2024-09-11 15:24:57
In Germany it is a hit genre with “Popocatepetl twist” and “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Honolulu Beach Bikini”. Throughout the world, Caterina Valente sings everything: jazz and chanson, bossa nova and pop. He is now dead at the age of 93.
The biggest sportswoman in Germany since Marlene Dietrich is the Italian with the most recent French passport: Caterina Germaine Maria Valente. He is a singer, dancer, guitarist, actor, instrumentalist and, yes, everything in between: an entertainer. In a man’s business. He sang 1,500 hits, jazz, pop, musicals, chanson and bossa nova in twelve languages. She quilted and quilted. And again and again: laugh!
She is a happy, funny, unique artist. And although he retired from the stages decades ago, and unfortunately also from music, and took what seems to be very content, retired life in Ticino, rarely like a good Facebook photo, his reputation grew forever. Re-release and just look back, nothing clouded by the zeitgeist, show: Caterine can not do it!
And it is no coincidence that this multi-cultural creation ends up on German stages, cinema screens and living room TV boxes. His parents are from Italy, his father has Spanish roots. He was born on January 14, 1931 in Paris, then married to a German with a Dutch stage name, then to an Englishman and lives mostly in Switzerland. He calls himself “a kind of musical goulash”. But there is nothing Hungarian about her, but most of it is southern even she became world famous as Malgueña girl.
First, it is illuminated by the lights of various displays. Giuseppe Valente, his father, is the accordion virtuoso Di Zazzo, and his mother Maria is the best female comedian in the world. He was born in Germany during the war, was bombed out of Berlin and later interned. But Caterina was silent about it and smiled indifferently away. Always with a twinkle in her hazel eyes. The show must go on! This is given as a mantra with your breast milk. And even more after the big blow. Rise from the ruins, joy is the order of the day. And the little one, soon the little girl, and finally the unstoppable all-rounder, danced, played and sang in the foreground as “the voice of the upswing” (“Spiegel”).
The Germans quickly claimed him as their property and often – with their consent – despised, domesticated and underestimated his talent. Yet it is of the world. Although it has become popular between the Rhine and the Oder, the Isar and the Schlei, it is legendary in Europe and the USA. Which in Germany people do not want to know anything about. Here she is a sassy pop girl from an economic wonderland – with an Italian touch that was popular at the time. A worst hour with Catrin easily replaced a trip to the south, fast and elegant.
Caterina Valente, it is Germanized and made to fit the design. He ducked and survived. Only abroad he became big, glamorous, provocative, danced and sang with Louis Armstrong, Dean Martin, Perry Como, Michel Legrand and Harry Belafonte. He even sang Chet Baker’s melancholic blues trumpet. Back at home, where the sun show was first lit, he was allowed to bear his first name over and over again. “Bonjour, Kathrin” is the name of one of his films, “Bonsoir, Kathrin” was addressed by his TV shows, which brought the country together in front of the TV box with Käseigel and Kullerpfirsich.
She was called Kat or Cat or Katharina the Great, and celebrated her 50th birthday in 1986 under the title “Bravo, Catrin”. She’s more of a chameleon than you’d expect in this country. His voice, sometimes harsh and sometimes sinister, can do more than just steal. He knows how to improvise, improvise, race through octaves, it’s spontaneous and primal music. As a woman who knows Teutonic with a Dada twist, she sings mostly about “Titipitipitipso”, “Popocatepetl-Twist”, “Madison in Mexico” and “Chico from Puerto Rico”. Caterina Valente promised the FRG citizen’s love for the south and satisfied him, at least for a moment, with “Tschau Tschau Bambina” and “Come with me to Italy for a bit”.
“Plenty Valentine!”
Caterina Valente first stood in the circus ring with her brothers as a five-year-old girl. It had its first stage appearance in 1936 at Stuttgart’s Friedrichsbau. After imprisonment in Breslau and moving to Odessa, the Valentes returned to Paris, where Caterina, at the age of 16, appeared as a singer in nightclubs. He played with the then unknown Gilbert Bécaud, toured Scandinavia and made his first recordings in Copenhagen in 1948. The head of entertainment at Radio Zurich brought them into the studio in 1952, and the The recording attracted attention from all German broadcasters. Numerous productions followed, including at Südwestfunk Baden-Baden, where he provided important support to bandleader Kurt Edelhagen. In the same year she married the juggler Erik van Aro.
Back then, it could be a fantastic international jazz performance; However, many of these recordings first faded into obscurity, and the heat of hits and flashy entertainment shows grew stronger. Caterina Valente scurried along the BRD gala stairs, singing every song that came her way. A highly bipolar career that went to the edge of pop schizophrenia was revealed: his recordings with the Werner Müller Orchestra, such as “Malagueña” (1954) and those that followed, became international. Signature Song “The Wind and I” was celebrated and stayed in the American charts for weeks.
At the same time, their first albums were released with international titles such as “The Hi-Fi Nightingale” (1956) and “Plenty Valente!” (1957). But in Germany, “All the Dreams of Paris” sold over 700,000 copies.[900,000]and became a local star with “Where My Sun Shines” and “Play Me Again, Habanero.” And hardly anyone noticed that “Caterina wa” was nominated for a Grammy as the best singer in 1959, and in 1965 he was the first American to receive the Fame Award of the television critics as the singer of the best on US television, presented by Sammy Davis. Jr. He was courted by Burt Bacharach, worked with Buddy Rich and Tommy Dorsey, sang for Queen and Leonard Bernstein.
While in demand worldwide in many languages and styles, search, sing and win, he has to continue to satisfy the German traveler in Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich as a three-minute performance: with ” Enter Dreamboat of Love”, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Honolulu Beach Bikini”, “Where my sun shines” and other works. Caterina Valente has long since become a star in Puschenkino Grandpa. In 1954 she made her first film , “Mannequins for Rio,” and a dozen more followed in rapid succession. In 1957 he presented his own television show, including in Italy, Austria and Switzerland. This continued until the seventies; Added to this were regular guest appearances with Hans Rosenthal, Peter Frankenfeld and Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff.
And in between he always impressed as a cosmopolitan, polyglot show star on the international stage. In 1963, Caterina Valente should have sung “Daughter of Ipanema” instead of Astrud Gilberto. He made 15 tours in the USA, he was at the Olympia in Paris seven times, at the London Palladium and several times in New York; Even during the times of the Iron Curtain, it even had actions in the USSR and the GDR. In the US he was a guest star in more than 100 television shows, with Danny Kaye, Bing Crosby and Carol Burnett.
The final highlight was the ARD tribute “Bravo, Catrin!” in 1986 for its 50th anniversary. There are about 17 million viewers there. But that is already a swan song. In 1979 he had another German chart success with the hit “Manuel”, as well as in 1984 with “Men need love”. In 1987 he said laconically “I’m still here”.
Of course, Caterina Valente could have continued. Your good name is still alive. But he wanted to make a surprise in the 1990s as jazz singer and translator Kurt Weill. In 1996 he made his last appearance in Leipzig. And soon after that he returned regularly and without regret, first to the USA, then to Switzerland. His last record was released in 2001, and in 2003 there was a surprise appearance on Italian television as a duet partner with his son Eric von Aro. He has given everything. And maybe you also suspect that soon it will be rediscovered as a major interpreter of world music, with a focus on South America: the two faces of the imagined pop woman!
This Caterina Valente – often together with the eternal duo runner-up, her brother Silvio Francesco – melodically confirmed to the Germans: “It is getting better, always better.” in Mannheim and in the Black Forest. She was a chansonette, comedian, comedienne and multi-instrumentalist. It has hits and swing, flamenco and tango, chansons, canzoni, aria and popular songs. Unfortunately, later she was a terrible mother, a fighting ghost with a stubbly nibbled hairstyle and a permanent happy memory of the best hitting time. He then stormed down the show stairs and recited songs from the time in fanfare.
This Caterina Valente can be grandiose and precise. He knows why he sings: “You are a song.” This voice can shoot up to the stars quickly and hit like an arrow. But he is also able to speak of promise and despair, wrapped in velvet, flour and purring. Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield, Barbra Streisand, Doris Day, Astrud Gilberto, Sarah Vaughn, Dionne Warwick, Shirley Bassey – all of them were Valente, and always on the stairs to the stars. Not as a calypso ghost and goblin show that eternally celebrates “love, dance and 1000 hits”, but as one of the best artists of the second half of the 20th century.
Now Caterina Valente died in Lugano at the age of 93. She was a singer.
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