Kamil Běhounek (March 29, 1916,

Blatná Blatná (; german: Blatna) is a town in Strakonice District in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 6,400 inhabitants. It is known for a water castle in the centre of a pond, and a landscape garden around it. The town cent ...

- November 22, 1983,

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...

) was a

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohem ...

n accordionist who played

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

and popular music. He also worked as a bandleader, arranger, composer, and film scorer. He also occasionally played tenor saxophone. Běhounek was an

autodidact Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) or self-education (also self-learning and self-teaching) is education without the guidance of masters (such as teachers and professors) or institutions (such as schools). Generally, autodidacts are individua ...

on accordion, having learned to play by imitating recordings and

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

broadcasts. He studied law in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

and began performing in clubs; his first recordings on solo accordion date from 1936. In the late 1930s he worked with the Blue Music Orchestra, Rudolf Antonin Dvorsky, Jiří Traxler, and

Karel Vlach Karel Vlach (8 October 1911, in Prague – 26 February 1986, in Prague) was a Czech dance orchestra conductor and arranger. He founded his first orchestra in 1938. Many important composers, instrumentalists and arrangers of the Czech jazz scene gr ...

. In 1943, he was forcibly compelled by the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

s to go to Berlin and make arrangements for the bands of Lutz Templin and Ernst van't Hoff. Upon his return to

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

in 1945, he used some of these arrangements for his own band, then returned to Germany the following year, where he continued arranging for bandleaders such as ,

Willy Berking Willy Berking (22 June 1910 – 21 May 1979) was a German orchestra conductor, trombonist and composer. Career Berking studied music (piano and composition) in Düsseldorf and then in Berlin, where he formed his first big band at the age of 1 ...

, , and Werner Müller. He also played with his own ensemble, including in Bonn and, after 1948, in

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

for American soldiers' clubs. Between 1968 and 1977 he recorded several albums of folk music, but continued to play swing with his own groups. He also wrote an autobiography, ''Má láska je jazz'' (Jazz is my Love), which was published posthumously in 1986.

References

*"Kamil Behounek". '' The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz''. 2nd edition, ed.

Barry Kernfeld Barry Dean Kernfeld (born August 11, 1950) is an American musicologist and jazz saxophonist who has researched and published extensively about the history of jazz and the biographies of its musicians. Education In 1968, Kernfeld enrolled at U ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Behounek, Kamil Czech jazz musicians 1916 births 1983 deaths Jazz accordionists 20th-century accordionists People from Strakonice District Czechoslovak emigrants to Germany