In the sticky fifties, Ted Herold was the biggest scandal after Hildegard Knef’s “Sinner”. She showed a coarse-grained bosom in the cinema, he cheekily claimed he was a man. The American retort singer Fabian had presented “I’m a Man” – Harald Schubring added considerably more voice and promised in the Foreign Legionary German of the time: “My kisses burn hotter than desert winds”.
The fact that a 17-year-old proclaimed from the 45 record that he was sexually mature was beyond the capacity of German radio during the years of “Operation Clean Canvas” and the tireless campaigns against dirt and trash. Radio Luxemburg had to help out and helped the electrical engineer to a brief, very successful career. Ted Herold, as a manager Americanized him, looked more proletarian than Peter Kraus, and when he twitched his hips on stage (always a bit more angular than Elvis, seven years his senior), he actually exuded something like sex appeal.
King Elvis asked King Herold: “But you only sing German?”
Elvis had already passed his prime in 1958, had been drafted and was doing his military service in Hesse. Herold liked to tell the story of how, as a beginner, he was led to the good soldier Elvis. His first own single “I need no ring” was just in the shop window, and the King nodded approvingly and then asked, somewhat perplexed: “But you just sing in German?”
Unfortunately, see and above all listen to “Wooden Heart”, Elvis could even sing better in German than the whole local Schlagergschwerl that emulated him and from which Herold stood out. But in 1963 he was brought in by the Bundeswehr, and then his career was over. Herold became a shovel again, made his master as an electrician, ran a solid workshop until Udo Lindenberg remembered him and brought him back on stage. As a respectable craftsman, he didn’t need to, but he enjoyed it, especially when he could pull on the competition. “For me,” that was important to him, “a lot more chairs were knocked down than with Playback-Peter.”
When Herold then sang “Ich bin ein Mann” (I am a man), the female fans, who had grown a little older with him, nodded and said: He can do that with the voice. On Saturday evening, 79-year-old Harald Schubring, presumably together with his wife, died in an apartment fire in Dortmund. Ted Herold lives on.