Stelios Kazantzidis life - Part II

After his military service, Stelios started to work in famous music halls with the also successful songstress, Kaity Grey. They were couple in life, too. They recorded together a lot of very popular songs that Greeks still sing in revelries. After his separation with the beautiful Grey, he meets a young songstress named Marinella. Her real name was Kyriaki Papadopoulou. She came from Thessaloniki, which is the biggest city of North Greece. Stelios Kazantzidis and Marinella became the greatest duet of all time, in Greece. They were in great demand of the nightclubs and Greek composers. Their tours all over the world were very successful. In USA, Australia but also in Germany and Turkey they became very popular to the Greek immigrants.

“Manduballa” was the name of a bollywood actress. Stelios Kazantzidis compose the homonymous song in 1959 and he also sang it. That “album” recorded an unprecedented success. 100.000 disks sold in that year. Imagine that the Greek population was about 9 millions. Also realise that Greece was a poor country after the Second World War and the 4 years civil war. Although his discographic company earned about 10 millions drachmas, Stelios Kazantzidis received less than 1000 drachmas!!! The Greek courts worked on that case. Finally, Kazantzidis achieved his goal. He achieved to receive money analogically to the sales of his disks. That was a gain for all Greek singers who were exploited until 1960. From now on, Stelios Kazantzidis was the “revolutionist”, whom the companies had to ruin. Stelios Kazantzidis has declared: “Only if I knew that companies’ income was disposed for the progress of music or for the betterment of my co-workers’ life, I would tolerate that utilization”. Thanks to Kazantzidis battle against the rulers of Greek discography, the majority of moderns Greek singers can survive or gain some money from their “albums”.

( Stelios Kazantzidis and Marinella)