NEWS

Here are 49 amazing archive pictures of Arnold George Dorsey, the Leicester legend better kbnown as Engelbert Humperdinck.

Engelbert was born in Madras as one of ten siblings, and moved to Leicester at the age of 10 with parents Mervyn and Olive. He took up playing the saxophone and worked in clubs in the early 1950s before taking up singing in his late teens where his impression of Jerry Lewis led friends to call him Gerry Dorsey.

He would go on to use this as his stage name for almost a decade.

After being conscripted to the army he signed a deal with Decca records in 1958 with his first single I'll Never Fall in Love Again.

His big break came in 1965 when he teamed up with music manager Gordon Mills who also looked after Tom Jones. It was him that suggested the name change to Engelbert Humperdinck - borrowed from a 19th century German composer.

Things started to move on a pace and by 1967 he was keeping the Beatles off the top chart position with his version of Release Me that stayed in the Top 50 for 56 weeks, selling 85,000 copies a day at its height.

This set of pictures charts some of those early days events of Leicester's much loved son.

https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/history/gallery/way-used-be-49-archive-5924736