Eddie McIlwaine

There’s a lot of love in The Last Waltz, a ballad I like a lot and which first appeared in the UK charts exactly 50 years ago today, in September 1967. But just now and again I wake in the night puzzling over the pain and the heartache also there in the lyrics, and why songwriters Barry Mason and Les Reed wrote them that way.

Every time I hear Engelbert Humperdinck’s recording of The Last Waltz, which has just been revived on the radio, I have to wonder if Mason, who is now 82, was telling the story of a broken heart he had suffered in his own life. Perhaps one day he will let me know.

The song is back in favour everywhere and will be featured at a concert by Alan Corry and his Festival Brass in the Glenmachan Church of God, Belfast, on Friday, October 20.

The opening stanza describes how two lonely people fell for one another as they shared the traditional last waltz at a village hop and vowed to stay together forever more.

But the affair turned sour when the young lady fell out of love and walked away.

Once upon a time when he was in Belfast singing his hit, I asked Engelbert (below), now 81 and still working, if he knew the answer to the mystery, but he hadn’t a clue and was content to perform The Last Waltz just the way it was written.

Humperdinck’s big break came with Please Release Me, released in 1966, and it still gets sung on all kinds of occasions and at family parties. But The Last Waltz is the one with the special appeal. It reminds me of romantic nights in the Floral Hall at Bellevue.

In spite of the romantic songs he sang in his heyday, Engelbert (real name Arnold Dorsey, who was born in India) has been married to Patricia for more than 50 years and they have four children.

The singer has revealed that Patricia suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and also has admitted: “I deal with tender lyrics on stage and when sensitive nerves are touched as I’m singing something sentimental my eyes well up. I hope the audience understands.”

Engelbert, who is helping to raise money for research into Alzheimer’s, appeared in Belfast several times and was a huge success here.