 |
Peter Straker | |
|---|---|
 Straker in 2016 | |
| Born | 7 November 1943 |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, actor, songwriter |
| Website | newsite |
Peter Straker (born 7 November 1943) [1] is a Jamaican-born British singer and actor.
|
Peter Straker | |
|---|---|
| Straker in 2016 | |
| Born | 7 November 1943 |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, actor, songwriter |
| Website | newsite |
Peter Straker (born 7 November 1943) [1] is a Jamaican-born British singer and actor.
Straker was born in Jamaica, and moved to London in his early childhood. He first became known in 1968, when he starred as Hud in the original London production of Hair . Over the next three years, he released a succession of singles on the Polydor label, though none became commercially successful. In 1971 (credited mononymously as Straker), he appeared in the comedy-drama film Girl Stroke Boy , co-written and co-produced by Caryl Brahms and Ned Sherrin. [2]
In 1972, he signed with RCA Victor, and had a minor hit with the song "The Spirit is Willing", based on "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" by J. S. Bach, and adapted by the songwriting duo of Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, who also produced the single. Credited to "Peter Straker – The Hands of Dr. Teleny", it entered the charts on 19 February 1972, had a chart life of 4 weeks and peaked at No.40. [3] Howard and Blaikley wrote and produced Straker's first album in 1972, Private Parts, based around Straker's reminiscences of his life. [2]
In the mid-1970s he moved to Pye Records, and toured as a singer. He met Freddie Mercury, and they became close friends. [4] Mercury was instrumental in winning Straker a new recording deal with EMI, and co-produced his first album for the label, This One's On Me, with Roy Thomas Baker. Straker's 1978 album, Changeling, produced by Tim Friese-Greene, with most of the songs written by guitarist Mike Allison though several were written or co-written by Straker. In 1979, Straker released the album Real Natural Man, released on Rocket Records. However, the record again found little success, and Straker reconsidered his career direction. [2]
Straker subsequently featured in countless West End productions, including Pete Townshend's Tommy , Ken Hill's Phantom of the Opera , Jeanne at Birmingham Rep and Sadler's Wells, Hot Stuff, Blues in the Night , The Rocky Horror Show , The Rat Pack, One Love and Holding On; both with Ruby Turner. His classical roles include Cassius in Julius Caesar at Bristol Old Vic, and Lucio in Measure for Measure at the National Theatre.
He appeared in Doctor Who (in the 1979 serial Destiny of the Daleks ), and the 1985 ITV series Connie , [5] as well as many other television shows including The Gentle Touch and Casualty . [2] Straker also originated the title role of Nosferatu in the British premiere production of Bernard J. Taylor's musical at the Eastbourne Hippodrome in 1995.
He later reprised his role in The Wiz with Birmingham Rep, and starred in The Hackney Empire's Cinderella , The Landor Theatre's The Glorious One's. He returned to the Edinburgh Festival with a new musical show, Peter Straker's Brel which later played at the St James Theatre in London. More recently, Straker has performed in The Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, in a concert performance of Piaf with The Matthew Jones Orchestra. He was announced to be returning to the Who's musical Tommy, which began a UK Tour in 2017. [6]
Cherry Red Records released a 3-CD boxset of Straker's albums on 20 March 2020. Included are remastered versions of This One's On Me, Changeling and Real Natural Man, together with bonus tracks. This was the first time these albums had been released in any format since the 1970s and 80s. [2]
Produced by Ken Howard & Alan Blaikley
Produced by Freddie Mercury and Roy Thomas Baker
Produced by Tim Friese-Greene
Produced by Reinhold Mack & Mike Allison
Produced by Mike Allison & Antoinne Ellis
Timothy James Curry is a British actor and singer. He rose to prominence as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the film The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), reprising the role he had originated in the 1973 London and 1974 Los Angeles musical stage productions of The Rocky Horror Show.
Freddie Mercury was a British singer and songwriter who achieved worldwide fame as the lead vocalist and pianist of the rock band Queen. Regarded as one of the greatest singers in the history of rock music, he was known for his flamboyant stage persona and four-octave vocal range. Mercury defied the conventions of a rock frontman with his theatrical style, influencing the artistic direction of Queen.
Jacques Romain Georges Brel was a Belgian singer and actor who composed and performed theatrical songs. He generated a large, devoted following—initially in Belgium and France, but later throughout the world. He is considered a master of the modern chanson.
News of the World is the sixth studio album by the British rock band Queen, released on 28 October 1977 by EMI Records in the United Kingdom and by Elektra Records in the United States. News of the World was the band's second album to be recorded at Sarm and Wessex Sound Studios in London, and engineered by Mike Stone, and was co-produced by the band and Stone.
Queen is the debut studio album by the British rock band Queen. Released on 13 July 1973 by EMI Records in the UK and by Elektra Records in the US, it was recorded at Trident Studios and De Lane Lea Music Centre, London, with production by Roy Thomas Baker, John Anthony and the band members themselves.
Made in Heaven is the fifteenth and final studio album by the British rock band Queen, released on 6 November 1995 by Parlophone Records in the United Kingdom and by Hollywood Records in the United States. It was the band's first and only album released solely under the name "Queen" after the death of lead singer Freddie Mercury in 1991. Following Mercury's death, guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor, and bass guitarist John Deacon worked with vocal and piano parts that Mercury recorded before his death, adding new instrumentation to the recordings. Both stages of recording, before and after Mercury's death, were completed at the band's studio in Montreux, Switzerland. The album debuted at number 1 in the UK, where it went quadruple platinum selling 1.2 million copies. 500,000 copies were shipped in the United States.
Mr. Bad Guy is the only solo studio album by British musician Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen. Released in 1985, during a period in which Queen were on hiatus from recording, it contains eleven songs, all written by Mercury himself.
Jazz is the seventh studio album by the British rock band Queen. It was released on 10 November 1978 by EMI Records in the United Kingdom and by Elektra Records in the United States. Produced by Roy Thomas Baker, the album artwork was suggested by Roger Taylor, who previously saw a similar design painted on the Berlin Wall. The album's varying musical styles were alternately praised and criticised. It reached number two in the UK Albums Chart and number six on the US Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart.
Barcelona is a collaborative studio album recorded by Freddie Mercury, lead singer of popular British rock band Queen, and operatic Soprano Montserrat Caballé. It was released in 1988 and serves as the second and final album by Mercury to be recorded outside of Queen.
Russell Churney was an English composer, pianist, arranger and musical director, and a member of the comedy/cabaret group, Fascinating Aïda. Ooberman keyboardist and vocalist Sophia Churney is his sister.
"The Great Pretender" is a popular song recorded by the Platters, with Tony Williams on lead vocals, and released as a single in November 1955. The words and music were written by Buck Ram, the Platters' manager and producer who was a successful songwriter before moving into producing and management. The song reached No. 1 on Billboard's Top 100, and No. 5 on the UK charts.
The Honeycombs were an English beat group, founded in 1963 in North London, best known for their chart-topping, million-selling 1964 hit, "Have I the Right?" The band featured Honey Lantree on drums, one of the few high-profile female drummers at that time. They were unable to replicate the success of their first single and disbanded by 1967.
"I'm Going Slightly Mad" is a song by the British rock band Queen. Written by Freddie Mercury but credited to Queen, with uncredited lyrical contributions by Peter Straker, it was released as the second single from the band's 1991 album Innuendo. The song was released as a single on 4 March 1991, a month after the release of the album. The lyrics and the accompanying music video project the song as humorous and lighthearted, despite the lyrics dealing with the mental decline Mercury was experiencing as one of the effects of advancing AIDS.
Kenneth Charles Howard is an English songwriter, lyricist, author and television director.
Reinhold Mack is a German record producer and engineer. He is best known for his collaborations with Electric Light Orchestra, Queen, Sparks, and Chinaski (CZ).
As well as his work with Queen, Freddie Mercury released two solo albums and several singles. Although his solo work was not as commercially successful as most Queen albums, the two off-Queen albums and several of the singles debuted in the top 10 of the UK Music Charts. Following Mercury's death in 1991, several posthumous box sets and compilation albums have been released.
"Have I the Right?" was the debut single and biggest hit of British band The Honeycombs. It was composed by Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, who had made contact with The Honeycombs, a London-based group, then playing under the name of The Sheratons, in the Mildmay Tavern in the Balls Pond Road in Islington, where they played a date. Howard and Blaikley were impressed by the group's lead vocalist, Dennis D'Ell, and the fact that they had a female drummer, Anne (‘Honey’) Lantree. The group were looking for material to play for an audition with record producer Joe Meek, and they played the songs Howard and Blaikley had just given them. Meek decided to record one of them, "Have I the Right?", there and then. Meek himself provided the B-side, "Please Don’t Pretend Again".
Alan Tudor Blaikley was an English songwriter and composer, best known for writing a series of international hits in the 1960s and 1970s in collaboration with Ken Howard, including the UK number ones "Have I the Right?" and "The Legend of Xanadu". Together with Howard, he also wrote two West End musicals and a number of TV themes, including the theme music for the BBC's long-running series of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple.
"Jacky" (La chanson de Jacky) is a song written by the Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel and Gérard Jouannest. Brel recorded the song on 2 November 1965, and it was released on his 1966 album Ces gens-là. The song was translated from French into English and retitled "Jackie".
"Time" is a 1986 song recorded by Freddie Mercury, along with "In My Defence", for Dave Clark's musical of the same name. Even though Mercury did not appear in the musical itself, both songs were included on the cast album, and "Time" was also released as a separate single, backed by an instrumental version of the song, and reached #32 on the UK Singles Chart. The song also peaked at #12 in Ireland. The single version was later included in the 2000 box set The Solo Collection and the 2006 compilation album Lover of Life, Singer of Songs: The Very Best of Freddie Mercury Solo.