Peter Reber

Peter Reber is a Swiss singer/songwriter whose career spans several decades, beginning with his stint in the schlager trio Peter, Sue & Marc during the 1970s and carrying on from the 1980s, when he embarked on a chart-topping solo career, until the 21st century, when he was still popular enough to hit the Top Five of the albums chart with consistency. Born on April 28, 1949, in Bern, Switzerland, he co-founded Peter, Sue & Marc in 1968. Comprised of Sue Schell (vocals) and Marc Dietrich (vocals, guitar) in addition to Reber (vocals, guitar, piano), Peter, Sue & Marc got their start as a cover group that performed contemporary folk material by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul and Mary. They rose to fame in 1971 when their song “Les Illusions de Nos Vingt Ans” was chosen to represent Switzerland at the Eurovision Song Contest. They represented Switzerland at the Eurovision Song Contest again in 1976 (“Djambo Djambo”), 1979 (“Trödler und Co”), and 1981 (“Io Senza Te”). In addition to their several Eurovision appearances, Peter, Sue & Marc scored a half-decade’s worth of Top Ten hit singles, most notably “Cindy” in 1976, “Memory Melody” in 1977, and “Tom Dooley” in 1978, and released several full-length albums, including Like a Seagull (1976), Mountain Man (1977), Tom Dooley (1978), By Airmail (1979), and Birds of Paradise (1980). The trio split up in 1981, and several years passed before Reber went solo with the Top Five hit album Grüeni Banane (1985). The follow-up albums Jede Bruucht Sy Insel (1986) and Dr Sunne Entgäge (1988) were even more successful, going all the way to number one. In the 1990s, he remained popular, hitting number two with Ufem Wäg Nach Alaska (1990) and number one with I Wünsche Dir (1993), though his output became somewhat sporadic. For instance, after not releasing a new album for five years, he unveiled two of them in 1998, Timbuktu and Winterzyt-Wiehnachtszyt, the former of which reached the Top Ten, the latter the Top Five. After the turn of the century, Reber formed the duo Peter Reber & Nina with his daughter and released a pair of Top Five hit albums, Winterland (2004) and Himel & Ärde (2006), and fell one spot short of number one with the long-awaited solo effort Es Läbe Voll Lieder (2010). ~ Jason Birchmeier