Ioanna (Joanna) Georgakopoulou is one of the interesting and, as far as I’m concerned, under-rated transitional figures in rebetiko.
She started singing and recording with major pre-WWII rebetiko performers when she was a teenager, and continued after the war as rebetiko gradually transitioned to mainstream popular music. Her voice was unlike the Smyrneika-influenced female singers of the time in that it was largely unornamented.
It’s a shame she isn’t as well known as Marika Ninou, Sotiria Bellou and other singers from the 1950s and 1960s: As well as singing, Georgakopoulou wrote and recorded more than 50 rebetiko and popular songs, including “Because of You I’m Drunk Every Night,” which she recorded with Prodromos Tsaousakis in 1948.
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