Changes and chart topping

Aware that Dorsey had been struggling several years to make it in music, Mills suggested a name change to the more arresting Engelbert Humperdinck, borrowed from the composer of such operas as Hansel and Gretel. Mills also arranged a new deal with Decca Records. And in early 1967, the changes paid off when Humperdinck's version of Release Me, done in a smooth ballad style with a full chorus joining him on the third chorus, reached the top ten on both sides of the Atlantic and went to number one in Britain, keeping The Beatles' adventurous Strawberry Fields Forever from entering the top slot in the UK.

Even in a year dominated by psychedelic rock music, Release Me's success may not have been that surprising, considering Frank Sinatra's chart comeback that began a year earlier, and stablemate Tom Jones's success with a ballad or two in the interim, both of which probably opened some new room for more traditionally-styled singers. Release Me was believed to sell 85,000 copies a day at the height of its popularity, and the song became the singer's signature song for many years.

Humperdinck's deceptively easygoing style and casually elegant good looks, a contrast to stablemate Tom Jones's energetic attack and overtly sexual style, earned Humperdinck a large following, particularly among women. Release Me was followed up by two more hit ballads, There Goes My Everything and The Last Waltz, earning him a reputation as a crooner that he didn't always agree with. If you are not a crooner, he told Hollywood Reporter writer Rick Sherwood, it's something you don't want to be called. No crooner has the range I have. I can hit notes a bank could not cash. What I am is a contemporary singer, a stylized performer.

The hits kept coming---he charted with Am I That Easy To Forget, A Man Without Love, Les Bicyclettes del Belsize, The Way It Used To Be, I'm A Better Man, and Winter World of Love before the 1960s ended and the 1970s were truly underway; he scored with such albums as The Last Waltz, The Way It Used To Be, A Man Without Love, and Engelbert Humperdinck. So did his own television program, though it didn't last as long as Jones's program did, being cancelled after six months.