Peter Thomas Sound Orchester

*2025 stock* Derrick turns 50 this year, but the extremely popular and highly successful German crime series has gone quiet. This is due to chief inspector Horst Tappert's posthumously publicized Nazi past. A comparable TV series, on the other hand, continues to run unwaveringly to this day: Der Alte. What they both have in common, and the subject of this album, is that Peter Thomas was one of their musical creators in their early phase. Peter Thomas and his Sound Orchester composed and played the music for the first Derrick episode "Waldweg" (1974). Six more followed. The composer and musician even made a cameo appearance in the Derrick episode "Death of the Trumpeter" (1976), where he is in the audience of singer Sabrina (Emy Cesaroni) and briefly interacts with her.

The corresponding track "Ohne Dich Ist Es Nacht" once was a successful single and can be heard on this album. Three years later, in 1977, Peter Thomas even wrote the theme music for the first 100 episodes of the TV crime series Der Alte, as well as the music for four episodes, including the first "Die Dienstreise". Musically, the range extends from a discofox version of "The House Of The Rising Sun" to easy listening and krautrock and funky instrumentals. It"s surprising how experimental people were in the seventies when it came to the musical equipment of TV series, before the synthesizers overtook everything in the eighties.