Peter Thorup
Encyclopedia
Peter Thorup was a Danish
guitarist
, singer
, composer
and record producer
. He was one of the most important blues musician
s in Denmark
, and he was known outside his own country, when in the late 1960s he met Alexis Korner
and the two formed the bands
New Church, Collective Consciousness Society aka CCS, and later Snape.
. They formed New Church, and then in 1970 Collective Consciousness Society around Korner and Thorup, the rest of the line-up was rather loose and depended on the availability in the schedules of many musicians. Frequent performers within the band included Tony Carr (drum
s), trumpet
er Harold Beckett, Herbie Flowers
on bass guitar
, Henry Lowther
(trumpet
) and Harold McNair
with woodwind instrument
s. They were among the first groups to record on Mickie Most
's RAK Records
and John Cameron
arranged
their albums. They had several hit single
s, commencing with a cover of Led Zeppelin
's "Whole Lotta Love
", which was used as the theme for BBC Television
's Top Of The Pops
.
Their music was characterised by Korner's growling vocals and Thorup's higher tones. They split in 1973 to create a band, Snape, that Korner and Thorup formed when on tour with King Crimson
in the United States
. King Crimson
members Boz Burrell
, Mel Collins
, and Ian Wallace
left Robert Fripp
in New Orleans to continue on tour with Korner. Thorup appeared on Korner's 1972 studio album Accidentally Born in New Orleans. A live album
from this band was released in Germany. During this period, Thorup frequented London's nightclub
s, performing with Korner and Colin Hodgkinson
on bass.
In 1976 Thorup returned to Denmark
to work with Danish musicians inclding Sebastian.
Thorup mostly played rock
or blues
, but he also got a local pop
hit, recording a Danish
version of Kenny Rogers
and Dolly Parton
's "Islands in the Stream
" with Anne Grete in 1984. In the last couple of decades of his life he lived a quiet life, playing small concerts in Denmark and recording a few albums.
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
guitarist
Guitarist
A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar while singing.- Versatility :The guitarist controls an extremely...
, singer
Singing
Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and record producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
. He was one of the most important blues musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
s in Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, and he was known outside his own country, when in the late 1960s he met Alexis Korner
Alexis Korner
Alexis Korner was a blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a Founding Father of British Blues"...
and the two formed the bands
Musical ensemble
A musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles...
New Church, Collective Consciousness Society aka CCS, and later Snape.
Career
Thorup played at the age of 18 in the Danish band, Beefeaters, and he met Korner on his concert tour in ScandinaviaScandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
. They formed New Church, and then in 1970 Collective Consciousness Society around Korner and Thorup, the rest of the line-up was rather loose and depended on the availability in the schedules of many musicians. Frequent performers within the band included Tony Carr (drum
Drum kit
A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
s), trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
er Harold Beckett, Herbie Flowers
Herbie Flowers
Herbie Flowers is an English musician specialising in bass guitar, double-bass and tuba. He is noted as a member of Blue Mink, T...
on bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, Henry Lowther
Henry Lowther (musician)
Henry Lowther is an English jazz trumpeter.Lowther's first experience was on cornet in a Salvation Army band. He studied violin briefly at the Royal Academy of Music but returned to trumpet by 1960 though he sometimes played violin professionally...
(trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
) and Harold McNair
Harold McNair
Harold McNair was a renowned saxophonist and flautist.-Background:...
with woodwind instrument
Woodwind instrument
A woodwind instrument is a musical instrument which produces sound when the player blows air against a sharp edge or through a reed, causing the air within its resonator to vibrate...
s. They were among the first groups to record on Mickie Most
Mickie Most
Mickie Most was an English record producer, with a string of hit singles with acts such as The Animals, Arrows, Herman's Hermits, Donovan, Suzi Quatro and the Jeff Beck Group often issued on his own RAK Records label....
's RAK Records
RAK Records
Rak Records was a British record label, founded by record producer Mickie Most in 1969. Rak was home of artists like Herman's Hermits, Suzi Quatro, Mud, Kenny, Hot Chocolate, Smokie, Arrows, Span, Racey and Kim Wilde. Rak Records were distributed via a licensing deal with EMI, which bought the...
and John Cameron
John Cameron
-Life and academic career:Cameron was born at Glasgow and received his early education in his native city. After having taught Greek in the university for twelve months, he removed to Bordeaux, where he was soon appointed a regent in the college of Bergerac. He did not remain long at Bordeaux, but...
arranged
Arrangement
The American Federation of Musicians defines arranging as "the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include reharmonization, paraphrasing, and/or development of a composition, so that it fully represents...
their albums. They had several hit single
Hit single
A hit single is a recorded song or instrumental released as a single that has become very popular. Although it is sometimes used to describe any widely-played or big-selling song, the term "hit" is usually reserved for a single that has appeared in an official music chart through repeated radio...
s, commencing with a cover of Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...
's "Whole Lotta Love
Whole Lotta Love
"Whole Lotta Love" is a song by English rock band Led Zeppelin. It is featured as the opening track on the band's second album, Led Zeppelin II, and was released in the United States and Japan as a single. The US release became their first hit single, it was certified Gold on 13 April 1970, when it...
", which was used as the theme for BBC Television
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...
's Top Of The Pops
Top of the Pops
Top of the Pops, also known as TOTP, is a British music chart television programme, made by the BBC and originally broadcast weekly from 1 January 1964 to 30 July 2006. After 25 December 2006 it became a radio program, now hosted by Tony Blackburn...
.
Their music was characterised by Korner's growling vocals and Thorup's higher tones. They split in 1973 to create a band, Snape, that Korner and Thorup formed when on tour with King Crimson
King Crimson
King Crimson are a rock band founded in London, England in 1969. Often categorised as a foundational progressive rock group, the band have incorporated diverse influences and instrumentation during their history...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. King Crimson
King Crimson
King Crimson are a rock band founded in London, England in 1969. Often categorised as a foundational progressive rock group, the band have incorporated diverse influences and instrumentation during their history...
members Boz Burrell
Boz Burrell
Raymond "Boz" Burrell was an English musician. Originally a vocalist, Burrell is best known for his bass playing and work with the rock bands King Crimson and Bad Company.-Career:...
, Mel Collins
Mel Collins
Mel Collins is a British saxophonist and flautist and session musician.He has worked in a wide variety of contexts ranging from R&B and blues rock to jazz, but is perhaps known for his work in progressive rock, as with King Crimson, Camel and the Alan Parsons Project.-Career:Collins has worked...
, and Ian Wallace
Ian Wallace
Ian Wallace is the name of:*D. Ian M. Wallace, ornithologist*Ian Wallace , science fiction author*Ian Wallace , pioneer of Vancouver's conceptual art movement...
left Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp
Robert Fripp is an English guitarist, composer and record producer. He was ranked 42nd on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and #47 on Gibson.com’s "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time". Among rock guitarists, Fripp is a master of crosspicking, a technique...
in New Orleans to continue on tour with Korner. Thorup appeared on Korner's 1972 studio album Accidentally Born in New Orleans. A live album
Live album
A live album is a recording consisting of material recorded during stage performances using remote recording techniques, commonly contrasted with a studio album...
from this band was released in Germany. During this period, Thorup frequented London's nightclub
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...
s, performing with Korner and Colin Hodgkinson
Colin Hodgkinson
Colin Hodgkinson is a British rock, jazz and blues bassist, who has been active since the 1960s.-Career:...
on bass.
In 1976 Thorup returned to Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
to work with Danish musicians inclding Sebastian.
Thorup mostly played rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
or blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, but he also got a local pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
hit, recording a Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
version of Kenny Rogers
Kenny Rogers
Kenneth Donald "Kenny" Rogers is an American singer-songwriter, photographer, record producer, actor, and entrepreneur...
and Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton
Dolly Rebecca Parton is an American singer-songwriter, author, multi-instrumentalist, actress and philanthropist, best known for her work in country music. Dolly Parton has appeared in movies like 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Steel Magnolias and Straight Talk...
's "Islands in the Stream
Islands in the Stream
"Islands in the Stream" is the title of a song written by the Bee Gees and sung by American country music artists Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. It was released in August 1983 as the first single from Rogers' album Eyes That See in the Dark and the second pop number-one for both Rogers and Parton...
" with Anne Grete in 1984. In the last couple of decades of his life he lived a quiet life, playing small concerts in Denmark and recording a few albums.