Engelbert Humperdinck (born Arnold George Dorsey, May 2, 1936, Madras, India) is a well-known pop singer who rose to international fame during the 1960s and 1970s, after adopting the name of the famous German opera composer Engelbert Humperdinck as his own stage name. His family migrated to Leicester, England, when he was 10, and a year later he showed an interest in music and began learning the saxophone. By the early 1950s he was playing in nightclubs, but is believed not to have tried singing until he was 17 and friends coaxed him into entering a pub contest.
In early 1967 the changes paid off when Humperdinck's version of "Release Me," done in a smooth ballad style with a full chorus joining him on the third chorus, reached the top ten on both sides of the Atlantic and went to number one in Britain, keeping The Beatles' adventurous "Strawberry Fields Forever" from entering the top slot in the UK. "Release Me" spent 56 weeks in the Top 50 in a single chart run.
Humperdinck's deceptively easy going style and casually elegant good looks, a contrast to Tom Jones's energetic attack and overtly sexual style, earned Humperdinck a large following, particularly among women. "Release Me" was followed up by two more hit ballads, "There Goes My Everything" and "The Last Waltz", earning him a reputation as a crooner that he didn't always agree with. "If you are not a crooner," he told Hollywood Reporter writer Rick Sherwood, "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 stylized performer." [wikipedia]
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