Arnold George Dorsey (born 2 May 1936), known professionally as Engelbert Humperdinck, is a British singer. He achieved international success in 1967 with his recording of "Release Me".
Humperdinck started as a performer in the late 1950s under the name "Gerry Dorsey", but found success after 1965 when he partnered with manager Gordon Mills, who advised him to adopt the name of German composer Engelbert Humperdinck as a stage name. His recordings of the ballads "Release Me" and "The Last Waltz" topped the UK Singles Chart in 1967, selling more than a million copies each. Humperdinck scored further major hits in rapid succession, including "There Goes My Everything" (1967), "Am I That Easy to Forget" (1968), and "A Man Without Love" (1968). He attained a large following, with some of his most devoted fans calling themselves "Humperdinckers". Two of his singles were among the best-selling of the 1960s in the UK.
During the 1970s, Humperdinck had significant American chart successes with "After the Lovin'" (1976) and "This Moment in Time" (1979). He garnered a reputation as a concert performer and received renewed attention during the 1990s lounge revival with his recordings of "Lesbian Seagull" for the soundtrack of Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) and a dance album (1998). The new millennium brought a range of musical projects, including the Grammy-nominated gospel album Always Hear the Harmony: The Gospel Sessions (2003) and the double album of duets Engelbert Calling (2014). Humperdinck represented the United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest 2012 in Baku, Azerbaijan with the song "Love Will Set You Free", placing 25th out of 26. Humperdinck continues to record and tour, having sold more than 140 million records worldwide.
Dorsey was born in 1936 in Madras (now Chennai), British India, one of 10 children born to British Army non-commissioned officer Mervyn Dorsey, who was of Irish descent, and his wife Olive who, according to the singer, was of German descent. His family moved to Leicester, England, when he was ten years old. He later showed an interest in music and began learning how to play the saxophone. By the early-1950s, he was playing saxophone in nightclubs, but he is believed not to have begun singing until he was in the later years of his adolescence. His impression of Jerry Lewis prompted friends to begin calling him "Gerry Dorsey", a name that he worked under for almost a decade before changing it to the moniker he would become famously known by.
Dorsey's attempt to launch his music career was interrupted by conscription into the British Army Royal Corps of Signals during the mid-1950s. After his discharge, he got his first chance to record in 1959 with Decca Records. He had been spotted when he won a talent contest in the Isle of Man the previous summer. Dorsey's first single "Crazy Bells" (b/w "Mister Music Man") was not a hit despite him plugging the songs on two appearances on the ITV teenage music show Oh Boy! in February and March 1959. He switched to Parlophone later that year but his first record for them, "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" (b/w "Every Day Is a Wonderful Day") was not successful either. Dorsey would return to record for Decca again, but almost a decade later and with very different results. Also during that same year, he became part of a touring show called "The Big Beat Show" with other pop singers of the time including Billy Fury, Vince Eager, and Terry Dene. Further television appearances followed in 1959 on the ITV show "The Song Parade". A tour as a support to Adam Faith followed and he continued working the nightclubs. In June 1961, however, he was stricken with tuberculosis and spent nine months in hospital. He eventually recovered and returned to show business in 1962; but had to start all over again from scratch. Dorsey went back on the variety stage and to nightclub work, but with little success.
In 1965, Dorsey teamed up with Gordon Mills, his former roommate while in Bayswater, London, who had become a music impresario and the manager of Tom Jones. Mills, aware that Dorsey had been struggling for several years to become successful in the music industry, suggested a change of name to the more arresting Engelbert Humperdinck, borrowed from the 19th-century German composer of operas such as Hansel and Gretel.
The reason was simply the unusual sound of the name in English.
Humperdinck enjoyed his first real success during July 1966 in Belgium, where he and four others represented Britain in the annual Knokke song contest, winning that year's prize. Three months later, in October 1966, he was on stage in Mechelen. He made a mark on the Belgian charts with "Dommage, Dommage", and an early music video was filmed with him in the harbour of Zeebrugge.
In the mid-1960s, Humperdinck visited German songwriter Bert Kaempfert at his house in Spain and was offered arrangements of three songs: "Spanish Eyes", "Strangers in the Night", and "Wonderland by Night". He returned to Britain where he recorded all three songs. He recognised the potential of "Strangers in the Night" and asked manager Gordon Mills whether it could be released as a single, but his request was refused, since the song had already been requested by Frank Sinatra. "Spanish Eyes" and "Wonderland by Night" would be included on the singer's 1968 LP A Man Without Love.In early 1967, the changes paid off when Humperdinck's version of "Release Me" topped the charts in the United Kingdom and hit No. 4 on the US Billboard 100. Arranged by Charles Blackwell in an "orchestral country music" style, with Big Jim Sullivan and Jimmy Page as session musicians and a full chorus joining Humperdinck on the third refrain, the record kept the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever"/"Penny Lane" from the top slot in the United Kingdom (for the first time since 1963). The B-side of "Release Me", "Ten Guitars", continues to be enormously popular in New Zealand. "Release Me" spent 56 weeks in the Top 50 in a continuous chart run, and was believed to have sold 85,000 copies a day at the height of its popularity. The song has remained at the core of Humperdinck's repertoire ever since.
Humperdinck's easygoing style and good looks soon earned him a large following, particularly among women. His hardcore female fans called themselves "Humperdinckers". "Release Me" was succeeded by two more hit ballads: "There Goes My Everything" and "The Last Waltz", earning him a reputation as a crooner, a description which he disputed. As Humperdinck told Hollywood Reporter writer Rick Sherwood:"[I]f you are not a crooner it's something you don't want to be called. No crooner has the range I have. I can hit notes a bank could not cash. What I am is a contemporary singer, a stylised performer."
In 1968, with a Variety Club of Great Britain award for Show Business Personality of 1967, Humperdinck reached No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart with "A Man Without Love". His album of the same name climbed to No. 3 on the UK Albums Chart. Another single, "Les Bicyclettes de Belsize", was a top 10 hit in the United Kingdom and reached the top 40 in the United States. By the end of the decade, Humperdinck's expanding roster of songs also included "Am I That Easy to Forget", "The Way It Used to Be", "I'm a Better Man (For Having Loved You)" (written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David) and "Winter World of Love". He supplemented these big-selling singles with a number of equally successful albums. These albums – Release Me, The Last Waltz, A Man Without Love, and Engelbert Humperdinck—formed the bedrock of his success. For two seasons in 1969–70, Humperdinck fronted his own television series The Engelbert Humperdinck Show for ATV in the United Kingdom, and ABC in the US. In this musical variety format, he was joined by, among others, Paul Anka, Shirley Bassey, Tony Bennett, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Ray Charles, Four Tops, Lena Horne, Liberace, Lulu, Carmen McRae, Dusty Springfield, Jack Jones, Tom Jones and Dionne Warwick.