-His velvet voice may be as unique as his name, and according to him, Las Vegas is where he made his name.

Engelbert Humperdinck is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪ -Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and other supporters.

-Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon joining you from Westgate Las Vegas, where on October 2nd and 3rd, our esteemed guest will be performing.

Born in British India and raised in Leicester, he built a global fan base off his emotional ballads.

His breakthrough hit in 1967 was "Release Me," and that was around the same time he began performing right here in Las Vegas.

Engelbert Humperdinck, thank you for joining us.

-That's a lovely intro.

Thank you very much.

-Well, and I could have gone on and on.

Las Vegas, what has this meant to your career, this city?

(Engelbert Humperdinck) Well, it is the capital entertainment city of the world.

And I think anybody who comes to Las Vegas has to have the talent to be a performer over here.

Otherwise, you know, they hit the road, Jack.

I had the pleasure of coming here very early in '67.

A gentlemen drove me around to find out which hotel I wanted to play, and we, we ended up at the Riviera.

And I played there for nine years.

And luckily enough, no empty seats.

-And you had your name on the marquee.

-Yeah.

-How did that come to be?

-Unbelievable.

I was standing there looking out the window, and I saw them putting my name up on the marquee.

I cannot begin to tell you what my stomach was doing at that particular time.

You know, I mean, I was brand new to the entertainment world, as big as it was, you know, being in Las Vegas and to look out and see my name going out in big letters was unbelievable.

And as a matter of fact, there was a guy who wrote a joke about my name going up on the marquee.

And he said, There's always an accident where Engelbert's marquee is.

He says Engelbert's all right, but his Humperdinck, his hump is all right, but his dink keeps falling off.

[laughter] -Okay.

Interpret that as you will.

-Whatever you want to do with it.

-Take me back to that time, though, because that was new success for you, and you had had some tough years prior?

-Oh, my Lord.

They were-- It took me a long-- They said I had an overnight success, but it took me from 17 to 29 years, when I was 29 before I became successful, before I had a hit record.

I had, I started recording in 29 around 29, 30, when I was 30.

And I never thought I was going to find myself.

I really didn't, you know, because when I recorded, when I recorded, "Release Me," it sat on the shelf for about three months, and I thought, this is a hit record.

I don't understand it.

Then all of a sudden, my manager said, You're going to do Sunday night at the London Palladium.

I did the Palladium, and the very next day it started selling like 80,000 - 90,000 a day.

And I kept calling up him, saying, How did we sell today?

He said, We did 127,000 today.

And yeah, I can't begin to tell you.

It broke all records that particular year, and it stopped the Beatles from having their 13th number one.

And it's in the Guinness Book of Records, and it was number one around the world.

But the message of "Release Me" is sort of negative.

Please release me.

Let me go.

I don't love you anymore.

But people loved that song.

-This room that we're in, we are in the Elvis suite at Westgate Las Vegas, which you have stayed here yourself, but you also knew Elvis personally.

How would you describe your relationship with him?

-To be honest with you, when I first met him, you know, normally people just shake hands.

And when I first met him, the first thing he ever did was he embraced me, you know, and he gave me a hug.

And I thought, wow, that's incredible coming from Elvis, you know?

And he came to see my show when I was working at the Riviera, and he came backstage.

And that's how we first met.

And but his appearance over there-- And I told him, I said, Please let Elvis come in when the lights go down.

I said, I don't want too many distractions.

And he came in when the lights went down.

He sat down, but the buzz was around Elvis was in the room, in the showroom.

And when I did introduce him, it took me 10 minutes to quiet the audience down.

In the end, I said, Elvis, this is my show.

And, and, of course, I brought up one of my big guns.

And it was, it helped to quiet the audience down, and which, which means a big song, right?

-Right.

-And it was just incredible.

-Would you describe that relationship as friendly or a rivalry?

-Oh, no rivalry.

No, nothing like that, no.

It was most friendly.

It was friendly.

-And he learned some things from you, and you learned some things from him?

-Well, I would say I learned more from him than he learned from me, because I think he was, he was much bigger.

His status was much bigger than mine, you know, and he was, he was the number one in the world.

And when I went to see his show, I mean, I took, I took notes.

I stole a lot of things from him, you know.

And they say, if you're going to steal something, steal from the best.

And I stole from the best.

And I didn't mind that-- nothing, nothing too much like him, but little things that he did, because he never took his image seriously.

He always, he always made fun of his image, which I thought, that's so wonderful, you know?

And I did the same, I do the same thing because I got a funny name, number one, which I can play with.

But I did what he did.

You know, he never took his image seriously.

And I was very thrilled about that.

-Tell me how you got your name.

-I got my name because I tried under my real name, which is Arnold George Dorsey.

I changed to Jerry.

That didn't work.

And I had that for a number of years.

And then I got Gordon Mills, who was my manager at the time, and he was also handling Tom Jones.

And he said to me, he said, If I'm going to handle you, he says, you're going to have to change your name.

He says, I'm going to look for one.

And he found Engelbert Humperdinck.

And I said, How come you gave me the long name?

He gave him the short one.

But, you know, nevertheless, I took a name that was as long as that and turned it into a romantic image.

I'm very proud of that fact.

-That was your only response, that it's that long?

What about how unique it was?

-It was very unique.

I mean, people used to take in and make fun of it.

They called me Pumpernickel.

And as a matter of fact, Dean didn't want-- He never, ever called me by Engelbert or Eng or anything like that.

He always called me Humpy Bumpy Lumpy Dumpy.

[laughter] I loved him for that.

-I have seen a sign that said "You've been Humperdincked," made your last name into a verb.

But that was from the past.

I don't know.

I think there are a lot of creative things that people must have done with your name.

-I mean, this hotel is all-- Whenever I appear here, they have a drink in my honor over here.

They called it a Humper drink.

It's a cocktail they've made up, and I'm so thrilled that, you know, people do things with my name.

-Yeah.

You describe yourself as a thespian of music.

What does that mean to you?

-Well, a lot of people who get on stage and sing, they just sing it and with technique and this and that.

I try to act the song more than-- I feel the song and act it as if it was a script, because the lyrics mean something, and you have to portray it as if you are acting in a movie.

But the funny thing is when you read a lyric-- Prior, a few years ago, before, I mean, I read a lyric.

I read it differently to what I'm reading it now, because, for the simple reason, about four years ago, I lost my darling wife.

And ever since she's been gone, I read lyrics a lot differently.

There's more heartfelt and more, because everything seems to go in her direction, and it does make a difference, you know?

And so therefore I read a lot differently now.

You know, she was my backbone to my career.

And she was, you know, everything.

Everywhere I went, you know, she always backed me up, and she did a terrific job of raising the children.

And she was a housewife.

-You miss her.

-I miss her very much.

-Tell me also about your relationship with performing.

It seems almost like you can't live without it.

-No, I can't live without it.

This is something.

I mean, at the beginning of this year, I was off for a few weeks and it just drove me up the wall.

I didn't know what to do with myself.

I have to be on the road and I have to be on that stage and I have to be performing.

And I've been fortunate enough to have a great audience.

My audience are very staunch, and I want to say that over the years, I've had 300 fan clubs around the world, you know, and maybe not so much these days, because, you know, when I first started was really, it was rampant.

-Wild.

-Yeah, crazy.

And that's when I first came to Vegas as well.

But Vegas has taught me a lot, because when I've come here, I've seen names on the marquee that I've admired over the years, and I'm able to get to see their shows and see what they do.

And because it's not easy for you to, for me, when I used to live in England, to see shows of any caliber that you know, that Vegas showed.

And it was nice to come here and see that and learn a lot from them.

-The last thing I want to ask you about is the experience you had in this room when you stayed in the Elvis suite.

How long ago was that?

-Well, I did a, I did a special when I was here, I was playing here.

It was a 1982, did a fantastic, one of my best specials I did right here.

And but after Elvis had passed and I was booked in this particular hotel and I stayed in his suite, I was up here.

I was up here, and it was a lot different to this.

They rearranged everything here.

With Elvis's suite, there was a, there was something there that was unbelievable.

And it had an atmosphere about it.

It had some kind of a feeling about it.

When I went to bed the first night I stayed in this hotel, in his bedroom there's a, there was a lamp that you turned the light on like this.

And I'm watching the TV, so I turned the light off.

Well, the light came on again.

So I turned it off because I was watching TV.

The light came on.

Three times the light did that, you know, and then the jacuzzi was not far from me.

It was behind the lattice door, and that jacuzzi came on six times during that night.

[imitating sound] And so I said to myself, Elvis, I'm your friend.

What are you doing to me?

You know?

And then the next week, I was going to Hawaii, and so I thought, why don't I do a song that Elvis did in Hawaii called the "Wedding Song."

So I sent one of my guys out to get a tape, because they-- And today you can just look it up on your phone, but then those days, you had to get a tape and a pad and write the lyrics down.

I said, buy me the tape, I said, and I could take the lyrics down, and perhaps my arranger can do an arrangement over here.

So he went out.

He got the tape.

He brought it in here.

He had the machine.

We put it into the machine.

It was ready to put the lyrics down.

And the machine was fairly a good machine.

It just ate the tape.

-Oh!

-And all the lights went out.

My hair stood up like this.

I said, Elvis, come on now.

But that's what happened on my very first night over here in this suite.

But I think he was just making himself known that, you know, that, or make me feel that, you know, This was my sweet, you know?

Elvis, it's always been your suite.

[laughter] So I'm going to say that it was quite an experience.

-I'll say.

Engelbert Humperdinck, thank you so much for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-My pleasure.

So nice of you to do that.