Ilja Richter was born to parents Georg and Eva Richter. Georg was a Communist, who named Ilja after the Russian journalist Ilja Ehrenburg, and Eva was a Jew who survived the Third Reich under a fake Aryan identity. Georg spent nine and a half years in the penitentiary and concentration camp during the Third Reich. After the family was in political difficulties in the GDR, they moved to West Berlin in 1953. There, the Richters leased a restaurant. In 1955, Ilja's sister Janina was born, and in 1959 they moved to Cologne.
5CD Box Set The Anniversary Edition by James Last was released in 2009 by Universal Music GmbH. James Last was a German composer and big band leader of the James Last Orchestra. Initially a jazz bassist, his trademark "happy music" made his numerous albums best-sellers in Germany and the United Kingdom, with 65 of his albums reaching the charts in the UK alone. Last is reported to have sold an estimated 200 million albums worldwide in his lifetime, of which 80 million were sold by 1973 - and won numerous awards including 200 gold and 14 platinum discs in Germany, the International MIDEM Prize at MIDEM in 1969, and West Germany's highest civilian award, the Bundesverdienstkreuz in 1978. Last's trademark sound employed big band arrangements of well-known tunes with a jaunty dance beat, often heavy on bass and brass.
Four-part double CD series - comprehensive and first cross-label documentation of the only relevant German contribution to the international phenomenon of rock music.
5CD Box Set The Anniversary Edition by James Last was released in 2009 by Universal Music GmbH. James Last was a German composer and big band leader of the James Last Orchestra. Initially a jazz bassist, his trademark "happy music" made his numerous albums best-sellers in Germany and the United Kingdom, with 65 of his albums reaching the charts in the UK alone. Last is reported to have sold an estimated 200 million albums worldwide in his lifetime, of which 80 million were sold by 1973 - and won numerous awards including 200 gold and 14 platinum discs in Germany, the International MIDEM Prize at MIDEM in 1969, and West Germany's highest civilian award, the Bundesverdienstkreuz in 1978. Last's trademark sound employed big band arrangements of well-known tunes with a jaunty dance beat, often heavy on bass and brass.