Giannakis Ioannidis was one of the Greeks recorded in the U.S. in the 1920s who had an impact on the development of rebetiko in Piraeus. Many of the recordings he made sound theatrical, which is no surprise — he was an actor in a theatre troupe that started in Greece and toured Africa and Australia before landing in Chicago.
Ioannidis was one of the members of the troupe called on to record 78s for American Greeks. Among them were a handful that passed into the rebetiko repertoire, including From Under the Tomatoes. The song is a bit nonsensical: the verses are eight independent couplets (so independent that the last couplet is shared with the song Elenaki).
The simplicity of the song and the bouzouki work by Manolis Karapiperis are echoed in much of the early 1930s rebetiko recorded in Greece, especially in some of the compositions of Giorgos Batis, Markos Vamvakaris and others.
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