Last is reported to have sold an estimated 200 million records worldwide in his lifetime[3] of which 80 million were sold by 1973[4] and won numerous awards including 200 gold and 14 platinum discs in Germany, the International MIDEM Prize at MIDEM in 1969,[5] and West Germany's highest civilian award, the Bundesverdienstkreuz.

[6] His album This Is James Last remained a UK best-seller for 48 weeks, and his song "Games That Lovers Play" has been covered over a hundred times.

[1] Last's trademark sound employed big band arrangements of well-known tunes with a jaunty dance beat, often heavy on bass and brass.

[7] Despite at times being derided by critics and purists as the "king of elevator music"[1] or "acoustic porridge",[3] his style and music were popular in numerous countries and cultures, including Japan, South Korea, the former Soviet Union, the US and UK, and his native Germany,[8] where it became "the archetypal soundtrack of any German cellar bar party",[4] and made him the "most commercially successful bandleader" of the second half of the 20th century.

He began studying the piano at age 10, although he could play simple tunes such as the folk song "Hänschen klein" when he was 9.

His home city of Bremen was bombed heavily during World War II, and he ran messages to air defence command posts during the raids.

He entered the Bückeburg Military Music School of the German Wehrmacht at the age of 14 and learned to play bass, piano and tuba.

[1] When the Last-Becker Ensemble disbanded, he became the in-house arranger for Polydor Records, as well as a number of European radio stations.

During the next decade he helped arrange hits for artists such as Helmut Zacharias, Freddy Quinn, Lolita, Alfred Hause and Caterina Valente.

On these records, he varied his formula by adding different songs from different countries and genres, as well as guest performers like Richard Clayderman and Astrud Gilberto.

Last's trademark sound employed big band arrangements of well-known tunes with a jaunty dance beat, often heavy on bass and brass.

In 2003, his song "Einsamer Hirte" (The Lonely Shepherd) which features the pan flute of Gheorghe Zamfir appeared on the soundtrack of the Quentin Tarantino movie Kill Bill Volume 1.

He won numerous popular and professional awards, including Billboard magazine's Star of the Year trophy in 1976, and was honoured for lifetime achievement with the German ECHO prize in 1994.

His song "Music from Across the Way" (recorded by Andy Williams in 1972) is a melody with a classical feeling and was a worldwide hit; it was the only other Last single apart from "The Seduction" to reach the U.S.

(His only other U.S. chart single was a double-sided entry featuring remakes of the Village Stompers' "Washington Square" and Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary", which reached No.

[20] Despite being the "most commercially successful bandleader" of the second half of the 20th century,[1] Last's extravagant spending and "incompetent" financial advice led him at one stage to the "brink of ruin."