In 1929, Manolis Karapiperis became one of the earliest musicians to record the bouzouki. He recorded six sides in New York and then disappeared from the recorded repertoire. Only four of the six were originally released.
He played a primitive style. Karapiperis strummed opens strings while playing simple melodies on the third string of the bouzouki. This old-fashioned style was heard only on some of the earliest rebetiko recordings made in Greece beginning in the mid-1930s.
The open string strumming was gone when the most influential New York-produced bouzouki record was released in 1933. What remained was the single string melody, with occasional phrases in thirds. (That record was To minore tou teke by Ioannis Halkias, who was also known as Jack Gregory.)
While the open-string strumming was largely abandoned in rebetiko, it was a fixture of urban Cretan music recorded by Stelios Foustalierakis. He played a bouzouki-related instrument called the boulgari, and was heavily influenced by early rebetiko.
Karapiperis didn’t make a major splash at the time but the records he made are significant for capturing the likely style of early rebetiko.
Sokiani zeibekiko was also sung by Karapiperis.
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