Mourning the singer: Bill Ramsey died at the age of 90

Bill Ramsey became famous in the 50s and 60s with hits like “Pigalle” and “Mimi never goes to bed without a crime thriller – but his great love has always been jazz. Now the singer died in Hamburg at the age of 90.

Singer Bill Ramsey has died at the age of 90. The native American fell asleep in his home in Hamburg on Friday afternoon, his wife Petra told “Bild”. Ramsey had great success in Germany in the 50s and 60s with hits like “Pigalle – the big mousetrap”, “Sugar doll from the belly dance group” or “Mimi never goes to bed without a crime story”.

Born in Cincinatti / Ohio in 1931, William McCreery Ramsey later served his military service in Germany. His musical career began in Frankfurt am Main when the young GI appeared there as a jazz singer in army clubs in the early 1950s. As the chief producer of the US military broadcaster AFN, he was soon able to devote himself entirely to music.

Great love of jazz

He eventually became famous with hits – but his great love was jazz from beginning to end. “How did you come to switch from Schlager to Jazz?” – this is the question that journalists asked him most often, wrote Ramsey once on his homepage and emphasized: “Only those who have already dealt intensively with the jazz scene in the mid-1950s can know that the question should be the other way around.”

In April he said in the NDRthat it was “not a big break” for him. “The song ‘Mimi never goes to bed without a crime story’, for example, is a swing number that was also played by Kurt Edelhagen and his orchestra, a top jazz orchestra in Europe at the time.” Ramsey did not want to distance himself from his funny hits, they were “funny comments on current affairs”, he once said. But he wanted to shed his image as a “hit clown”.

Adopted home of Hamburg

In the 1960s in particular, he also appeared in films, including hit films and Karl May adventures. Around 30 films and even more albums, plus numerous TV programs such as “Talentschuppen” (1974-1980) – Ramsey was a born entertainer. As a moderator, he presented for the even at an advanced age Hessian Broadcasting its “Swingtime”. It wasn’t until the beginning of March 2019, shortly before his 88th birthday, that he put an end to the show after more than three decades as an anchorman.

Even as a jazz interpreter, he was still on stage at an advanced age, for example for a concert on his 85th birthday in Hamburg’s St. Pauli Theater. The Hanseatic city had long been his chosen home. Ramsey, who had had German citizenship since 1984, lived there with his fourth wife Petra in an apartment with a view of the Elbe.