Yiannis Kyriazis emerged as a performer late in rebetiko’s classic age, had a long career as a popular recording artist and performer, and then played a role in the revival of rebetiko in the 1970s.
Kyriazis was born in Kavala in northeastern Greece in 1915 and settled in Thessaloniki in 1937, age 22, where he went to university. He also began working as a guitarist and singer for the rebetes then performing in Thessaloniki, including Markos Vamvakaris and Vasilis Tsitsanis.
After the disruption of WWII, he settled into a musical career as a singer, guitarist and composer. He made his first recording in 1947, singing with Stella Haskil, and over the next two decades was regularly featured on record. He performed with, or wrote for, the major performers of the time, including Kaiti Grey and Stelios Kazantzidis. (The site Discogs lists 80 recordings.)
He wrote dozens of songs and while most are classified as laiko now, the influence of early rebetiko never seemed far from what he was doing.
In 1974, in the early stages of the rediscovery of rebetiko, he recorded the album The Old Rebetiko (Το παλιό ρεμπέτικο), an album of 12 early rebetiko songs from writers such as Tsitsanis, Vamvakaris, Panagiotis Tountas and Anestis Delias. His renown as a popular singer helped draw the listening public’s attention to those old songs, and to “old rebetiko” in general. The album was popular enough that there were three re-releases on vinyl, as well as a 1995 release on CD.
The sucker was originally recorded by Markos Vamvakaris in 1935. Kyriazis’s version is quite true to the original.
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