Doing the Hump.
My brother Matthew does a great Engelbert Humperdinck, even winning karaoke contests with a version of After The Lovin'.
Which is kind of weird because he doesn't look anything like the crooner.
But according to Humperdinck, who's at the National Arts Centre tomorrow, it's more important to sound like him than to look like him.
"It's funny, when I first became famous, one of the things I was known for were those big sideburns," he recalls on the phone from his hotel in Erie, Penn.
"I was getting mobbed everywhere I went. I was getting pretty tired of all the attention. So, one day, I shaved the sideburns off. People had a hard time recognizing me after that."
With a new album, All In The Game, which includes new live versions of his biggest hits, it's a lock that he'll revisit his classics After The Lovin', Quando, Quando, Quando, Bicyclette de Belsize and Release Me, the song that "put me on the map," and his personal favourite.
It's a repertoire that's finding its way with the lounge and karaoke crowd.
"I think that I'm singing better now than ever," he says. "My sound is much more commercial, much more today's sound."
Like his disco version of a little number Hump gave to Sinatra, Stranger In The Night. It drove Sun music writer Ian Nathanson to fits at last year's concert.
How do you update a classic?
And more importantly, why?
Like most of the great singers, Humperdinck grew up through music, dreaming of playing the sax in a big band.
When he found out at 17 that he had a voice, he also treated it like he was playing an instrument.
"Being a musician at the start of my career taught me the rudiments for being a good singer," he says.
But the godfather of style, and Tom Jones' nemesis, Humperdinck, despite all temptation to do otherwise, has evolved into a lady-killing pop icon who's smoother than Kraft peanut butter.
But he also plays the role of man's man with a wicked sense of humour, an obsession for golf and a certain knack with the ladies.
Oh, and he's also a pretty good singer. The 64-year-old artist has racked up sales of more than 130 million and has roughly 250 fan clubs and a website that receives nearly half a million hits a month.
"If you analyze success, you lose it," he explains.
"The secret is to make it seem spontaneous. I'm as receptive to my audience as they are to me."
Tickets for Humperdinck's Southam Hall concert are $40-60 and are available at Ticketmaster at 755-1111 or at the NAC box-office.
