Who was/is Baier & Westrupp ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more
Baier & Westrupp
"The Ruhr-Bard and Pott-Poet." (common name for Frank Baier in the press)
For more than 30 years Frank Baier has been a voice of the district - "loud and annoying" as he is said to be. Always on the spot, when it comes to playing another song on the street, on the floe: at the Kokstonne in front of Streiktor or in front of the town hall, in the colony of collieries or at the demos in the Ruhr area. When he sings together with 'Waller' Westrupp "Dat muss doch auch wat Spißken bringen," it means in plain language: "There we make rioting." And this language was understood by the people at the station. The people there were the "doormats of the nation" in the 70s. The mines closed down by the dozen, unemployment was higher than in other regions, and the steel strike of 1978/79 "pissed the bears in their pants and in the back". And then my buddy says to me before the concert: 'Man, boy, I'd like to sing a nice song too, I'm eating hard anyway! And then there was the first line for the song: 'Boh ey, dat must be some fun, just want to grieve ...'."
At that time Frank Baier began to 'mock' songs, i.e. to write songs in the Ruhrpottslang, "...just as I grew up on the street with the other plagues, between sewage plants, garbage dumps, in the shadow of the 'Rosenblumendelle' colliery, where in the morning on the balcony on the milk the thick soot flakes floated on the cream, and the mother threw us at noon 'n Dubbel - 'ne double bread tricks with turnip cabbage on it - down, so that 'se us of a jacket had." A line of text by the Dortmund worker poet Josef Reding - "Vonne Maloche, direkt nach Haus', nee, so siehthze aus ..." (Vonne Maloche, directly to the house) - was for Baier very early "the brightener - a text about the buddy, who has to go out to the bar from the colliery - for 'n 'Gedeck' [beer and corn] - and already considered when he comes home right away and takes his mother to the sofa ...".
The dialect songs hit the souls of the people and are quite important for their battered regional self-confidence. The stories come across warmer and hit the core - with the people in the colony or at the Werktor. "Still today - after 30 years - this song comes at live concerts with the rappers of SOG, the Sons of Gastarbeita - so with rap as wheelbarrow -, as up-to-date about the ramp as if the song had been written yesterday. And the people are glowing, and the lighters are going on."
Dat must also bring some fun with the Skiffle & Jug Band Walter h.c. in 1976. Meier Pumpe played (Walter = Walter Westrupp; h. = Herribert 'Heri' Horstig, guitar; c. = Curny on bass; Meier = Wolfgang Klasmeier on drums; and Pumpe is Frank Baier's old Skiffle nickname), with which Baier and Westrupp were also on their way to mix up the people in the Ruhr area with their Skiffle ("... and dat Blut inne Pumpe beginnt am Kochen", aus: Rain from coal dust).
Walter Westrupp (born 1946) has not only made a name for himself as a folk rock duo with Bernd Witthüser (late 60s to mid 70s), but the two have also become legends.
www.frank-baier.de
www.westrupp.de
Extract from
Various - songwriter in Germany
Vol.3, For whom we sing (3-CD)
/various-songwriter-in-Germany-vol.3-for-who-who-we-sing-3-cd.html
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