The Beatles put on an incredible display of chart power in their native Great Britain in the 60s. Once they started the ball of momentum rolling, every one of their singles skyrocketed to the top of the UK charts.
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Until one song didn’t. The artist who ended The Beatles’ No. 1 streak wasn’t an established, competing rock band. Instead, it was a breakthrough song in 1967 by a guy singing a combination of country music and easy listening that did the trick.
What a Streak
In 1963, “Please Please Me”, the A-side to The Beatles’ second UK single, made it to No. 1 on a pair of key British pop surveys. But it stalled at No. 2 on the chart that would eventually be recognized as the official British pop singles list. Thus, the No. 1 streak began in earnest with their third single, “From Me To You”, which indeed topped that all-important chart.
Over a span of four years, The Beatles released 11 new singles in the United Kingdom. Each of those songs made it all the way to No. 1. Two of those No. 1s were so-called double A-side singles. This meant that there was no real distinction between A-side and B-side since both songs were released on the radio.
In late 1966, fresh off their decision to stop touring, The Beatles ensconced themselves in the studio to begin working on the material that would emerge in the next year. And the first fruits of that labor arrived in February 1967: another double A-sided single containing the songs “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane”. Considering the magnitude of those songs, you might assume that the continuance of the streak was a foregone conclusion. But an artist once known as Gerry Dorsey had other ideas.
A New Name and New Hope
He was born Arnold George Dorsey in 1936 in what was then British India. He changed it to Gerry as he embarked upon a singing career in the late 50s. And success might have been forthcoming more quickly were it not for a serious bout with tuberculosis that wiped out his momentum.
Pushing 30 years old as the mid-60s approached, Dorsey found a lifeline in the person of music impresario Gordon Mills. Mills had recently made a huge splash by discovering the Welsh vocal powerhouse Tom Jones. Sensing he had something similar, he signed up Dorsey.
His first order of business was giving Dorsey a stage name. For whatever reason, Mills liked the name Engelbert Humperdinck, which he borrowed from a renowned German composer whose most famous work was done in the late 19th century. Now the new Humperdinck needed a song to reintroduce him to the world.
A Surprisingly Successful “Release” by Engelbert Humperdinck
The rechristened Engelbert Humperdinck heard potential in a saxophone instrumental version of the song “Release Me”, written in 1949 by Eddie Miller and Robert Young. It had already been via country and R&B artists. In Humperdinck’s version, the country style was combined with lush orchestration and the singer’s even lusher vocals. None other than Jimmy Page was one of the guitarists who played on the session.
But Humperdinck still needed a little bit of a push to get the song over. That came when he was a last-minute fill-in for a variety show that was sort of Great Britain’s answer to Ed Sullivan. Once Humperdinck performed “Release Me” on the show, it started to climb the charts in a hurry.
It didn’t stop until it hit No. 1. And in so doing, “Release Me” by Engelbert Humperdinck froze the “Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane” single at No. 2. The Beatles’ chart-topping streak ended at 11 in a row. And Engelbert Humperdinck, with this surprising feather in his cap, was on his way to a very successful career of his own.
Photo by Engelbert Humperdinck/YouTube
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