Serious rock fans had a good reason to hate Engelbert Humperdinck in 1967. Not because of his slick, MOR ballads, which were seen as the antithesis of rock 'n' roll, not for that black, bushy mustache and sallow, sun-tanned complexion which must have partly inspired the latterday comedian, Steve Coogan, to create the satirical cabaret crooner, Tony Ferrino. No, the reason rock fans would have hated Humpy that year was because he did what no other pop artist had ever done before - he kept The Beatles out of the No 1 slot. Release Me was only the debut hit for the artist formerly known as Gerry Dorsey, and yet it managed to prevent The Beatles' greatest single, Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever, from reaching pole position. It was enough to make hippies rip their kaftans in exasperation.
Thirty years later, we have almost forgiven Engelbert Humperdinck his callous, chart-topping coup. Which is a good thing, because he's back, and making yet another bid for the hit parade in 1999. Perhaps he can hold Oasis from the No 1 slot - we'll gladly cheer him on this time. Arnold George Dorsey - for that is his real name - is sitting at a table in Dublin's Westbury Hotel, looking like a large, lightly-tanned bear, and grinning like Larry Sanders at his most obsequious. The 63-year-old is wearing an open-collared shirt positively bursting at the chest, and there's a bulky Rolex wrapped around his tree-trunk wrists. I can't help picturing this man in a wrestling ring, facing off against that other burly legend from the 1960s, Tom Jones. Celebrity death match? This would be the ultimate clash of the crooning titans.
But while Tom Jones still crops up in the charts every now and then, his one-time rival has been rather absent from the hit parade - he seemed to have disappeared from our consciousness altogether. That's all about to change this month with the release of - wait for it - The Dance Album, a collection of Humpy classics and new tunes which have been tweaked for the 1990s dance floor by the Inter-hit writing and production team of Chris Cox, Barry Harris and Jeff Johnson. Imagine, if you will, Release Me with a hi-nrg beat, The Last Waltz gone hip-hop, and Spanish Eyes with a Latin House mix. Sounds like a clubber's nightmare trip into childhood. Titter ye not, however, for The Dance Album, released here last week, is already ensconsed in the US Top 10, giving Engelbert the distinction of being the oldest person on this week's Billboard charts. So, how on Earth did Engelbert Humperdinck metamorphose into MC Humpy, and whose idea was it?
"What has happened is, I never know what style of music I'll be doing on my next album," explains Engelbert, his American drawl reined in by a slight vestige of his original Leicester accent. "It's like throwing dice to find out what the people are going to want. I never looked for this, but the two producers, Barry and Cox, came to me and said: `Why don't you try doing re-mixes of your standards?' And I was a little dubious about it, but they brought a sample of what it would sound like, and it sounded great. So I said let's give it a shot. It was a fun album to record, and it's a fun album to listen to."
The Dance Album features six of Engelbert's biggest hits from the 1960s: Release Me, The Last Waltz, After The Lovin', Quando, Quando, Quando, A Man Without Love and Spanish Eyes, done in a way your mother wouldn't recognise, plus four new tunes, Am I The Lover?, Mano A Mano, This Night and When Love Finds Your Heart. If it catches on and becomes a worldwide hit, then we could be looking at a career revival of Meat Loaf proportions.
Has Engelbert missed being in the public eye? "I've been around," protests the man. "I've been travelling the world. Although I haven't had chart success, I've still been all over the world. I've just finished a five-week tour of Germany, Belgium, Austria, Holland and Switzerland. Then I went home to England for Christmas and New Year, and now I've just started promoting my new album, and I've found that everybody's buzzing about it. It's incredible. It's hard to believe it's causing such a stir, and it has given me a big injection of life."
Not that Engelbert looks in need of any injection. Born in Madras, India, his tan looks light, his skin supple, and his general demeanour suggests a person in the rudest of health. He doesn't sit by his pool in Beverly Hills with a sheet of bacofoil beside him, and he says he has never been tempted to go under the plastic surgeon's knife. "I take care of myself pretty good. As a matter of fact, when I was in Germany I was taking sun beds just so I could look good on television. I take my vitamins every day, I play a lot of golf and I walk five miles on the course, and I play tennis. Maybe in 10 years' time I might need a facelift, but I'm not ready for it yet!"
Humperdinck also rides a Harley, and he regularly zooms out of his Beverly Hills home and barrels up Pacific Coast Highway with an army of fellow Harley enthusiasts. A happily-married father of four (his son is his manager and his daughter sings in his touring show), Humperdinck still finds time to fly back to England and catch up with some of his nine sisters and brothers and their families. There's also an Irish connection: his nephew, Gerry Dorsey, owns the Black Tulip restaurant in Dun Laoghaire, which is run by Gerry's daughter, Fiona Anderson. After the interview, Engelbert is to join his nephew and great-niece for dinner in Dun Laoghaire, and sample the robust delights of Guinness.
Later, Engelbert is strutting his stuff on Kenny Live, and if all goes according to plan, he may well be returning to the Top of the Pops studio, where he sang all his Top 10 hits all those years ago. This time, however, Humpy will be rubbing shoulders with young bucks such as Boyzone and 911, and teen queens like Billie and B*Witched. Won't he feel a little old beside all these pouting young popsters? "Well, Cher's back, and she sang on Top of the Pops, so there's no reason why I can't do that. I was on stage recently with a group called Smash Mouth (chart-busting US funk-rockers), and I thought I'd feel out of place with these guys, but these guys were in awe. They were going: `Hey, what a great thing to be onstage with you.' So that was nice. They asked me about who I knew in the old days, and did I ever meet Elvis. I said, yeah, of course, I was a good friend of Elvis."
The friendship between The King and The Hump developed in the early 1970s, when both artists were huge stars in Las Vegas. They even shared the same martial arts teacher. "The teacher had an affair with Elvis's wife," says Humperdinck, "But Elvis never mentioned it to me, ever, even though he knew I had his wife's lover as a karate teacher." There was, however, one bone of contention between the stars which Humperdinck had no problem bringing up. "He stole my sideburns," accuses Humperdinck - rather unfairly since Elvis isn't around to refute this allegation. "I said it straight to his face, I said: `You stole my sideburns.' He just laughed and said: `What looks good on you is gonna look good on me.' Seriously, though, he was a wonderful man, a great friend, and he never said a bad word about anybody."
Elvis will have to wait a fair few years before he can be reunited with his old showbiz buddy, because Humperdinck is planning to keep performing right into the next millennium.
"I'm a worker, my voice is stronger than ever, and as long as I've got people out there who like me and want to buy my music - I'm there. It's my job. The one legacy I want to leave is my music."
The Dance Album is on Interhit Records, and available in Ireland through RMG Distribution. The first single from the album, a dance version of Quando, Quando, Quando was released yesterday