Remember when Englebert Humperdinck promised to "sing you sleep after the lovin'?"

Well, now the 63-year-old, self-described King Of Romance, who plays Casino Rama on Wednesday night, wants you to get up and shake a leg.

Humperdinck's latest release, The Dance Album, hits stores here on Aug. 24, and features some of the entertainer's best known hits -- After The Lovin', Release Me, Spanish Eyes and Quando, Quando, Quando -- remixed as dance songs. There are also five new songs but, really, who cares when you can get down to Man Without Love?

"It originally all stems from my son Scott, who's my manager," explains Humperdinck, on the line from the Pink Palace, the L.A. estate actress Jayne Mansfield once called home. "He really wanted to do a dance track and have my voice on top of the track to get it out there in the clubs."

Thus the stage was set for a meeting between Humperdinck and the remix-production duo known as Thunderpuss 2000 -- a.k.a. L.A. native Chris Cox and Hamilton-born Barry Harris.

"They came over with Scott and we sat down and discussed the whole idea and they said, 'Absolutely, we want to do an album as opposed to a single.' They came with very rough demos of how we could take some of my standard classic songs into a different direction."

Still, you may wonder why an artist who has lasted more than three decades, sold 130 million albums worldwide, possesses one of the largest fan clubs in the world and still plays about 120 shows a year, felt the need for reinvention?

"I think everybody needs a shot of additional success every once in awhile," says Humperdinck. "This dance album has been on the charts all over the world. I think Canada's the last place of its release, so it's always nice to be in the charts.

"And so you have to do different projects to get into the charts and to get the radio attention and the attention of club deejays and the attention of the record-buying public."

He also had earlier success with a younger audience with his cheeky, lounge song Lesbian Seagull from the 1996 Beavis & Butt-head Do America soundtrack.

"It's all part of just staying out there and keeping the visibility up and having people talk about you, same old, same old," says Humperdinck. "The proof is in the pudding and success is success. ... We've just hung up another couple of platinum albums because of the Beavis & Butt-head stuff, so it was very successful. And, you know, you have to have a sense of humour to do this."

In fact, Humperdinck was talking to Canadian Mike Myers about getting involved in the soundtrack for the Austin Powers sequel, The Spy Who Shagged Me, but it didn't work out due to his involvement in two other soundtracks.

"I'm not really even allowed to talk about them, it's real early days," he says. "One's for an animated movie that comes out next year. It's a sequel to another animated movie, and will proably be a duet with another male artist. And the other one is a title track to another movie."

One week in Vegas

In the meantime, the road always beckons. Humperdinck plans to return to Toronto to play Roy Thomson Hall in early February. And despite his long-standing association with Las Vegas, he's only playing there one week this year at the new Venetian Hotel; typically, he does four- to six-week stands.

So does the transformation of Las Vegas from Sin City to a family-oriented resort sit well with him?

"It's difficult for me to answer that honestly because I've been going there for 30 years and the way that they treat the entertainers has changed, quite considerably, from the sort of mob days to the now corporate world," says Humperdinck. "Let me just put it this way -- they used to take much better care of us before."