I first came to know of Inga Rumpf as lead singer for Frumpy, one of the early ‘70s German rock bands loosely lumped together with the broad group of Krautrock bands, though never included in the core “experimental” bands such as Can, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Neu!, Popol Vuh, and others of that ilk. Frumpy was a blues rock band with a strong female vocalist, one of the few woman in the Deutsch rock of the era.
The news, to me, was that Inga Rumpf had a completely different earlier career, from a very young age, before Frumpy, though some of it would’ve been, so to speak, the training period for the band. In her earlier career she sang folk and Black gospel songs, either as solo act or as part of a group, the City Preachers, and even, briefly, was groomed to be a schlager (anodyne German pop) singer but this potentially commercially profitable direction was not to her taste or inclination, which was to go on weird, interesting and challenging tangents and not necessarily to follow the path expected of her, or young women singers in Germany at the time.
Rumpf has a wonderful, powerful and expressive voice, perfect for expressing the emotion in blues and soul songs. One wonders, if she were an American, if she’d have followed a Janis Joplin-like curve of success or whether her career would have been more similar to that of Lydia Pense, the lead singer of Cold Blood, a band that followed the Kozmic Blues Band approach to horn driven soul rock, and Pense’s voice, if one weren’t paying attention, was a ringer for Joplin. Cold Blood was well-known enough to be one of the bands that played the final shows at the Filmore East before it closed, but never achieved mainstream success. The thing is, Pense still has a career, some 50 years after Joplin died. Inga Rumpf has also had a long and varied career, in Germany and internationally, without becoming a superstar yet has survived intact and with a back catalogue of intriguing, highly entertaining records.
Rumpf went from Frumpy to Atlantis, a heavier aggregation that toured the USA, and supported some big names, but weren’t prepared to put in the hard work of conquering a vast country and probably didn’t have proper record company support either. By die late ‘70s Rumpf, with a curly contemporary perm replacing the long straight hair of the hippie years, attempted a solo pop rock career and in the ‘80s she cut her hair modishly short, wore the highly identifiable fashion of the times and followed and electronic pop and rock direction, and switched from writing and singing in English to writing and singing in German, all of it clearly aimed at maximum commercial success, before returning to the (English) blues and gospel music with which she started her career for the balance of her life. in a way it is a typical career path of so many of her contemporaries on the British and US rock scene where artists and bands who came to prominence in the ‘60s struggled to adapt to the times when they hit their thirties and forties. By and large the ‘80s were not a good decade for the music of these older artists who changed their original sound according to contemporary production styles and dressed in contemporary fashion, very little of which matched the stylishness of mid-‘60s fashion, never mind the rock star satin and tat of the glam ‘70s.
Rumpf went through the same cycle and then returned to her roots where she was most comfortable and appealing to her audience.
If Rumpf had been born in the USA or had been prepared to move there to push her career forward, she might well have been a household name there, something like Bonnie Raitt (Rumpf sings, play bottleneck slide guitar and writes her own songs) for, after all, one of the highlights of her career is that Tina Turner recorded one of Rumpf’s songs and released it as a B-side of a successful single. As it is, Rumpf may be well-known in her homeland but is no more than a footnote to rock cognoscenti elsewhere, if they were interested in German rock music, and one would imagine has a comfortable life performing when she wants to and intermittently releasing records, secure in her place in the world and without a need to be a superstar. She sounds authentic when she speaks and when she sings.
On Apple Music, Frumpy is represented solely by a compilation album but there are quite a few solo, so to speak, Rumpf albums, such as collections of her early blues and gospel recordings, with the City Preachers amongst others, and more recent music. For some peculiarly amusing reason Atlantis’ eponymous debut album from 1973 is combined with the albums of what looks like a typical schlager combo.
Frumpy’s style is typical of the heavy, organ dominated German bands of the Krautrock era, with Rumpf’s strong bluesy vocals front and centre. Atlantis is more progressive, more jazzy and less heavy and somehow less tuneful than Frumpy. The electronic organ sound of Frumpy is replaced by synthesisers and an anodyne AOR sound. Rumpf’s unique voice is the only common denominator and seems wasted in Atlantis where none of the songs stand out.
As often the case, YouTube is the forum for the rest of the Frumpy albums, including the excellent Frumpy Live from 1972, showcasing a groove-based blues rock band, with long jams and Rumpf’s powerful, slightly hoarse, soulful vocals. A Frumpy concert must have been an experience and I’m surprised that this band didn’t try to make it in the USA, rather than the more banal Atlantis. Frumpy would’ve have done well supporting, for example, the Allman Brothers Band or Lynyrd Skynyrd. Surprisingly, the signature song, “How the Gypsy was Born” isn’t featured on this live set.
Someone in the Rockpalast documentary explains the failure of Frumpy and/or Atlantis to make it in the USA, in addition to the lack of enthusiasm for spending years on the touring circuit there, that it would be like exporting ice to the Eskimos for a German band hoping to make it in the USA by playing American style rock. I can’t see why Frumpy would not have made it, if they were prepared to put in the work. Their music was not esoteric Krautrock but had enough blues, soul and groove, not to mention extended organ and guitar solos, to appeal to the American heartland, and if the Southern rock bands could do it, Frumpy could do it too.
I don’t know, but I hope Inga Rumpf has made at least a comfortable living from her musical career, in all its variations, and is kind of famous in Germany, if not all over the world. She writes good songs and has a marvellous voice, and deserves huge success and acclaim but perhaps, ultimately, she was more interested and found satisfaction in following her own, idiosyncratic path rather than pander to crass commercial interests.
Rock writers fawn over the Krautrock royalty of Can, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Neu! and the few other bands generally referred to in that context, but Inga Rumpf deserves as much attention and as many kudos.
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