A post at rebetiko.sealabs.net lists 129 songs that Thanasis Evgenikos recorded during a career that stretched from 1934 to 1960, an impressive output and one that rarely lost touch with his roots in rebetiko.
Evgenikos was born on the island of Samos in 1908. It was there, while working as a farmer, that he began singing – folk, rebetiko and music from nearby Asia Minor – at island festivals, feasts and parties.
He first recorded in Athens in the 1930s but it was mainly after 1948 – after the disruption of World War II and the Greek civil war – that he established his career. Evgenikos had a wonderful low tenor voice and an expressive approach to lyrics that fit well with rebetiko. Even as the music generally became more polished and European-sounding during the 1950s, his records an echo of older rebetiko sounds.
Throughout his career, he recorded the works of the major composers and appeared alongside leading male and female singers.
Many wronged me, with Anthoula Alifrangi as second voice, is an interesting recording. The instrumentation is santouri, violin and guitar, which would not have sounded out of place in the early 1930s, but was rare in the world of rebetiko recordings in 1955. In fact, the song sounds closer to the rebetiko of the mid-1930s than it does to the mid-1950s, thanks to the instrumentation and his wonderful voice.
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