Stratos Pagioumtzis ( 1904 – 16 November 1971) was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

rebetiko Rebetiko (, ), plural rebetika ( ), occasionally transliterated as rembetiko or rebetico, is a term used to designate previously disparate kinds of urban Greek music which in the 1930s went through a process of musical syncretism and develope ...

'' singer, also known with the nickname ''Stratos the sluggard (Στράτος ο τεμπέλης)'' or simply ''Stratos''.

Biography

Pagioumtzis was born in 1904 in the

Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

town of

Ayvalık Ayvalık (), formerly also known as Kydonies (), is a municipality and Districts of Turkey, district of Balıkesir Province, Turkey. Its area is 305 km2, and its population is 75,126 (2024). It is a seaside town on the northwestern Aegean Se ...

and he migrated to Greece before the Greco-Turkish war of 1919–1922. He settled in the port city of

Piraeus Piraeus ( ; ; , Ancient: , Katharevousa: ) is a port city within the Athens urban area ("Greater Athens"), in the Attica region of Greece. It is located southwest of Athens city centre along the east coast of the Saronic Gulf in the Ath ...

and supported himself by working as a fisherman and later as a supplier of provisions to moored ships, but he always had in mind to earn his living from his greatest passion, music. He started to sing professionally in the late 1920s and his first recordings appeared in 1933. In 1934, he got together with other

'' singers

Yiorgos Batis Yiorgos Batis (, also Giorgos Batis) (1885 – 10 March 1967) was one of the first rebetes influential to ''rebetiko'' music. His real name was Yiorgos Tsoros although he was known as Yiorgos Ampatis. He had a great love for music and musical ...

Anestis Delias Anestis Delias ( – 31 July 1944) was a Greeks, Greek bouzouki player, composer and singer of ''rebetiko''. Delias was from a musical family of İzmir, Smyrna in Anatolia, who arrived on the Greek mainland as a young Greek refugees, refugee du ...

and

Markos Vamvakaris Markos Vamvakaris (; 10 May 1905 – 8 February 1972), was a Greek musician of ''rebetiko'', universally referred to by ''rebetiko'' writers and fans simply by his first name, Markos. The great significance of Vamvakaris for the rebetiko is als ...

, and founded the rebetiko quartet, ''I Tetras i Xakousti tou Peiraios'' (, literally ''The famed quarted of Piraeus''). In 1937, during the Metaxas dictator regime, he was convicted of drug use and was exiled internally to the Cycladic island of Sifnos. Pagioumtzis had a beautiful voice which earned him wide recognition. He is considered as one of the greatest singers of the classical rebetiko era. Pagioumtzis recorded over 400 songs with his voice and worked with many well-known composers such as Vassilis Tsitsanis, Giannis Papaioannou, Bayianteras, and Panagiotis Toundas. Vassilis Tsitsanis once said that Pagioumtzis had '' nightingales in his throat''. Pagioumtzis died of a stroke on 16 November 1971 in New York, after completing a concert in a Greek nightclub.

Notes

External links

Στράτος Παγιουμτζής, 1904 – 1971
1904 births 1971 deaths People from Ayvalık 20th-century Greek male singers Greek rebetiko singers Emigrants from the Ottoman Empire to Greece {{Greece-singer-stub