. It was Kaempfert’s first and only album chart- topper and the first of his two albums a crack the top 10 (four years later, his Blue Midnight reached number five.) Kaempfert continued to chart albums through 1971. He died at the age of 56 in June 1980 in Switzerland.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of January 16, 1961
1. Wonderland By Night, Bert Kaempfert
2. Music from ‘Exodus’ and Other Great Themes, Mantovani
3. Exodus, Soundtrack
4. Last Date, Lawrence Welk
5. This Is Brenda Lee, Brenda Lee