He sang about the "Belly Dance Doll" and the
Mimi, who never goes to bed without thrillers: Bill Ramsey had his first hit 60
years ago. A visit to the import mood-cannon - at heart a jazzman.
Bill Ramsey was only 22 years old when he received the
nicest compliment of his life in Frankfurt. And that by the First Lady of Jazz:
Ella Fitzgerald.
She was in Germany in 1953 for a concert; Ramsey, at that
time was a producer at the US Army transmitter AFN, had taken up it. Then we
sat on the same ide of the glass together. Colleagues urged Ramsey to sing two
of his songs. Disconcerted, the young man agreed to a blues number and a
ballad.
Fitzgerald turned to Ramsey's boss and said, "This
guy has a black voice - all you got to do is close your eyes". Just close
your eyes. And the very white, slightly overweight American sounds smoothly
like a black one.
"Wow! It could not be better," says Ramsey,
giggling in astonishingly bright tones. And brings the air of his apartment in
the chic Hamburg Elbchaussee to a vibration, with a few bars of Ray Charles:
"In the evening when the sun goes down, and When nobody else is
around".
He came, sang and
won
65 years have passed since Ellas Fitzgerald's praise. Bill
Ramsey, the white guy with the grandiose, black voice, is still singing, even
at the age of 87. He never dropped his memorable American accent.
It has always been the trademark of Ramsey, the imported
post-war era humor cannon. How would the German economic miracle just succeeded
without hits like "The sugar doll from the belly dance group"?
Without the "Wumba-Tumba chocolate ice.
Ramsey came,
sang and won: For 29 weeks, his song "Souvenirs, Souvenirs" of 1959
was in the German hit parade, around half a million fans bought the single.
Ramsey blared "Do you know the sugar doll from the belly dance troupe, of
which all Morocco speaks? The little cute bee with the tulle curtain in front
of the baby doll face?" And everybody sang along.
"People should laugh, forget about their everyday worries, that's the whole point of the hit stuff," Ramsey said. He actually says "stuff" and means it - winking, not pejorative. Something he did and that he lived well. Although Ramsey has always been a jazzman at heart, he is already thrilled as a three cheek heir to the music of black people in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Door to door with Edelhure Nitribitt
William McCreery Ramsey was born in 1931 as the son of a successful advertising manager and a teacher. Because his parents had a lot to do, he spent his everyday life especially with Tom Jones. The black housekeeper called the chubby boy "Mr. Bill" who chauffeured him to fishing on the lake, but he was not allowed to fish by himself. Because he was black.
The future of the "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant" sprouts seemed predetermined: As a child, Bill went to a distinguished boarding school on the East Coast, then to sociology studies at the elite Yale University. But Bill did not want to become like his father, he wanted to make music and imitated the black blues and jazz singers until he sang just like them. He never finished his studies.
Instead, Bill Ramsey was drafted in 1951 and was fortunate not to be forced into the Korean War, which killed more than 36,000 Americans. As a US soldier, he landed in Frankfurt am Main and lived for a while in the same apartment as Rosemarie Nitribitt. The noble whore blocked the bathroom for hours at a time, Ramsey reminds himself.
In Frankfurt, they quickly recognized his talent: Ramsey became the chief producer of the US radio station AFN, in the "Jazzkeller" he met the producer and Caterina Valente discoverer Heinz Gietz.
"People should laugh, forget about their everyday worries, that's the whole point of the hit stuff," Ramsey said. He actually says "stuff" and means it - winking, not pejorative. Something he did and that he lived well. Although Ramsey has always been a jazzman at heart, he is already thrilled as a three cheek heir to the music of black people in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Door to door with Edelhure Nitribitt
William McCreery Ramsey was born in 1931 as the son of a successful advertising manager and a teacher. Because his parents had a lot to do, he spent his everyday life especially with Tom Jones. The black housekeeper called the chubby boy "Mr. Bill" who chauffeured him to fishing on the lake, but he was not allowed to fish by himself. Because he was black.
The future of the "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant" sprouts seemed predetermined: As a child, Bill went to a distinguished boarding school on the East Coast, then to sociology studies at the elite Yale University. But Bill did not want to become like his father, he wanted to make music and imitated the black blues and jazz singers until he sang just like them. He never finished his studies.
Instead, Bill Ramsey was drafted in 1951 and was fortunate not to be forced into the Korean War, which killed more than 36,000 Americans. As a US soldier, he landed in Frankfurt am Main and lived for a while in the same apartment as Rosemarie Nitribitt. The noble whore blocked the bathroom for hours at a time, Ramsey reminds himself.
In Frankfurt, they quickly recognized his talent: Ramsey became the chief producer of the US radio station AFN, in the "Jazzkeller" he met the producer and Caterina Valente discoverer Heinz Gietz.
The singing cuddly
bear
"Do you want to sing rock'n'roll or something
funny?" Gietz asked the American in 1957. "Rock'n'roll was banned for
jazzmen back then, a mix of hillbilly and pop, I did not care," says
Ramsey. And decided on something funny.
In the fifties and sixties, the Germans were on the one
hand eagerly on Schnulzen à la Rudi Schuricke ("If at Capri ...") or
Lale Andersen ("A ship will come"). On the other hand, the economic
miracle country could not be satiated with lively nonsense, from "Water is
There for Washing" (The Peheiros) to "I Do Not Want Chocolate"
(Trude Herr). There was a lot of room for international interpreters like
Caterina Valente, Wencke Myhre or Chris Howland. And also for musicians with
roots in jazz, but who became famous through hits, such as Paul Kuhn and Nana
Mouskouri or Bill Ramsey.
From then on, he became the singing cuddly bear in a
large-scale jacket, fleshly carefreeness. A jester with a bouquet of colorful
balloons in his hand. "He has a voice like a lion who is terribly
hungry," enthused the Hamburger Abendblatt in 1960.
And because the hit was also so well-riddled as a film,
Ramsey was seen in almost 30 theatrical films, with titles such as "Music
is Trump" (1961) and "Liebesgrüße aus Tirol" (1964). Mostly he
took over comical supporting roles and played himself: the singing Bill.
He was loved and despised for that. "There were
people who did not greet me anymore," Ramsey says. And he complains about
the elitist "jazz police" who accused him of betrayal because he had
turned to the easily digestible, commercially profitable genre.
"It does not matter what you play, but how you
play," he quotes Louis Armstrong. And sticks to the Schlager drawer:
"Strictly speaking, that was not a hit, that was Novelty! There was no
such thing before," Ramsey emphasizes. Ironically funny nonsense texts to
a music that damn swings.
"Listen," he shouts, "you flick on two and
four with your fingers." Then he starts: "Without a thriller, Mimi
never goes to bed, never to bed, two, four, two, four,
rum-dada-dab-dab-schnapp-schnapp!" Nevertheless, the features column
Ramsey scrounged Ramsey a pop singer, complained the "continuous flushing
of German auditory canals by radio waves with simply fabricated Bla Bla rhymes
in a common setting," said DER SPIEGEL in 1963.
Good mood clown
against his will
In the 1960s Ramsey tried to emancipate himself from
underground music and sought his way back to his jazz roots - "a difficult
road". Because the image of the good-mood clown had stuck to him.
"The public wants his Bill as a mood cannon and not as a jazz
interpreter," said producer Gietz 1966 SPIEGEL. It was not until Ramsey
made a financial contribution that his record company was ready for an album of
blues and ballads.
Even decades later, when Ramsey had long since recaptured
his reputation as a jazz great, people always wanted just one thing: the sugar
doll. "Well, that's just my fate," says the man with the snow-white
hair. He's wearing it with humor.
Ramsey played a piano player in Apaches Last Battle
(1963) with Lex Barker and Pierre Brice.
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