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Udo Jürgens

Music

Udo Jürgens was born in Klagenfurt as Jürgen Udo Bockelmann and grew up in Carinthia. He discovered his passion for music, and especially the piano, at an early age so it was only logical that he entered the Conservatory in Klagenfurt in 1948 to study piano, harmony, composition and singing, graduating three years later.

In 1950 he was the youngest contestant in a competition for composers run by Austrian radio and came first with his song “Je t’aime”. From 1954 onward he began performing regularly with a variety of groups and bands under the stage name Udo Jürgens, made a name for himself as an outstanding jazz pianist and embarked on a tour of Russia with the Max Greger Orchestra. It was at this time that he made his first recordings and appeared in his first movie, entitled … und du, mein Schatz, bleibst hier (1961). In 1963 he signed a recording contract with the Montana label and his first record, “Tausend Träume”, became a huge success in Austria.

Following his fifth and fourth places in the Eurovision Song Contests of 1964 and 1965 with his songs “Warum nur, warum?” and “Sag ihr, ich lass sie grüßen” respectively, he won the competition with his third entry “Merci Chérie”, which went on to become an international hit, rising high in the charts in over 20 countries. His LP Portrait in Musik also became an outstanding bestseller, the number “Siebzehn Jahr, blondes Haar” winning him the Goldener Löwe (“Golden Lion”) while he himself was voted “Best German-language Singer” by the jury of German music journalists. The follow-up album, Was ich dir sagen will, was the biggest-selling LP of 1967. At that time, Jürgens’s songs “Warum nur, warum?”, “Merci Chérie” and “Was ich dir sagen will” had already sold over 20 million copies and were being sung all over the world in eight languages and over 40 different versions.

Several concert tours of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg and Japan followed. In 1975 he had the “Hit of the Year” in Germany with “Griechischer Wein”. The Greek version of the song has become a kind of folk song and as “Come Share The Wine With Me” is the title song of Bing Crosby’s final album. “Aber bitte mit Sahne” (1977), “Buenos Dias Argentina” (1978) and “Mit 66 Jahren” (1978) gave Udo Jürgens three more massive hits.

He maintained his success over the following years with several albums and concert tours. To date a grand total of around 100 million records by Udo Jürgens have been sold worldwide and his repertoire consists of nearly 1,000 songs. Compositions by Udo Jürgens have also been hugely successful both on record and on stage in versions sung not only by Bing Crosby but also by numerous other stars such as Shirley Bassey, Sammy Davis Jr., Gus Backus, Gerhard Wendlandt, Rex Gildo, Caterina Valente, Brenda Lee, Sacha Distel, Jean-Claude Pascal and Sarah Vaughan.

Besides his work as a singer and musician Udo Jürgens also plays guest roles on German television (Ein Schloss am Wörthersee, 1993) and he has written two autobiographical books, Smoking und Blue Jeans and …unterm Smoking Gänsehaut. In 1999 he founded the Udo Jürgens Stiftung, a foundation that concentrates chiefly on supporting children and orphans in difficulty.

The album Mit 66 Jahren (Was wichtig ist…) from the year 2000 went gold in both Germany and Austria. This success was repeated the following year with the award of the Goldene Stimmgabel (“Golden Tuning Fork”) and the audience’s award as the “Most Successful German Solo Pop Act”.

In 2004 he wrote the biographical family novel Der Mann mit dem Fagott that was in the Spiegel bestseller chart for months. For his albums Jetzt oder nie, Zeig mir den Platz an der Sonne, the anniversary edition of Aber bitte mit Sahne and the DVD Mit 66 Jahren – live 2001 he was presented with four gold discs during the Popkomm music fair in 2006. His current album, Einfach ich, has also gone gold in Germany and Austria. On 30 November 2009 the channels ZDF (Germany), ORF (Austria) and SF (Switzerland) broadcast a special programme on prime-time television to mark his 75th birthday. The programme was presented by Markus Lanz and attracted a total audience of over six million. The Best Of double CD went straight into the album charts at number one in Austria and number four in Germany and achieved gold and platinum status within a matter of weeks, something that had never happened before in Udo Jürgens’s long career. His current tour, his 22nd in all, represents a new high watermark in his stage career with over 95% of tickets sold and a total audience of over 320,000. To date over six million people have been to an Udo Jürgens concert in the German-speaking countries.