Horace Panter (born Stephen Graham Panter, 30 August 1953 in
CroydonCroydon is a major commercial centre in Greater London and the principal settlement of the London Borough of Croydon. It is south of Charing Cross, and is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
) also known as
Sir Horace Gentleman, is the
bassistThe electric bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a plectrum....
for the
CoventryCoventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham with a population of 300,848...
2 Tone2 Tone is a music genre created in England in the late 1970s by fusing elements of ska, punk rock, rocksteady, reggae and pop...
,
skaSka is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s, and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues...
revival
bandIn music, a musical ensemble or band is a group of musicians that works together to perform songs. The following articles concern types of musical bands:* Big band* Boy band* Christian band* Church band* Concert band* Cover band* Dansband* Fife and drum...
The SpecialsThe Specials are an English 2 Tone ska revival band formed in 1977 in Coventry, England. Their music combined a "danceable ska and rocksteady beat with punk's energy and attitude", and had a "more focused and informed political and social stance" than other ska groups...
.
After spending most of his formative years in
KetteringKettering is a town in the north of Northamptonshire, England. It is the main town within the Borough of Kettering.Kettering is on the River Ise, a tributary of the Nene and is twinned with Lahnstein, Germany and Kettering, Ohio, in the United States....
,
NorthamptonshireNorthamptonshire is a landlocked county in the English East Midlands, with a population of 629,676 as at the 2001 census...
, Panter started a one-year art course at Northampton School in 1971, where he met many influential musicians. In 1972 he started studying
fine artFine art describes any art form developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than utility. This type of art is often expressed in the production of art objects using visual and performing art forms, including painting, sculpture, music, dance, theatre, architecture, photography and...
at Coventry's Lanchester Polytechnic, now known as
Coventry UniversityCoventry University is a post-1992 university in Coventry, West Midlands, England. Under the terms of the Further and Higher Education Act of 1992, the institution's name was changed from Coventry Polytechnic to Coventry University...
.
Horace Panter (born Stephen Graham Panter, 30 August 1953 in
CroydonCroydon is a major commercial centre in Greater London and the principal settlement of the London Borough of Croydon. It is south of Charing Cross, and is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
) also known as
Sir Horace Gentleman, is the
bassistThe electric bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a plectrum....
for the
CoventryCoventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham with a population of 300,848...
2 Tone2 Tone is a music genre created in England in the late 1970s by fusing elements of ska, punk rock, rocksteady, reggae and pop...
,
skaSka is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s, and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues...
revival
bandIn music, a musical ensemble or band is a group of musicians that works together to perform songs. The following articles concern types of musical bands:* Big band* Boy band* Christian band* Church band* Concert band* Cover band* Dansband* Fife and drum...
The SpecialsThe Specials are an English 2 Tone ska revival band formed in 1977 in Coventry, England. Their music combined a "danceable ska and rocksteady beat with punk's energy and attitude", and had a "more focused and informed political and social stance" than other ska groups...
.
After spending most of his formative years in
KetteringKettering is a town in the north of Northamptonshire, England. It is the main town within the Borough of Kettering.Kettering is on the River Ise, a tributary of the Nene and is twinned with Lahnstein, Germany and Kettering, Ohio, in the United States....
,
NorthamptonshireNorthamptonshire is a landlocked county in the English East Midlands, with a population of 629,676 as at the 2001 census...
, Panter started a one-year art course at Northampton School in 1971, where he met many influential musicians. In 1972 he started studying
fine artFine art describes any art form developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than utility. This type of art is often expressed in the production of art objects using visual and performing art forms, including painting, sculpture, music, dance, theatre, architecture, photography and...
at Coventry's Lanchester Polytechnic, now known as
Coventry UniversityCoventry University is a post-1992 university in Coventry, West Midlands, England. Under the terms of the Further and Higher Education Act of 1992, the institution's name was changed from Coventry Polytechnic to Coventry University...
. In his second year there, he met
Jerry DammersJerry Dammers is a founder and keyboard player of the Coventry, England based ska revival band The Specials, The Special A.K.A. and The Spatial AKA Orchestra....
, and soon they formed The Specials. The band started playing in Coventry bars and pubs and by 1980 were arguably the UK's biggest band. Following the break-up of The Specials in 1981, Panter went on to play with
General PublicGeneral Public was a rock band, formed by The Beat vocalists Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger.-Career:After the 1983 break-up of The Beat , Wakeling and Roger decided to continue working together in a new venture...
, and then with the reformed Specials in the 1990s. Since then, Panter has been playing in the
bluesBlues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre created within the African-American communities in the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
bands Box of Blues and Blues To Go, and he leads the Coventry Ska-Jazz Orchestra. He is now teaching art to special needs children in Corley Special School in north Warwickshire. He has written a well-received autobiography called "Ska'd for Life", in which he shares how he became introduced to the ska genre, and he describes his experiences since the band's creation.
External links