In 2017, Engelbert Humperdinck released an album he described as a love letter to his wife, Patricia. By then she had been living with Alzheimer’s disease for years. Tucked in the middle of that album is one song unlike the others: “I’m Glad I Danced With You,” a duet about the night he first asked Patricia to dance. The girl singing opposite him was not a guest star. It was their granddaughter Olivia, who had just turned 9.
“Olivia Represents My Wife”
Engelbert Humperdinck never treated the duet as a novelty. When he talked about it, he explained exactly who Olivia was supposed to be on that record.
“Olivia represents my wife because I first danced with my wife when she was seventeen years old and we have been dancing together ever since.”
He said the song was written for him by his daughter and her husband, and that it was their own daughter who stood in for Patricia when she sang the lyrics. In another interview, he put it even more simply: he met his wife at a dance hall when she was 17, and that is what the whole song is about.
On the surface, it is a grandfather singing with his granddaughter. Underneath, it is an 81-year-old man singing to the 17-year-old girl he once asked to dance, with a granddaughter singing her part.
A Dance Hall in Leicester, 1956
The story the song tells goes back to 1956. Engelbert, still going by his birth name, Arnold Dorsey, had just finished his national service and was back home in Leicester, England. He met Patricia Healey at the local dance hall, the Palais de Danse.
“Her face was so full of innocence. As soon as I saw her, I knew she was ‘the one.'”
He has always said she was 17 when he asked her to dance. It was a long courtship. They married in 1964, while he was still a working nightclub singer, years away from his first hit. Three years later, in March 1967, his recording of “Release Me” went to No. 1 in Britain and stayed there for six weeks. Country fans knew that song long before Engelbert recorded it: Ray Price and Kitty Wells both had hits with it back in 1954.
A Song Written Inside the Family
“I’m Glad I Danced With You” was co-written by Engelbert Humperdinck’s daughter, Louise Dorsey, and her husband, Tony Taliaferro, along with Jim Martin. Country listeners may know Tony by his stage name, Tony Toliver. Before his own records on Curb, the Texas-born singer and pianist spent the last years of Dottie West’s life as her bandleader.
Their daughter, Olivia, recorded her part when she had just turned 9. Engelbert said she sang the lyrics written for his wife “so well,” and talked about the song with obvious pride: he asked Patricia to dance at that dance hall, they had been together ever since, and that is why the song exists, with his daughter as a writer and his granddaughter as a singer.
The Only Duet on a Love Letter Album
The album, The Man I Want to Be, came out on November 24, 2017, marking Engelbert Humperdinck’s 50th year in music. It was his first album of new material in more than a decade, and it mixed new songs with covers, including Willie Nelson’s “Crazy.” Every other track is Engelbert alone. “I’m Glad I Danced With You (with Olivia)” is the only one where he shares the microphone.
“My last album, The Man I Want To Be, is really a love letter to my wife.”
At the time, Patricia was being cared for at the family home in Los Angeles, and Engelbert spoke openly about her illness in interviews.
What Happened After
The song did not stay on the album. Engelbert kept singing it on tour, and a softer “Candlelight Mix” was released later. In early 2020 he said it went down extremely well with audiences every time he performed it.
Patricia Healey died in February 2021 after contracting COVID-19, following more than a decade with Alzheimer’s. She and Engelbert had been married for 56 years.