A good-looking young man with black lard and soft facial features, who sings to sounds with an intonation that sometimes seems like hiccups and swings his hips, which was known as "jungle music", in this way drives half the country crazy, which then turns into Military service in Hessian is drafted and because of the Beatlemania and other newfangled stuff that was spreading at that time, completely lost touch: Germany also had an Elvis Presley, whose name was Ted Herold, a cleverly chosen pseudonym in which the rock'n'roll rebellion Teddy Boys resonated as well as literally that heroism that was attested back then to everyone who could sing and at least hold a guitar.

Edo Reents

Editor in the features section.

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Today one can hardly imagine how young Ted Herold, who came from Berlin, was when he, mediated by a classmate, won his first Elvis Presley titles with Polydor under Bert Kaempfert, namely only sixteen; and only a year older when he caused a sensation in 1959 with “Ich bin ein Mann”, a puerile tearfulness that unleashed it on America at the same time, very similar to Paul Anka (“Lonely Boy”). Teenage pain was just pulling, and Ted Herold was able to articulate it no less convincingly than the Anglo-Saxon originals in a flexible but not particularly voluminous voice with all the sexual needs that might resonate and make the radio stations cringe. When asked why he did it in German, like Peter Kraus,is easy to answer with the reference to the mass acceptance of the starved young republican audience, also satisfied with imitation light music.

He had his only number one hit with "Moonlight", a pure hit that reminiscent of Elvis Presley's "Blue Moon" from afar, but does not come close to its subtlety. With this song, already sold half a million times at that time, he took a gentler course; but the television stations still didn't want him, a prototype interpreter by German standards.

Ted Herold never complained about it, worked as a radio and television technician, brought out records again around 1980 and experienced a late compensation with television appearances in which he was presented as what he was basically never right or was never allowed to be: a real rock and roller.

Now Harald Walter Bernhard Schubring, as the German Elvis was actually called, died in a house fire in Dortmund when he was almost eighty.