Frumpy was a German progressive rock/krautrock band based in Hamburg, which was active between 1970â1972 and 1990â1995. All of the band members met as performers with Germany’s first folk rock band City Preacher, formed by Irishman John O’Brien-Docker in Hamburg in 1965. In 1968, the band had split, with O’Brien-Docker and several other members parting company. Singer Inga Rumpf, a distinctive “un-feminine” sounding vocalist often compared favourably with Janis Joplin, continued to use the band name with a line-up including drummer Udo Lindenberg, singer Dagmar Krause, French organist Jean-Jacques Kravetz and bassist Karl-Heinz Schott. In the spring of 1969, Lindenberg left to pursue a solo career and was replaced by Carsten Bohn, who by November that year had grown disappointed with Krause and called for the band to pursue a new creative direction, “a fusion of rock, blues, classical, folk and psychedelic.”
Reforming in March 1970 as Frumpy (a play on Rumpf’s surname inspired by seeing the word “frumpy” in a CBS record catalogue) the new line-up of Rumpf, Bohn, Kravetz and Schott debuted at the Essen International Pop & Blues Festival in April 1970, where two of their songs “Duty” and “Floating” were recorded and released on the live compilation album Pop & Blues Festival ’70. This was followed by more tour dates in France, Germany and the Netherlands, an appearance at the Kiel Progressive Pop Festival in July 1970, and at the Open Air Love & Peace Festival at Fehmarn in September 1970.
They recorded their debut album All Will Be Changed in August 1970. To promote the album the band embarked on a fifty-night German tour with Spooky Tooth, as well as playing supporting slots with Yes, Humble Pie and Renaissance. The album received both critical acclaim and commercial success.
Initially the band played without a guitarist, which was unusual in the rock genre, instead making great use of Kravetz’s “spacey organ excursions” Rumpf said: “In the beginning we were happy enough as a quartet. I played and composed exclusively on an acoustic guitar. It was only later that we began to write songs that called for a guitar.” In 1971, just before the band started recording their second album, called simply ‘2’, they recruited guitarist Rainer Baumann to the line-up. The album, “heavier and more mature progressive rock with classical overtones in Kravetz’s organ work,” repeated the success of the first, and gave the band a hit single with “How the Gipsy Was Born”, which would become their “signature tune.” The German music magazine Musikexpress dubbed Frumpy as the best German rock act of the year, while Inga Rumpf, was described as “smoky”, “demonic” and “roaring,” was declared by a national newspaper to be the “greatest individual vocal talent” of the German rock scene.
Due to “musical differences” Kravetz left the band in early 1972 to work with Lindenberg and his Das Panik Orchester and also to record a solo album, Kravetz (1972), which featured both Rumpf and Lindenberg. He was replaced in Frumpy by Erwin Kania, who appears on several of the tracks on Frumpy’s third album By The Way, being ousted halfway through recording in March 1972 when Kravetz rejoined the band. Baumann expressed a desire to establish a solo career also, and the band played a “farewell concert” in June 1972 with Thomas Kretschmer on guitar. Musikexpress published an obituary for the band in August 1972. The obituary closed with: “We request that you refrain from messages of condolence, since you will soon be hearing from Inga, Karl-Heinz and Jean-Jacques under another name.” A double live album, Live, was released posthumously in 1973.
