Charalambos Mavridis is another one of the Greek performers who had a small but significant impact on recorded rebetiko before disappearing from the public scene.
In the years just before the German occupation of Greece, Mavridis appeared on more than a dozen recordings. He sang the works of composers such as Tsitsanis and Skarvelis, alongside Daizi Stavropoulou, Stelios Keromitis, Marika Ninou and other major recording artists. And then he was gone from the recorded repertoire (other than a single recording in 1953).
We know that Mavridis was born in Pontos on shores of the Black Sea in 1922 and that he came to Greece as a young child. By the late ’30s he was reportedly deep into the rebetiko lifestyle, and a practising musician, self-taught on bouzouki and guitar. His first recordings were in 1939 and most of his reported discography of 15 sides were made in the 1940s, the last year of recording before the German occupation.
Several sources report he quit performing in public and recording for personal reasons, although they don’t specify what those were. One suggestion is that both his wife and his mother disapproved of rebetiko and his rebetiko-driven lifestyle.
Mavridis didn’t stop performing, although it was apparently most often only among and for friends. Panos Savvopoulos, a songwriter and musician who has written and broadcast extensively about rebetiko, has five audio files at his website of Mavridis playing and singing for friends in 1980. (The website is in Greek: the audio files are embedded about halfway through the article.)
Mavridis is not a name that I knew well. I was more than familiar with his voice, particularly in his well-matched support of Stavropoulou and Ioanna Georgakopoulou.
Don’t let money fool you, written by Kostas Skarvelis, was recorded in 1940 in Athens.
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