Manolis Chiotis

Manolis Chiotis was born in Thessaloniki on 21 March 1921 (some sources give 1920). He was a child prodigy: he learned the guitar, the violin and the oud as well as the bouzouki, and while still a teenager he was already playing professionally and making records. In the late 1930s he moved to Athens, where the recording industry was, and soon every singer wanted him in the studio. His speed and precision were unlike anything the rebetiko world had heard.

After the war, in the 1940s and 1950s, he became a star of the Athens night clubs, both as a player and as a composer. He worked with the great voices of the time, and his records sold widely. In 1959 he married the young singer Mary Linda (Μαίρη Λίντα), and the two formed a duo that was hugely popular in the late 1950s and the 1960s, in Greece and among Greek communities abroad.

Chiotis toured the United States several times in the 1960s, playing for Greek-American audiences and for American listeners curious about the bouzouki, which the film Never on Sunday (1960) had made famous; in 1964 the couple even played at the White House for President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was a heavy smoker and a man of the night, and his health failed early. He died in Athens on 21 March 1970, on his forty-ninth birthday. His records have never stopped being reissued.

Chiotis changed the bouzouki itself. The traditional rebetiko bouzouki had three pairs of strings. Around the mid-1950s Chiotis began playing an instrument with four pairs (τετράχορδο μπουζούκι), tuned like the top four strings of a guitar. This gave him a wider range and allowed him to play chords and fast runs in the style of a jazz or flamenco guitarist. He also used amplification on stage. Purists complained, but the four-course bouzouki won: it is the instrument most Greek bouzouki players use today.

As a composer and arranger he opened Greek popular song (λαϊκό) to the world. In his songs you hear Latin American rhythms such as the mambo and the bolero, and touches of jazz. Among his own songs are Παρτίδες (1950), recorded with Stella Haskil, and, with Mary Linda, Εγώ θα τα πληρώσω (I Will Pay for It, 1958) and Θεσσαλονίκη μου (My Thessaloniki, 1961), a love song to his native city.

His most famous recording, however, is not his own song. In 1960 Mikis Theodorakis recorded his song cycle Επιτάφιος (Epitaphios), on poems by Yannis Ritsos, with the singer Grigoris Bithikotsis, and Chiotis played the bouzouki. That record, which brought a great poet's words to popular music, owes much of its brilliance to his playing.

To hear Chiotis, start with the 1960 Epitaphios of Theodorakis and Bithikotsis, and listen to the bouzouki between the verses; then look for his instrumental recordings, where his speed is easiest to hear. Every bouzouki player in Greece today plays the four-course instrument he made standard, and many still learn his solos note by note. Greek radio and television regularly remember him on the anniversary of his birth and death, 21 March. His duets with Mary Linda are a fixture of programmes about the golden age of Greek popular song, and Θεσσαλονίκη μου is still sung in his native city.

• He was born and died on the same date, 21 March, in 1921 and 1970.
• He could play guitar, violin and oud as well as bouzouki.
• The four-course bouzouki he popularised is now the standard instrument in Greece.
• He played the bouzouki on Theodorakis's first recording of Epitaphios in 1960.