Loukas Daralas ( el, Λουκάς Νταράλας) (1927–1977) was born in

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

and is perhaps best known as the father of contemporary singer

George Dalaras George Dalaras ( Γιώργος Νταλάρας, 29 September 1949) is a Greek musician and singer. He is one of the most prominent figures of Greek musical culture. In October 2006, he was selected as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Ag ...

. He was a performer of ''

Rebetiko Rebetiko ( el, ρεμπέτικο, ), plural rebetika ( ), occasionally transliterated as rembetiko or rebetico, is a term used today to designate originally disparate kinds of urban Greek music which have come to be grouped together since the s ...

'' music in

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...

during the 1950s and early 1960s and is famous for the song "To Vouno" ("The Mountain"), a well-known rebetiko song. He released the album ''Enas Rebetis''. According to the surviving relatives of famous rebetissa

Marika Ninou Marika Ninou ( el, Μαρίκα Νίνου) (1922 – 23 February 1957), was an Armenian-Greek rebetiko singer, born Evangelia Atamian ( el, Ευαγγελία Αταμιάν). Biography She was born in 1922 on the ship "Evangelistria" that br ...

, in an interview with Panos Geramanis on radio in late 2004, Marika Ninou was the one who discovered, hence the first singer to record "To Vouno", one of the last songs recorded by Ninou, prior to her untimely death. The Keti Grei version was issued a short while later and became very popular. Loukas Daralas' recordings were few. There were only two official releases on the now defunct Sonora label. The first being ''Enas Rebetis'', which included his own rendition of "To Vouno". The LP was a compilation of his own songs and 11 other pieces. A follow up LP was released a year later in 1975. However it did not achieve the success of the first LP. Both LPs are now available on the

PolyGram PolyGram N.V. was a multinational entertainment company and major music record label formerly based in the Netherlands. It was founded in 1962 as the Grammophon-Philips Group by Dutch corporation Philips and German corporation Siemens, to be a ...

label on one CD. The rarity of the original releases has resulted in copies of the two LPs being much sought after. Little is known about Loukas Daralas. He was born in Athens in 1927 and died in 1977. In an interview,

once described his father as a free man who travelled a lot and seldom spent time at home.

References

"Great Artists of Greek Music"
''Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Greece'' 1927 births 1977 deaths Singers from Athens Greek rebetiko singers 20th-century Greek male singers {{Greece-singer-stub