Before 1930 and the establishment of record production facilities there, Athenian music-makers were recorded by visiting technicians. Often they were folks from Odeon records in Germany, who would make the recording, take it home to have it pressed, and then export it to Greece, the U.S. and other countries.
That’s how much of the early rebetiko – especially Smyrneika – came to be recorded. And prominent on that early recording is the voice of Giorgos Vidalis.
Vidalis was a popular singer in Smyrna before Greeks were forced to flee that city, and within a year of arriving in Athens he was recording for Odean. Between 1924 and 1933, he recorded 120 or so songs for the company, about 30 of them the rebetiko compositions of Panayiotis Tountas, Kostas Karipis, Yiannis Dragatsis and others.
He stopped recording in the mid-30s along with several other refugees from Asia Minor, perhaps in response to the censorship imposed by the Metaxas dictatorship, but continued to perform with rebetiko and folk music groups. Vidalis died of cancer in 1948.
My Maritsa, My Doll, written by Tountas, was recorded in 1929.
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