music-selections

Bert Kaempfert – Afrikaan Beat (1961)

Did you like this gem from the past? Here’s another one.

This tune is legendary, and if you’re into reggae music you’ve heard it a million times. About every single reggae artist has performed over this melody. Countless versions have been made through the years in Jamaica (check out the first one: Lester Sterling -- Afrikaan Beat in our previous post) and all over the world.

So one day my brother cleaned the house and this 45 came out from a dusty library in my granpa’s home: now that’s a lucky find! It’s the original 7 inch, Polydor italian edition, and now that I found it, it started spinning again over and over on my turntable.

This tune was composed in 1961 and it still sounds great. You cannot get it out of your mind once you hear it, and it’s difficult to find somebody who doesn’t like it.

The man who composed it obviously had a great talent, but this is no surprise since he is the man who first hired the Beatles. Not enough? Well, he is the one who composed “Strangers In The Night” also. We’re talking about Mr Bert Kaempfert, he proved he knows a couple of things about melody.

(check out the cut-off label for Juke-Boxes on the rear cover…boy, that’s how your grand parents used to rock 50 years ago!)

Here it is, enjoy! And of course let us know what you think of it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 13th, 2010 at 6:27 pm. It is filed under Afrobeat, Reggae and tagged with 1961, Afrikaan Beat, Barrington Levy, Bert Kaempfert, Under Mi Sensi, vinyl. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.