“When was the last time I spoke to Pierre”, Corry Konings asks himself. “That was on his 86th birthday. I sent him an app on his birthday in which I congratulated him on his 68th birthday. Then he immediately called back that he was a little older, but I liked that I had estimated him younger. laughed heartily at that mistake,” says the singer of the life song.
At the beginning of the afternoon Corry heard the news from an acquaintance. “Had I heard it yet? He told about the death of Pierre. That made me quiet for a while. I did not expect it. He was buried in silence on Friday. It is the choice of the family and we have to respect that. He loved his audience and had to fight hard for it. I think he thought, ‘I don’t need all that fuss about my grave’.”
Pierre Kartner passed away last Tuesday at the age of 87. “A great loss for Dutch music”, is how Corry describes the man who stood at the cradle of her career some 54 years ago. The songwriter and singer wrote many hits for Dutch and foreign artists.
“Pierre shook the numbers out of his sleeve.”
“I’ve always enjoyed working with Pierre. He shook up the numbers,” Corry says about his productivity. One of those songs was Corry’s biggest hit: ‘Crying is too late for you’. Corry’s thoughts go back more than fifty years. Record dealer Ries Brouwer showed Pierre a cassette tape with a song by De Rekels, of which Corry was a part.
Well, let her come, Pierre had said. “Then I visited him a few times. I was a blue girl and still a hairdresser. During that period I also cut the hair of Annie, Pierre’s wife, a few times. Annie asked Pierre for a number for me “She deserved it.”
“I owe everything to Pierre.”
That number was not long in coming. It became: ‘Farewell, I won’t shed any more tears for you’. Not much later ‘Crying is too late for you’ rolled out of Pierre’s sleeve. “A great song. No less than 41 weeks in the top-40. The song had a different lyrics at first, but it related too much to my mother. Then Pierre came up with ‘Crying is too late for you’.
Corry says she owes everything to Pierre. “We never had any disagreements. It was always nice and cozy. I looked up to him. He wrote such beautiful songs. He was driven, which kept him young. A great man. My sound engineer calls him the ‘godfather of Dutch song’ . I totally agree with that.”
Finally, the statue of Pierre is mentioned. Corry has been fighting for a statue of Pierre Kartner together with John de Bever and his manager Kees Stevens for some time. That hasn’t happened yet for a variety of reasons. “Pierre can no longer experience it himself. He has done so much for the Dutch song and written so much for others. That statue will come now.”
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