Any Major Schlager
Top row: Michael Holm, Francoise Hardy, Katja Ebstein, Marianne Rosenberg, Ricky Shayne. Centre: Vicky Leandros, Udo Jürgens, Daliah Lavi, Jürgen Marcus. Bottom: Juliane Werding, Agnetha, Alexandra, Peter Maffay, Manuela
To mark Germany’s national day next week, on October 3, here’s a mix of German schlager and chanson tracks from the golden era between 1965 and 1975. Don’t be alarmed, we’re looking at the higher end of quality in schlager music.
Almost anyone who was a child in West Germany in the first half of the 1970s will tell you the routine on a Saturday, once a month: Have a bath, then into payamas, and at 18:45, the ZDF Hitparade would come on (ZDF was the channel on which the show was broadcast). Launched in 1969, it was the premier showcase for the German schlager — and it was incredibly popular. I watched it, in my payamas. Bath-time would be some time after 5, so that we’d catch Star Trek or Riptide (known in Germany as “Raumschiff Enterprise” and “SOS Charterboot”), and then once a month the Hitparade. In weeks when there was no Hitparade, we might have our bath after Star Trek.
Dieter “Thomas” Heck, shorn of his sideburns, presents the ZDF Hitparade on a Saturday evening in March 1976.
Presented by the bespectacled and sideburned Dieter “Thomas” Heck, the ZDF Hitparade came live from Berlin, filmed on a sparse set on which the stars, both established and budding, would sit among the audience. Mid-song, audience members would often get up and present the singer with flowers. It was superbly presented, even if the music was mostly awful.
Not that I cared about the defects in musical standards at the time. I loved the entertainment values, but by the time I was 10 years old, I started to become more discerning, and soon I denounced the whole schlager scene with increasing militancy. That attitude would carry me into adulthood. For a long time, I had no time for nor interest in the banal clap-along schlager fare.
In that I was with the majority of Germany’s youth. But the rejection of schlager followed no consensus. In a 1973 episode of the Disco TV show, super-square and conservative singer Heino performs his latest hit, a popular (and admittedly pretty catchy) clap-along number. The young people, guys with long hair and girls in tight stripey trousers, party to it like it’s 1999. At other times, the Disco audience would sit impassively to the glamrock of Slade or the dance-pop of ABBA or the rock of Status Quo or the disco-pop of Boney M, which suggests that this Heino mania was a spontaneous outbreak of schlager frenzy.
On the subject of Heino, a truly fascinating phenomenon who ended up doing duets with Rammstein, I recommend the documentary Made In Germany, which counts among its pundits, of all people, Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys. You need not know a thing about Heino to appreciate it.
Eventually I reached the age at which one may indulge in the nostalgia that evokes fond childhood memories. And many of the old schlager songs transported me back to the days when I’d sit with my payamas on the couch and watch the Hitparade with my mother, sister and brother. Much of the music might be questionable, but it recalls happy memories. Sometimes I find some old song, long-forgotten but instantly recognisable, and it’s back into the time capsule. Psychologist refer to this as our autobiographical memory, which is biased towards finding refuge in memories that recall moments when we felt safe — like sitting on the couch, watching TV with the family.
Schlager music has a bad reputation, and not without good reason. Most of it was banal and poor. But some of it was very good. ABBA fans will know that the Swedes were influenced by schlager. Before becoming an A in the group’s name, Agnetha Faltskrög tried her luck in German schlager, releasing six singles them between 1968-72; none of them was a hit. The last of these features on this mix. What might have been had Agnetha had become a big schlager star, too busy to join her husband and pals in their new pop combo? Would BBA have been as successful as they became?
Schlager star Michael Holm initiated two global hits, co-writing with Giorgio Moroder and recording the original of Chicory Tip’s Son Of My Father, and creating the first vocal version of the Italian instrumental which would become a Christmas hit for Johnny Mathis as When A Child Is Born. In Holm’s hands that song had no reference to Christmas: “Tränen lügen nicht” translates as “Tears don’t lie”.
Michael Holm performs on the ZDF Hitparade.
Drafi Deutscher kicks off this mix with one of the great schlager classics, “Marmor, Stein und Eisen bricht”. He entered the US Billboard Top 100 with an English version of it, retitled “Marble Breaks And Iron Bends”.
Many schlager stars were straitjacketed into the genre’s formula. Some were broken by it, others made the best of it. Husband-and-wife duo Cindy & Bert found fame with hackneyed songs about Spanish guitars and “gypsies”, but at heart they were a rock act. They featured here before with their cover of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid (On Any Major Schlager Covers Vol. 2); the song on this mix shows them as they wanted to be seen, rather than how their record company sought to present them.
Some of the songs here were big schlager hits, but the only one that invites a jolly clap-along is by Jürgen Marcus. I include it as an example of how that brand of schlager actually could be well-executed.
Marcus was a great singer who too often was stuck with sub-standard material. Israeli actress and singer Daliah Lavi — featuring here with as cover of a song by South African singer Emil Dean Zoghby, “Won’t You Join Me” — was more discerning. She had huge hits, usually with covers of English songs, and was a superstar among schlager singers, but musically she was closer to French chansoneers than most of her German colleagues.
As was Alexandra, the most tragic of the artists on this mix. The singer was just hitting the big time when she was killed in a car crash on July 31, 1969. She was only 27 (and thus became an unwilling member of the so-called 27 Club, comprising artists who died at that age). Rumours have it that the accident was caused by foul play. The featured song, the beautiful “Mein Freund, der Baum” (My friend, the tree) became a hit only after her death.
The wonderfully talented singer Alexandra on German TV in 1969, the year she died in a mysterious car crash.
International stars also formed part of the schlager firmament. Greek-born Vicky Leandros — who features here with her German version of the Eurovision winner Aprés toi — grew up and lived in West Germany. But stars like Caterina Valente, Mireille Mathieu, Gilbert Bécaud, France Gall, Nana Mouskouri, Danyel Gerard, Salvatore Adamo, Ricky Shayne or Françoise Hardy had hits with German songs, some originals and some covers of their mostly French originals, though Mathieu had several hits written for her by German producers (particularly Christian Bruhn, of whom more later). Of these international stars, Françoise Hardy and Ricky Shayne feature here.
Almost all songs here were single releases, albeit some of them as b-sides. Two, however, are album deep tracks. Manuela’s “Sonntag im Zoo” from 1967 is a delightful song that sounds like a Jimmy Webb or Burt Bacharach number arranged by The 5th Dimension. It was co-written by Christian Bruhn, who co-wrote many schlager hits, including the tracks here by Drafi Deutscher, Marion Maerz, Peter Maffay, and the wonderful Katja Ebstein, for whom he also wrote the magnificent “Wunder gibt es immer wieder” (featured on Any Major Eurovision).
Mary Roos was highly regarded in France as a chanson singer, and even played at the Olympia. Her “Schmetterlinge weinen nicht” (Butterflies don’t cry) of 1970 sounds even more like a Bacharach song; one might think it might be a cover of a Dionne Warwick song. It was co-written and produced by the multi-talented Michael Holm.
The mix concludes with three tracks from 1975 that can be ID-tagged under different labels than “Schlager”. Joy Fleming was a blues and soul singer, Marianne Rosenberg had the first German-language disco hit in 1975 with “Ich bin wie Du”, and Juliane Werding, who broke through in 1972 as a teenager with a powerful cover of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, delivers a fine German country song with the not snappily titled “Wenn Du denkst Du denkst, dann denkst Du nur Du denkst” (“When you think you think, then you only think you think”).
I’ve re-upped the two companion mixes, wherein schlager stars sing German covers of Englosh songs — Any Major Schlager Covers Vol. 1 and Vol. 2), s well as Any Major Originals – Schlager Edition, which comprises mostly international originals of schlager hits, including Emil Drean Zoghby’s original of the Daliah Lavi song.
As a bonus I include the greatest German schlager: what it lacks in highest artistic merits it compensates for the the highest levels of banality and an overdose of cliché, but there is no song in the genre that is as catchy as this track. Germans probably already know which track it is.
As always, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R, includes home-schunkeled covers, and the above text in an illustrated PDF. PW in comments.
1. Drafi Deutscher – Marmor, Stein und Eisen bricht (1965)
2. Udo Jürgens – Siebzehn Jahr, Blondes Haar (1965)
3. Marion – Er ist wieder da (1965)
4. Françoise Hardy – Wenn dieses Lied erklingt (1965)
5. Manuela – Sonntag im Zoo (1967)
6. Hildegard Knef – Von nun an ging’s bergab (1968)
7. Alexandra – Mein Freund, der Baum (1968)
8. Lil Walker – Abschied im September (1968)
9. Mary Roos – Schmetterlinge weinen nicht (1970)
10. Haide Hansson – Du bist das Leben (1970)
11. Katja Ebstein – Und wenn ein neuer Tag erwacht (1970)
12. Peter Maffay – Du bist anders (1970)
13. Daliah Lavi – Willst du mit mir geh’n (1971)
14. Vicky Leandros – Dann kamst Du (1972)
15. Cindy & Bert – Geh’ die Straße (1972)
16. Ricky Shayne – Delta Queen (1972)
17. Su Kramer – Glaub’ an dich selbst (1972)
18. Elke Best – Nichts bleibt ungescheh’n (1972)
19. Agnetha – Komm’ doch zu mir (1972)
20. Jürgen Marcus – Eine neue Liebe ist wie ein neues Leben (1972)
21. Bernd Glüver – Der Junge mit der Mundhamonika (1973)
22. Michael Holm – Tränen lügen nicht (1974)
23. Joy Fleming – Ein Lied kann eine Brücke sein (1975)
24. Marianne Rosenberg – Ich bin wie Du (1975)
25. Juliane Werding – Wenn Du denkst Du denkst, dann denkst Du nur Du denkst (1975)
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