JOE WILKENS UND DIE ROCKIES, Hula Baby, 1958
Posted: September 5, 2012 Filed under: 50s, Flexible Records, Rock´n´Roll Records 2 Comments »
Quelle was widely known as Germany´s most successful mail order company but until the 1980s they were also one of the five biggest chains of department stores. Established in 1927 the company declared bankruptcy in 2009 and the rights to the name were bought up by Otto, formerly their biggest rival in the mail order business. In the 1950s Quelle tried to grab a slice of the booming record market with their own short lived Quellux label, of course in true budget style issuing cheap flexible records. Quellux records were sold solely in their own Quelle department stores.
Hula Baby is a German version, first recorded by Peter Kraus in 1958, of Buddy Knox´ hit record Hula Love, that was likewise a version of Hawaiian Song, written and recorded by Leadbelly in 1948.
Baby, ich schiess dir einen Teddybär , a cover version of Perry Como´s “Kewpie Doll”, was first recorded by Austrian pop singer Jörg Maria Berg. Four years ago I posted another fine version of that song by Francesco Barini on the local Berlin budget flexi disc label Rondo here.
I have no idea who is behind Joe Wilkens and his Rockies and as usual both versions have never been reissued in any format.
JOE WILKENS UND DIE ROCKIES, Hula Baby, 1958
JOE WILKENS UND DIE ROCKIES, Baby, ich schiess dir einen Teddybär, 1958
About me:
My name is Andreas Michalke. I´m a cartoonist from Berlin, Germany and I like collecting records. Most of the records I find in thrift stores or at flea markets here in Berlin. I like a lot of music but I thought I`d focus on odd German records. Preferably with cartoon covers.
All my scans are high-resolution. If you double-click on them they will get much bigger.
I am not an expert in accents but I am excellent in making wild guesses. So I would say the singer has a dutch accent and his real name is Peter de Vries (who is present in this blog with another hula-song).
You are pretty excellent at making wild guesses! And an attentive reader of this blog. Thank you! That Peter De Vries record was a while back. I´m sure Peter Wilkens “accent” is just the average over-pronounced style of schlager singing that was in fashion at the time.
It would be nice to find more information about a lot of these budget label artists, but I´m afraid that it will not be done with a Google search. I would have to contact some of the owners of the copyrights of these songs, do an inquiry with BIEM and in general try to find people who were close to these companies and artists. And by then I would be well on my way to do a proper legal reissue of some of the material. I do believe that some of the better tracks here deserve to be put on a compilation, but right now it seems way too much work and would cost money that I don´t have. And who´s gonna buy this stuff anyway?
Right now posting budget hula songs on this blog is all I can do.