José Guardiola Díaz de Rada, (22 October 1930 – 9 April 2012) was a Spanish singer of popular music who sang in Spanish and Catalan. He in the

Eurovision Song Contest 1963 The Eurovision Song Contest 1963 was the eighth edition of the Eurovision Song Contest and took place in London, United Kingdom. It was organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster BBC, British Broadcasting Corporation ...

. Guardiola was born in

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

. He performed and recorded mostly Spanish versions of foreign songs and reached his maximum fame in Spain and Latin America in the early 1960s with versions of songs like "

Sixteen Tons "Sixteen Tons" is a song written by Merle Travis about a coal miner, based on life in the mines of Rosewood, Kentucky. Travis first recorded the song at the Radio Recorders Studio B in Hollywood, California, on August 8, 1946. Cliffie Stone ...

", "

Mack the Knife "Mack the Knife" or "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" () is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their 1928 music drama ''The Threepenny Opera'' (). The song tells of a knife-wielding criminal of the London underworld n ...

" and " Ya Mustafa". He was known as ''the Spanish

Crooner A crooner is a singer who performs with a smooth, intimate style that originated in the 1920s. The crooning style was made possible by better microphones that picked up quieter sounds and a wider range of frequencies, allowing the singer to acce ...

'' due to his style and the types of songs he sang. On 23 March 1963, he in the

with the song "", placing 12th. At that time he also sang a few songs with his infant daughter. He retired in 2008.

Discography

* ''Navidad'' EP with the Hermanas Serrano

References

"José Guardiola recibe un homenaje por sus 80 años"
(Spanish), 14 December 2009, by Juan Soto Vinolo, '' El Periodico''. {{DEFAULTSORT:Guardiola, Jose 1930 births 2012 deaths 20th-century Spanish musicians 20th-century Spanish male singers 20th-century Spanish singers Eurovision Song Contest entrants