Charity shops tell the story of our musical past, with old LPs from the middle of last century all the way to the CDs of recent times. You see the same artists and albums in every shop, and among the regular offerings are recordings by James Last. His iconic cover for Make the Party Last has a glass of bubbly suggestive of Seventies cocktail parties. I had not knowingly listened to any of his music until this week. And Last was beaten to my ears by another mass-producer of melody, Klaus Wunderlich.
Having acquired remnants of a house clearance in the form of a large bag of cassettes, I initially put tapes by Last and Wunderlich in my recycling pile (for a charity shop, not the rubbish bin). Then I was struck by the raunchy cover of a Wunderlich album, which seemed at odds with the style of music, as confirmed when I played the tape. Yet after three tunes I was hooked. Like Last, Wunderlich played a mixture of contemporary pop, classical pieces, folk songs and movie theme tunes, and I liked his orchestration.
James Last was born in Bremen in 1929 as Hans, and European fans always knew him as Hansi. He played in the musical corps of the Wehrmacht. After the war he was the big band leader of the James Last Orchestra, before he went solo. In the Sixties he wrote songs for leading artists such as Elvis Presley, Andy Williams and Petula Clark, but he became most famous for his clever arrangements of popular music.
By the Seventies his series of albums titled Non Stop Dancing and Beach Party were selling fast. British holidaymakers returned from the Mediterranean with a taste for European food and music, and with kitsch records the likes of Last and Wunderlich fulfilled their desire for something accessibly cosmopolitan. Don’t dismiss it all as a fashion faux-pas. Last’s style was jaunty, with a steady momentum from one track to the next.
Last was prolific, having around 180 recordings published with over 80 million sales. He toured regularly and hosted a television show. He was still performing live in 2014 at the age of 85, but he retired due to terminal illness, dying nine months later. In the Guardian, Alexis Petridis noted:
His detractors complained that James Last made everything sound the same. Showtunes, classical music, “Old MacDonald,” “Children of the Revolution” – it all came out sounding like snappy tunes and happy music to bring joy to all the world.
Wunderlich was born two years after Last, at Chemnitz in 1931, too young for military service for the Third Reich. In 1951 he moved from communist East to capitalist West Germany. He started playing a Hammond organ in 1955, and in 1958 he signed a contract with the Telefunken record company. Wunderlich did plenty of touring but after building his studio in Karlsruhe in 1972 he concentrated on producing his recordings of musical medleys.
Almost a hundred albums were produced in that studio, aided by his wife Gisela, a broadcasting sound engineer. Wunderlich progressed from Hammond to Wersi organ, and later a Moog synthesiser. He was popular in the UK, not as much as his rival (of English-sounding name), but he filled the Royal Albert Hall in 1978 and the Royal Festival Hall in 1984. After 20 million sales, Wunderlich died of a heart attack in 1997, aged 66.
Last sold more records, did more gigs, was a bigger celebrity and household name, yet I prefer Wunderlich. I am not sufficiently verbose in music writing to explain why, but I find his tapes strangely alluring. He is more interesting in his selections, not so much playing to the masses but creating a warm aural kaleidoscope of individual harmonic interpretations of songs old and new, from “When I Take My Sugar to Tea” to “Star Wars.”
