This is not only the best known composition by rebetiko singer and guitarist Yiannis Stamoulis, it became his nickname after the success of the song.
(About the title: I found several different translation of the Greek Μπιρ Αλλάχ (Bir Allah). By God seems to be the most common.)
Stamoulis was born on the island of Samos in 1912. Two years later, his family settled on the Greek mainland at Volos. By the 1930s, he was writing folk songs, singing and playing guitar, as well as singing tenor in a well-known local choir.
Stamoulis moved to Athens in the late 1930s or early 1940s. He performed throughout the 1940s, and in 1946, he started to appear on record. He was rarely the solo singer; most times he was second or even third voice, but he supported singers such as Stella Haskil, Markos Vamvakaris and, especially, Apostolos Hatzichristos. Many of his dozen or so recordings were made in 1947 and 1948, and he was recording as late as 1953 before he seems to disappear from the discography.
(It’s difficult to find information about him online and the search for what there is is complicated because he shares his name with a well-known Greek politician and an author.)
By God (Bir Allah) is lyrically simple: when the singer hears the phrase Bir Allah it reminds him of his time in Anatolia. Stamoulis wrote the tune, with lyrics by Charalambos Vasiliadis. The first and best-known version was recorded by Stella Haskil in 1947. It has been recorded by dozens of singers since. (On YouTube, I found a nice version from a group of young musicians recorded in 2022.)
This version is one of the few recordings where Stamoulis sang solo, accompanied by Stelios Keromitis on bouzouki. I haven’t been able to track down the year it was made.
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