He is best known for the hit “Im Wagen vor mir”. But Hans Blum alias Henry Valentino contributed even more to German hits as a singer and lyricist. He died last Friday at the age of 95.
Hans Blum alias Henry Valentino was successful as a pop singer and lyricist.
Henning Kaiser / DPA / Keystone
That’s the curse of big hits. As a singer you can struggle for years and achieve respectable chart positions. But at the end of a life, if you’re lucky, you’ll be left with a single song that becomes a catchy tune. Just as Drafi Deutscher was often reduced to his “breaking marble, stone and iron” and Rex Gildo was not allowed to leave a stage without shouts of “Fiesta Mexicana” and “Hossa, hossa” until his tragic death, Hans Blum was only brought to life throughout his life with an original highway song: “In the car in front of me”.
After his record company found the pseudonym Henry Caruso too bold, Blum called himself Henry Valentino. He disguised himself with a mustache and a bowler hat and cultivated his voice, which sounded as if he was already gargling wire nails and whiskey for breakfast. In 1977 he finally sang the magnificent duet “Im Wagen vor mir” with Uschi Peysang, who died early, which was covered by Die Toten Hosen, among others.
An early hit
Although Blum, born in Hanover in 1928, scored a coup as a singer in 1959 with the German version of “Charly Brown” under his real name, he wrote his name in the history of popular music primarily as a composer and lyricist. Immediately after the Second World War, he used his musical training, appeared in background choirs, sang for beer and meatballs at company parties and founded the Hansen Quartet alongside his future wife Ingetraut Maschke.
Blum’s heyday came in the 1960s and 1970s, when he profitably used his dual talents as a composer and lyricist and brought one evergreen after another onto the market. He triumphed several times at the German Schlager Competition, including with “Don’t bite into every apple” and “Harlequin”.
He also tried to improve the German record at the Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson and, without making it onto the medal podium, entered the race with Inge Brück’s “Anouschka” and Siw Malmkvist’s “Primaballerina”. He appeared there one last time in 1986 with Ingrid Peters’ “Going over the Bridge” and reached eighth place – a ranking that today sent German broadcasters into a frenzy.
His enduring hits include Graham Bonney’s “Seven League Boots”, Erik Silvester’s “Sugar in Coffee”, “El Lute” by Boney M., the “Gypsy Boy”, which became the symbol of the enigmatic Alexandra, and Howard Carpendale’s “The Beautiful Girl from Page”. one” that morally questionably encourages young women to order through mail order catalogs.
Spilled beads
Woke’s consciousness would of course also be disturbed by “In the car in front of me”. A stalker song in which an older white man terrifies a blonde Deux Chevaux driver: Which record company would dare to do something like that today? Last but not least, Hans Blum’s composition with the irresistible “Rada, rada, radadada” has significantly expanded the treasure trove of onomatopoeia in the hit song.
As befits, an extensive oeuvre also includes a lot of buried pearls. If you were to ask me about my favorite Blum song, it would be his wife’s “A love is like a song”, with which Mary Roos narrowly failed in the German Grand Prix preliminary round in 1975: “A love is like a song, / like a song. / Sometimes forgotten, / when it has faded away.”
Now Hans Blum, the man with many unforgettable songs, died at the age of 95 in Overath near Cologne.