Rock Nalle

Rock Nalle
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Roland Lyhr Sørensen (10 April 1943 – 14 December 2022), also known professionally as Rock Nalle, was a Danish singer.

History

Early career

Rock Nalle began his career in the late 1950s in Odense. He was trained as a gut cleaner at a slaughterhouse while playing with his band "The Teddy Bears" at schools and the like. At the age of 17, he went to sea and was, among other things, in Australia and New Zealand. He performed during that period with several different bands in Australia, and thus trained his English, which was to become important for him in his musical career.

Around 1965, he was "discovered" by Steen Wittrock and record producer Johnny Reimar – whom Nalle knew from childhood in Odense. This led to his first recordings. "Little Lonely One", "I'll Go Crazy" and "It's Only Make Believe" were recorded together with the Odense band Les Amis in Roklubben Kvik's premises in Copenhagen, where several of Otto Brandenburg's records were also recorded.

It was the same year he recorded his version of Wilson Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour", which is his biggest hit from the 1960s. It ended up on the top 20 list in England. He made several recordings in that period, including Wilson Pickett's "Don't Fight It" (1966), Otis Redding's "She Put the Hurt on Me" (1967) and Chuck Willis' "Whatcha' Gonna Do" (1966) and Gary "U.S." Bond's "New Orleans" (1967).

His energetic and lively stage performances, where he was now accompanied by his English band The Big Sound, meant that in 1967 he received the year's "Børge", which at the time was the same as today's Grammy.

In 1968 came the Dansktoppen, and there he tried, but without success, and stopped his career, taking a job as a dock worker in Odense.

He put it this way in the magazine "Appetize" in 2008: "There was nothing more to do for me. People sat down at the concerts and smoked pipes with their anti-atom signs on their cheeks. All that happened with Bob Dylan, Hendrix and Grateful Dead was not my style, so it suited me well to take a break, where I tried to find myself and take care of the family".

First comeback

After seven years as a dock worker, the singer and record producer Gustav Winckler sought out Nalle. This was the start of Nalle's comeback in the 1970s. Winckler saw an opportunity for success with various Danish "subversions" of foreign rock'n'roll hits, similar to, for example, Shu-bi-dua and Teddy Bear's Friends. Thus, for example, "La Bamba" became "Jeg kan li' store babser" in Winckler's Danish translation. This turned into 2 LPs. The first was published in 1975 and was given the apt name "Rock Nalle". The record was produced by Winckler, but was not a great success.

The next record "Rock Kost" from 1977, was produced by Gustav Winckler's son, Michael Winckler and contained, among other things, the hit "Go'e gamle fru Olsen", which was a translation of a Little Richard song "Good Golly Miss Molly", which Torben Eschen had translated into Danish. On the same record you will also find "Min fars roemark i Skjern", a Danish version of "Cottonfields", which also achieved success.

In the following years he toured with his bands, all called the Flames. The Flames were actually several different bands, depending on where in the country he performed. In 1979 he released another record with translations of the rock'n'roll classics "Rock'N ALL roll", produced by Wolfgang Käfer & Paul Bach.

Here he tried again with another Danishization by Torben Eschen – another of Little Richard's tracks – "Long Tall Sally", which became "Lange Lone", but the record did not achieve the same success as "Rock Kost".

In 1980, Nalle met Kim Larsen after a concert in Holstebro, where Larsen, after the concert, asked Nalle if he could have the white moccasins he was wearing that evening. Nalle replied that he was welcome, but the price was one song per shoe. A few months later, Larsen delivered a cassette tape to Nalle's manager. The tapes contained the songs "Amanda" and "Just Me" along with a note saying "Use Them As You Will". The songs became huge successes and gave him no end of airplay. He later recorded two more Kim Larsen songs "Anna Kære Anna" and "Så der' Vogn".

In 1982, Billy Cross produced the album "Side 2", which was to establish Nalle as the singer he was. The lyrics were written by Erik Thygesen, who at the same time published a book, "Nalle, rockens arbejdmand".

For the first time, Nalle was given melodies and musicians that matched his musicality and experience. The reviewers were enthusiastic but the record did not sell, getting stuck in internal personnel disputes at the record company. When the record was finished, it needed a cover. Nalle kept pushing for suggestions. In the end, he got so mad at the record company that one day he slammed the door and exclaimed in his unintelligible Funen dialect that "for my sake, you can wrap the record in a picture of Laurel and Hardy". So they did.

Nalle managed to get an agreement to give three tracks on "Lørdagskanalen", which was the most watched TV show of the time in connection with the release, but when people wanted to buy the record at the record stores on Monday morning, after the broadcast, the record had not yet arrived.

Downfall

In the eighties, after a lifetime of being overweight, he underwent slimming surgery, which subsequently led to an addiction to painkillers and later heroin addiction, and he ended up homeless, where he supported himself as a beggar in his home town, where he was especially to be found at Odense Railway station.

On 7 November 1996, he visited the Egeborg Treatment Center in Lolland, where he stayed for almost a year while being treated for his addiction.

He later said this about the period: "When I weighed 56 kilos and had five teeth left in my mouth, I couldn't even imagine a day like this. I just wanted to get away from it all. It was all about heroin and the pursuit of heroin. And if it hadn't been for my friends and a long year's stay at the rehab center Egeborg, I would have died long ago." And this quote: "I was down to kiss the gold boards from below".

After a downturn and many years away from the stage, Nalle resumed his singing career in the new millennium. Rock Nalle ended his career on 27 July 2022 after a long illness.

Nalle died in his home in Odense on 14 December 2022, aged 79.

References

This article "Rock Nalle" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Rock Nalle. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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