Biography
Arne Bendiksen was a Norwegian singer, musician, orchestra leader, songwriter and record producer. He had a great influence in Norwegian popular music in the 1950s and 1960s, first as a member of the group The Monn Keys, and later as a soloist and songwriter for other artists. He recorded his first records as a soloist in 1955. In addition to writing his own songs, Arne Bendiksen translated many foreign butchers into Norwegian.
Bendiksen wrote the tunes for Chat Noir’s family performance Davy Crockett (1962) with text by Bjørn Sand. Bendiksen played the title role. In the Eurovision Song Contest 1964, he presented Norway’s contribution “Spiral”. In addition, he also participated in the Melodi Grand Prix a number of times, both as an artist, composer and conductor.
In 1982 he was subjected to a massive fraud by Electro Union, which took over his company and went bankrupt in 1983. The scam was extensively documented by the economy magazine Farmand, without being contradicted by any party. Instead of going on a lengthy and costly process against lawyers who could do all the tricks, he bought both his studio and his catalog back from Electro Union’s residence. The company name is now Arne Bendiksen Records AS.
He received the jury honorary award under the Spellemannprisen in 1995 and won the Gammlengprisen in the veteran class in 1992.
In 2009, the Ministry of Culture and GramArt established a Music Prize for the further development of talents in Norwegian music. The award was named Bendiksenprisen, named after Arne Bendiksen, who passed away on 26 march 2009.
