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Vangelis Sofraniou, who studied Byzantine music in Smyrna and served as a cantor at a Smyrna church, was one of the many musicians who arrived in Athens after the expulsion of Greeks from Asia Minor. He quickly became established as one of the leading singers of the era. 

Sofraniou recorded folk and popular songs alongside rebetiko and Smyrneika compositions, as well as a number of highly emotive manes. He was the first to record a number of classic songs penned by Panigiotis Tountas. 

While there are dozens of videos of Sofraniou’s performances online, there is a little information about him beyond a bare-bones, one-paragraph biography that reports he performed and recorded steadily into the 1960s. He died in 1963.

Sofraniou recorded The Hashish Smokers in 1928. The song, under a number of different names and with differing lyrics, was recorded extensively in Athens and the U.S., and even shows up in the Turkish music repertoire.