Tin Pan Alley: Do Not Disturb

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One of the most popular pop composers in the U.S. today is a Hamburger. He is a German named Bert Kaempfert who lives in Hamburg, tools all his music for the American public, and has visited the U.S. fewer than a dozen times. Yet his latest song, Strangers in the Night, as recorded by Frank Sinatra, was No. 5 among the bestsellers last week and headed straight for the top. Sinatra's version has already been matched by no fewer than 85 other performers who know a winner when they hear it.

Kaempfert, 42, has written many tunes, but he has had nothing like Strangers going for him before. Still, he is no stranger to the bestseller parade. While most Americans have never heard of him as a personality (he never performs in public), they have bought a remarkable 10 million copies of his schmaltz-laced albums.

Kaempfert cultivated his taste for "foreign music" when he led a sextet in a U.S. Army officers' club in Bremerhaven. By cribbing from the jukebox, he learned all the popular American songs, soon developed a skill for arranging and composing foxtrotting tunes in the big-band idiom. Since his "music that does not disturb," as he calls it, is geared for U.S. audiences, he is virtually unknown in his own country. But Kaempfert does not care; last year he grossed $950,000. Strangers ought to make 'him a millionaire. "Maybe then," says his wife, "they will pay attention to Bert even in Germany."