Kosmas Kosmadopoulos wrote almost a dozen songs that were recorded by leading rebetiko performers in the few years before the occupation of Greece by the Germans in WWII.
Notably, he worked with Panagiotis Tountas, with the two of them swapping duties between lyrics and music.
Kosmadopoulos was born in the Asia Minor countryside near Smyrna in 1903. He arrived in Athens in 1922 and by the next year was playing saz and bouzouki in rebetiko ensembles.
His career as a performer last into the 1960s (he died in 1973). He worked with a number of singers and bandleaders, including Yiannis Papaioannou, with whom he developed a close working relationship.
Most of his compositions appear to have been recorded in 1939 and 1940, by artists that included Daisy Stavropoulou, Stratos Pagioumtzis and Stelios Keromitis, and Ioanna Georgakopoulu. (It is suggested, in at least one source, that Kosmadopoulos may have written at least one other song that was credited instead to Vasilis Tsitsanis.)
I bet all my money (Hippodrome) was recorded in 1940 with singers Pagioumtzis and the deep-voiced Keromitis. (Hippodrome is the Greek word for horse racetrack.)
Photo is from Kounadis Archive Virtual Museum.
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