Schlager and Clapping
We’re just at the mixing stage for an album featuring the 72 year old South African/German artist Howard Carpendale for Electrola, a German division of Universal. You may not have heard of him over here but he is a massive star in Germany and this is his final Greatest Hits album. Howard flew over here and we recorded it with the RPO in Abbey Road- what’s not to like!
He has a great back catalogue of Schlager music; that’s a particular type of pop music that even has its own chart in Germany. It’s been interesting to watch Howard on YouTube singing his songs in concert and seeing the whole audience clap along - always on the 1st and 3rd beats of the bar whilst in the UK and the USA, we tend to clap on the off beats (2&4). There is a great story, I hope it’s true, about Harry Connick Jnr on tour in Germany. Apparently the audience were clapping along to his song (on beats 1&3) which he just couldn’t handle, so he threw in a 5/4 bar, thus landing the claps later onto beats 2&4. I’m sure I’d never have thought of doing that.
We are delighted to be adding a duet on the record with Sir Cliff Richard who has rather impressively learnt the song in German. Apparently the two of them used to play tennis together whenever Cliff was giving concerts in Germany. The world of 70+ year old pop singers is a small but very classy one.
Finally, wrote this piano piece whilst waiting for mix comments…