It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “Das ist die Frage aller Fragen” by Cliff Richard
“Das ist die Frage aller Fragen” by Cliff Richard
February 17, 1965
#1 on Media Control Top 100 Singles Chart (Germany), January 30 – February 26, 1965
Cliff Richard is one of the biggest pop stars the UK has ever produced, having scored hits in every decade since the ’50s and launched countless comebacks and reinventions. (Think Elvis — if he were still alive and making music.) He and his band the Shadows started out as part of the UK’s initial answer to rock ‘n’ roll, scoring their first hit with “Move It” in 1958. Never the most raucous rocker to begin with, however, Richard soon settled into a solidly middle-of-the-road entertainer and has continued to be a British institution to this day.
In the United States, however, Richard is sort of a proto-Robbie Williams, better known for his inability to cross over to American pop stardom than for any of his actual songs. (This, despite the fact that he netted three US Top 10 hits in the late ’70s and early ’80s.) But while Richard’s success failed to translate across the Atlantic, he did manage to become hugely popular in continental Europe. Many performers of the era released recordings in multiple languages to stoke their foreign fanbases: famous examples include Petula Clark maintaining simultaneous anglophone and francophone pop careers, and the Beatles German-ifying “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You” into “Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand” and “Sie Liebt Dich.” But few British stars so eagerly appealed to European audiences as Cliff Richard, who released recordings in German, Italian, French, and Spanish, as well as Japanese.
Richard’s first non-English recording, “Bin Verliebt” (“Am in Love”), was released in early 1961. At the time, Richard and the Shadows were already huge stars in West Germany, and the English-language version of the song, “Fall in Love With You,” had previously climbed to #2 in the German charts. Following on the heels of the original, “Bin Verliebt” just edged into the Top 40. Nevertheless, it was a harbinger of future German-language hits to come.
“Bin Verliebt” was a one-off, but around 1963, Richard began translating and re-recording his English pop hits in earnest. Perhaps not coincidentally, 1963 was also the year the Beatles broke big in Britain. Richard continued to earn hits at home, but he and the Shadows were no longer the unstoppable force they had been in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, and they didn’t quite fit in with the new wave of rock. By recording hits in a variety of languages, Richard could widen and diversify his audience, even if he ended up yesterday’s news at home.
West Germany had been one of the first countries to embrace Richard, and his German-language recordings would only intensify his fanbase there. In late 1963, he earned his first German number-one with “Rote Lippen soll man Küssen” (“Red Lips Should Be Kissed”), a translated version of the Jerry Leiber-Mike Stoller classic “Lucky Lips.” Richard’s second German chart-topper, “Das ist die Frage aller Fragen” (“That is the Question of All Questions”), was also derived from a Leiber-Stoller hit — in this case, “Spanish Harlem,” which ex-Drifters frontman Ben E. King recorded in 1960 and took to the US Top 10. (Incidentally, “Spanish Harlem” was co-written by Phil Spector, the subject of last week’s column.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbKsnzYgU2U
King’s “Spanish Harlem” wasn’t a hit in the UK, but Richard covered the song on his 1962 album 32 Minutes and 17 Seconds with Cliff Richard. The backing track from that version — recorded not with the Shadows, but with Norrie Paramor and his orchestra — was recycled for “Das ist die Frage aller Fragen” with Richard’s phonetic German vocals dubbed over the top. Rather than a straight translation of the lyrics — which would have a British singer crooning to a German audience about a Latina woman in New York City — the theme of the song is more generalized, pleading for the object of the song to declare her love for the narrator. (“Und sagst du ja zu mir / dann wird alles für uns wunderbar sein” — “And you say yes to me / then everything will be wonderful for us.”)
Richard would continue recording German-language material throughout the ’60s and early ’70s, and even released two German LPs: 1969’s Hier ist Cliff (“Here is Cliff”) and 1971’s Ich träume deine Träume (“I’m Dreaming Your Dreams”). While several of these recordings would be hits, he wouldn’t score his third German #1 single until 1979, with the English-language “We Don’t Talk Anymore.”
In the interim, the world pop market had grown so globalized that anglophone artists rarely felt the need to record their hits in multiple languages anymore. Richard himself ended his run of German-language singles in 1974, with a version of Waylon Jennings’ “Hangin’ On” titled “Es gehören zwei zum Glücklichsein” (“It Takes Two for Happiness”). Forty years later, however, Richard released “Schmetterlings-Küsse,” a German rewrite of Bob Carlisle’s “Butterfly Kisses.” While Richard’s sudden return to German-language recording may seem unexpected, it makes perfect since when viewed in context of his career, one defined by multiple comebacks and attempts to appeal to as many fans as possible, wherever they may be in the world.
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
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