Wooden Heart (Muss I Denn)

August 1961

One of Elvis Presley's innumerable films was a flick called G.I. Blues, some of which was actually filmed on location in Germany during his stint in the Army. It was released in 1960, soon after Presley returned to civilian life, and it contained a charming, if insubstantial, little ditty called "Wooden Heart."

As you'll notice, the second half of the song is in German, apparently adapted from a Swabian folk song. Our old friend Bert Kaempfert is even listed as a co-writer.

But wait!

This post is not about Elvis at all. His recording of the song was successful in Europe, but was not even released in the United States until far after the fact. Hence, it certainly did not become a #1 single stateside. So why am I even mentioning it, then? Well, because of a highly successful cover version which did hit the #1 spot, sung by this flat-topped doof:

Wrong choice, America. Not that the song was so great to begin with, but Dowell strips any of the charm the original may have had right away. Instead, it's a saccharine clone of all the other easy-listening schlock out there. His German accent is slightly better than Elvis's, and that's probably the only (faint) praise I can muster. Probably the best thing this guy ever did was to promptly go away – he never made the top 10 again, only scoring two other minor hits, including the insipid "Little Red Rented Rowboat." I've got to say, 1961 has been probably the best year so far for this project, but this sure isn't helping.

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Wonderland by Night

January 1961

Ah, time to kick off a brand new year! Let's see what we have here... aaaaaaaand it's off to a bad start. This clinker apparently sold more records than anything else for three weeks.

It's by Bert Kaempfert, a German musician who both wrote and performed it. I've already expressed my hatred of easy-listening music on this blog, so I won't go into a tirade here, but this kind of song definitely fits into the category. It's both mindless and soulless; it neither requires any effort on the part of the listener, nor does it have anything to offer. There's a word I particularly like that describes this music perfectly: "pap."

But hey, hey, wait a minute. How about this cover version? The always (well, usually) dependable guitarist Leo Kottke gives us a pretty nice rendering of the tune. I dare say, it's a pretty nice melody – not that you'd know it, judging by the hit version. This certainly isn't one of my favorite things by Kottke, but it goes to show how much performance can matter. Of course, you need both things – a good song, and a good performance – and only one or the other doesn't cut it, as demonstrated by our friend Herr Kaempfert.

In fact, Kaempfert himself will come up a couple more times in this blog, but only as a songwriter, not a performer. And that's for the better.

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