Kim Wilde’s first records were written and produced by her father and brother, Marty and Ricky. The three of them have had a great influence on the music world, as this regular series ‘Wilde World’ shows.
It doesn’t happen very often that an artist covers a song in two different languages, so this week’s song is a special treat. Marty Wilde wrote ‘Love me, love my dog’ with Peter Shelley, a song that was typical of the cosy mid-Seventies atmosphere. The song’s lyrics essentially describe how a woman should love both the man and his dog for their love affair to work. Dutch entertainer Rudi Carrell took the song and made it his own within a year of the song’s release, in 1975.
Carrell first found fame with his Rudi Carrell Show on Dutch television in 1959. A year later, his song ‘Wat een geluk’ participated unsuccessfully in the Eurovision Song Contest. Meanwhile his TV show went from strength to strength, and in the mid-Sixties he started to present TV shows like ‘Am Laufenden Band’ on German television. His singing career continued as well. His TV success offered him the opportunity to record music for both the Dutch and German markets. When he recorded a version of ‘Love me, love my dog’ in Dutch as ‘Samen een straatje om’ (‘Walking the dog’) – for which he wrote the Dutch lyrics himself – he also recorded a German version titled ‘Wir zwei, mein Hund und ich’ (‘The two of us, my dog and I’). Both these versions are a simple paean to walking the dog late at night, just before going to bed.
Carrell eventually became better known in Germany than his home country, despite never being able to speak German flawlessly. He passed away in Bremen (Germany) on July 7, 2006 after suffering lung cancer as a result of his heavy smoking habits.
Listen to ‘Samen een straatje om’
Listen to ‘Wir zwei, mein Hund und ich’
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