Gerasimos Klouvatos merged during there 1950s as a leading composer and bouzouki player. He recorded over 100 78 RPM records before retiring in the mid-1960s and turning his hand to teaching bouzouki.
Klouvatos was born on the island of Naxos in 1914, but his family moved to Athens when he was young. He took bouzouki lessons and, in 1947, recorded his first composition, The Time Passed, with Dimitris Perdikopoulos .
After the disruption of the war, Klouvatos had his most productive period, creating songs for the likes of Stelios Kazantzidis, and applying his bouzouki skills to records and to performance, throughout the 1950s. He is credited with appearances on more than 130 recordings, as composer and bouzouki player. He wrote his biggest hit, Light the Cigarette, in 1958.
Klouvatos left Greece in the late 1950s for a successful four-year stay in America, returning in 1963 and continuing to work until he retired in 1967. He wasn’t quite done, though: During the rebetiko revival of the 1970s, he would perform alongside other older rebetiko musicians before his death in 1979.
Plunge the knife into me was recorded by Kazantzidis and Maria Grillis, with Klouvatos playing one of two bouzoukis on the track. The song is the lament of a love-tormented singer:
When you’re in pain you don’t count
The value of life,
plunge the knife into me
as deep as you can.
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