Quote of the Day: “What’s in a name?”

 

Arnold George Dorsey must have thought quite deeply about the answer to Shakespeare’s question, one which seems, at least in his case, to have boiled down to, “quite a lot, really.”

Born eighty-eight years ago today in Madras, India (the date is sometimes given as May 2), young Mr. Dorsey riffled through several options before deciding on his stage name:

 At first I thought I should be a second Beethoven; presently I found that to be another Schubert would be good; then, gradually, satisfied with less and less, I resigned to be a Humperdinck.

The implied deprecation of his namesake notwithstanding, it proved to be a good choice, and one which led to far more success than he’d enjoyed thus far with early performances under the name “Gerry Dorsey.”  The Humperdinck name was suggested by his manager, Gordon Mills, who–at the time–was also managing an up-and-coming young singer with the simplest of English stage names, Tom Jones.

The two of them—Tom Jones and the newly-minted Englebert Humperdinck—have been performing to packed houses for sixty years each, and are still touring, although Humperdinck’s 2024 “Last Waltz” Farewell Tour” is billed as his last.  They’ve always been the “chalk and cheese” of a particular style of English crooner, with Jones as the freewheeling sex bomb, and  Humperdinck as the quieter, buttoned-up homebody:

I love to smile. I love to laugh. I like to hear jokes. For instance, when I’m on the road, every night I watch ‘Seinfeld.’ I find it somewhere. I think it’s so funny, and I watch the repeats over and over again.

Hardly a raucous partier, then.

Regardless–or irregardless as the case may be–each of them had a marriage that lasted over half a century, until his wife’s death and–in a day and age when talentless, but freakish, “entertainers” depend on technology and razzle-dazzle to cover up their deficiencies even when performing live, both men hearken back to an age when the stars of popular music weren’t dressed like circus performers, and could actually belt out their greatest hits without the aid of syncing, echo chambers, or Autotune.

I’m not sure we’ll ever see their like again.

Happy Birthday, Englebert Humperdinck.

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  1. Mark Camp Member
    Mark Camp
    @MarkCamp

    Nice article. It points out the good qualities of these two successful non-conformists of Stoner Era pop culture.

     * * *

    Addendum.  (May be skipped by the reader without ill effect.)

    I credit them even though I’m not a fan of either, myself. Quite the opposite. The Real Men of Ricochet Fight Song says it better than I can.

    It is based on the MIT Fight Song, which goes…

    We don’t drink 

    And we don’t chew

    And we don’t go

    With girls that do!

    Here it is.

    We don’t dig Humperdynck

    And Tom Jones we eschew

    And we don’t fondly think

    On the sort of girls who do!

    • #1
  2. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Gerry Dorsey? He’d have been pestered for the last sixty years with questions about Jimmy and Tommy.

    • #2
  3. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Percival (View Comment):

    Gerry Dorsey? He’d have been pestered for the last sixty years with questions about Jimmy and Tommy.

    Yeah, a man can’t help his name given at birth.

    • #3
  4. Randy Weivoda Moderator
    Randy Weivoda
    @RandyWeivoda

    I like the wide variety of topics you take on, She.  No one ever knows what you will write about next.

    • #4
  5. She Member
    She
    @She

    Randy Weivoda (View Comment):

    I like the wide variety of topics you take on, She. No one ever knows what you will write about next.

    Thanks.  You know what they say about “Jacks (and Jills) of all trades….” 😬

    • #5
  6. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    She (View Comment):
    You know what they say about “Jacks (and Jills) of all trades….”

    They get things done.

    • #6
  7. She Member
    She
    @She

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    Nice article. It points out the good qualities of these two successful non-conformists of Stoner Era pop culture.

    * * *

    Addendum. (May be skipped by the reader without ill effect.)

    I credit them even though I’m not a fan of either, myself. Quite the opposite. The Real Men of Ricochet Fight Song says it better than I can.

    It is based on the MIT Fight Song, which goes…

    We don’t drink

    And we don’t chew

    And we don’t go

    With girls that do!

    Here it is.

    We don’t dig Humperdynck

    And Tom Jones we eschew

    And we don’t fondly think

    On the sort of girls who do!

    (H/T, Walter Raleigh’s Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd)

    Were all the world but Humperdinck and Jones,
    A smidge of truth found lurking in the news;
    This girl might find solace in tea and scones,
    And ask you in and vow to be your muse.

    But since there’s more to life than they
    And news, for what it’s worth, is done;
    I’ll skip the treats and send you on your way,
    And hope that you can find yourself anon.

    • #7
  8. Lilly B Coolidge
    Lilly B
    @LillyB

    Okay, it’s bad enough that Amazon is listening to my conversations (and I’m pretty sure Instagram is just reading my mind), but now it seems that Ricochet is somehow enabling @She to listen in on my family dinner conversations! Just last night, someone asked what the worst name was, and I immediately answered “Englebert Humperdinck.” The name came so quickly to mind because my 13 yr-old has become a fan. She plays “A Man Without Love” for me on the way to school. Not raising Swifties over here.

    *****

    This post is part of the Ricochet Quote of the Day tradition. Please join us by signing up for a day here.

    • #8
  9. Steve C. Member
    Steve C.
    @user_531302

    • #9
  10. She Member
    She
    @She

    Lilly B (View Comment):

    Okay, it’s bad enough that Amazon is listening to my conversations (and I’m pretty sure Instagram is just reading my mind), but now it seems that Ricochet is somehow enabling @ She to listen in on my family dinner conversations!

    LOL. Sudden flashback–funny how these things work–to my early childhood, and my darling mother, who, when I was a toddler, used to call me Big Ears, or Loppy Lugs (both characters from children’s stories in the UK.)

    How Noddy and Big Ears conquered the world | The Spectator

    Big ears and his friend, Noddy.

    Loppy Lugs was a rabbit with big floppy ears (the breed is known as “Lop,” and “lugs” is British slang for ears.)  There was either a book, or a cartoon about him when Mum was a child; I can’t find any original images.

    “Big Ears” was written out of Noddy some years ago.  Here’s what The Independent had to say in 1997:

    When negotiations began two years ago to screen a television version of the Noddy stories in America, Big Ears ran into problems. The network showing the programmes “could not be seen to sustain discrimination” against people with large ears. So they called him White Beard instead.

    Not sure why that doesn’t count as “age” or “follicular” discrimination, though.

    Still, I can’t help wishing that had happened 40 years earlier, so that I could have been less affected by the slings and arrows of my mother’s “large ear discrimination” which have traumatized me, ruined my life, and prevented me from making anything of myself….

     

    • #10
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