I was born in Gothenburg on the 19th november 1944.
Sometime in the late fifties I started to visit old ladies who tried to teach me to play the piano. It was the usual classic stuff an it mostly made me bored. At home I picked up tunes from my sisters records and learned them in my own way. One of the first I played was "Istanbul" which was a big hit at the time. On my fifteenth birthday my grandfather gave me a tenorbanjo and I tried to play new orleansjazz for some years. Later I turned to skiffle and listened to artists like Lonnie Donegan. 1960 my family moved to Stockholm an I went on with the jazz for a while but sometime in 1962 we formed a rockband "The Ruperts" and played on the local school-dances. 1963 I was at The Royal Tennishall in Stockholm and watched The Beatles. Since then nothing was the same.
They really made us think that nothing was impossible. And it wasn..t at that time.
1964 I studied graphic design at Konstfack in Stockholm and I continued to play rock, which made my art-ambition fade a bit. The band had names like Yellow & Blues, Grand Canyon and finally Contact. We started as a r&b-group, passed through the psychedelic zone and 1968 we ended up as a folk-rockband, singing in swedish. Since high school I had been writing poetry so it wasn..t such a giant step to create songs with lyrics in my own language.
1970 we met three real folkmusicians (violinplayers) - Skäggmanslaget - and it influenced us a lot. We recorded "Gråtlåten" on their first album and I wrote "Hon kom över mon" - a kind of folky pastisch, which we first recorded as a single. A year later we had our own fiddlers and made some kind of a breakthrough with the album "Hon kom över mon".
For some years we toured all over Sweden and we even made a norwegian tour. We played big festivals like Roskilde, Ruisrock in Finland and Saltøya i Norway. We also appeared in several tv-shows. After another album - "Utmarker" - we broke up in late 1972 and a year later I moved up north in Sweden to the city of Luleå. It was meant to be a four months job at the local theatre but I came to stay for almost nine years, wrote songs and played in bands like Norrbottens Järn, Anton Swedbergs Swängäng and Skottes Musikorkester. Norrbottens Järn made quite a success with the album "Drömmarnas Värld" and we toured a lot all over Sweden. I took part in radiocabarets and produced radio- and tv-programs. Since the late seventies I was musically on my own and made several soloalbums. I wrote my probably best known song "Vintersaga" in 1984, which first was recorded by Monica Törnell who really made it famous. Later the song was recorded by Jerry Williams as well as by myself for a couple of times.
In Luleå I also met the filmdirector and writer - Lars Molin - whom I came to work with in almost all his tv-plays and movies until he sadly died in 1999. 1998 he won an Emmy-award for the tv-play "Den tatuerade änkan" (the tatooed widow) with my music. Later in 1999 I released an album - "regi: Lars Molin musik: Ted Ström" with most of the music from that happy collaboration.
In 1985 me and my family - Eva, Anna, Johan and Albin - moved to Örebro and I worked as a tv-producer and graphic designer until 1988. Since then I have been working full-time with music, graphic design and painting (art). In the year of 2000 we moved to the small town - Nora - 30 kilometres north of Örebro. and here I..m running my own gallery - "Foajén. I..m also playing with the local "Group 713" and I have my own little studio as well. I..m also playing and touring with guitarplayer Torbjörn Carlsson and Björn J:son Lindh on flute and keyboards and a year ago we made the album "Vinterhamn" together with choirs directed by marvelous organplayer Marie Nordenmalm.
AND the old group Contact is still alive and well. The last years we have been making festivals and cruising the Baltic and some year ago we released a new album - Samma vindar, samma dofter - which is a collection of remastered oldies and one new song.
The sky is the limit!
