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Yiannis Tatasopoulos was a much-loved and much-recorded bouzouki player, singer and composer who, without being as well-known as many of the rebetiko and laiko stars of the 1950s, played a major role in that era in Greece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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He was born in 1928. By the early 1940s, his parents had moved to Athens and opened a taverna where folk musicians hung out and where the young Tatasopoulos met Markos Vamvakaris, Vasilis Tsitsanis and others. He started playing guitar but switched to bouzouki, taking lessons from Anestis Delias and Manolis Hiotis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Tatasopoulos went on to play on hundreds of recordings, sing with Marika Ninou, Sotiris Bellou and others, and compose his own songs, while collaborating with major composers like Giorgos Mitsakis. He was a major presence in the resurgent Athenian recording industry in the years following World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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In 1955, he left for America for the second chapter of his life. In America, he was soon recording and performing for Greek-American audiences and expanding his musical repertoire, particularly when he joined forces with Fred Elias, a violinist, in what could be considered a very early world music band – combining Greek, Arabian and other eastern Mediterranean sounds. He spent the rest of his life in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Tatasopoulos wrote the music for The sidewalk<\/em> and recorded it with singer Marika Ninou in 1950. As well as singing second voice, he played bouzouki on the record, with Giorgis Mitsakis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yiannis Tatasopoulos was a much-loved and much-recorded bouzouki player, singer and composer who, without being as well-known as many of the rebetiko and laiko stars of the 1950s, played a major role in that era in Greece. He was born in 1928. By the early 1940s, his parents had moved to Athens and opened a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rebetiko"],"yoast_head":"\n
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