Peter Kingsbery

Peter Kingsbery is an American singer-songwriter who co-founded the band Cock Robin in the 1980s. He grew up in Austin (Texas) where he studied classical music. He moved to Nashville (Tennessee) where he began his career as a musician (he accompanied Brenda Lee on piano on a few tours) and then to Los Angeles at the end of the '70s where he began a career as a singer-songwriter.

He composed a few songs for Smokey Robinson, and one of his compositions, Pilot Error, sung by Stephanie Mills, had some success in the dance charts in 1983. At the beginning of the 80s, he founded the group Cock Robin with Anna LaCazio, Clive Wright and Lou Molino III which enjoyed great success in Western Europe mainly. Failing to break their native country with a first self-titled album in 1985, the quartet became a duo of Kingsbery and LaCazio when they released their second album in 1987.

After the band split up in the early 1990s after their third album, Kingsbery enjoyed a fairly successful solo career, releasing four albums over a decade, and scoring a major hit in France with the song "Only the Very Best." With his fourth album he tried his luck singing in French, the language of his adopted country (living there since some years back).

He has since reformed Cock Robin with Anna LaCazio and on/off former member Clive Wright in 2006 and has released one studio album I Don't Want to Save the World the same year and a Live album in 2009. A new studio album Songs From A Bell Tower was released in October 2010. After the band split in 1990, Peter Kingsbery pursued a solo career in France, where he settled.

Kingsbery speaks fluent French and is much more famous in France than he is in his native US. After signing with a new label (Barclay), he recorded his first solo album A Different Man in 1991 in California that he co-produced with his friend, drummer Pat Mastelotto. Kingsbery broadened his skills by not only playing the piano or organ but also the accordion.

Breaking with the style of Cock Robin, he introduced more classical instruments such as wind instruments (saxophone, flute, trombone and euphonium) or traditional as the oud (or lute, giving Slavic accents to the song Hélène). Other than Mastelotto, some of the musicians who recorded this album with Kingsbery participated Cock Robin: Clive Wright, John Pierce, Corky James and Tim Pierce.

Phil Solem of The Rembrandts, also contributed to this album. Contrary to what he used to do in the Cock Robin albums, Kingsbery recorded a cover version of How Can I Be Sure, a hit by the band The Rascals dating from 1968. The album which originally included 10 songs, was re-released with 2 extra tracks "Love In Motion" and "The Sublime" for the international market.

It was followed by a tour in France, where he only played the piano in small clubs all over the country and Paris (in 1992, he played to a packed Théâtre Grévin). Shortly after, Kingsbery participated in the concept album musical Tycoon, the English version of the French cult musical Starmania by Michel Berger & Luc Plamondon, with English lyrics by Tim Rice.

He sang Only The Very Best, which became a major hit in France in 1992, and also the song Ego Trip on the album. ... Source: Article "Peter Kingsbery" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.