the1920sand30s | Stoyan Milenkov - A Single's Dream (1929) @the1920sand30s | Uploaded July 2021 | Updated October 2024, 2 hours ago.
Performed by: Stoyan Milenkov
Full Song Title: A Single's Dream
Recorded in: 1929
Stoyan Milenkov (born 1889 - died 1953) was a popular Bulgarian poet and cabaret artist in the early 20th century.
Stoyan Milenkov was born in 1889 in Breznik, Bulgaria and his activities do not fit into a simple definition. He was a poet, actor, musician, humorist and satirist.
A rebellious student, he dreamed of studying drama in Paris and barely finished sixth grade of high school. In Paris he graduated from the school of Charles Masset and studied with renowned Comedy Française actor Paul Mounet, gaining experience as an assistant director and intern in several theaters. He returned to his homeland with a diploma in 1911 and initially worked at the New National Theater and the National Theater and wrote the libretto of the operetta "Moralists".
In the years between the two world wars, the whole of Sofia knew his verses by heart. People were singing his songs in the streets, in the trams, in their homes, and the newspapers that printed his works were the first to sell. Stoyan Milenkov ridiculed negative manifestations in public and political life, even in times when freedom of speech and press was suppressed. In the foreword to his collection ‘Carnival without Masks - between the Cabaret and Parnassus’ is said that Milenkov was the founder of joke, ridicule, mockery, and humor, constructed according to literature standards and would leave a lasting mark that those who underestimate him could only dream of.
The whole of Bulgaria knew who Stoyan Milenkov was and when he appeared in a public place, one had the feeling that he was a close friend of everyone. If he, a graduate of the Paris theater school, had stayed to sing his songs by the Seine and not by the Perlovska River, he would have gained the fame of Maurice Chevalier. Everything he wrote remained in the memory of the people because it was relevant and never neutral. He had a social position in art and defended it in humorous style. In Paris, he heard the chansonniers in the avenues and back in Bulgaria he used to walk in the street with his guitar in hand.
No matter which song or poem from the collection of Stoyan Milenkov you listen to or read, you will see that nothing has changed since the 20s and 30s of the past century and his verses are still relevant today.
With his guitar in hand, Stoyan Milenkov traveled around towns and villages, singing his songs. After the change of the political system in 1944, he moved to the circus stage where he received his last rounds of applause.
His life, full of poetry and art, ended at the age of 64.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes, Stu
______________________
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners.
Performed by: Stoyan Milenkov
Full Song Title: A Single's Dream
Recorded in: 1929
Stoyan Milenkov (born 1889 - died 1953) was a popular Bulgarian poet and cabaret artist in the early 20th century.
Stoyan Milenkov was born in 1889 in Breznik, Bulgaria and his activities do not fit into a simple definition. He was a poet, actor, musician, humorist and satirist.
A rebellious student, he dreamed of studying drama in Paris and barely finished sixth grade of high school. In Paris he graduated from the school of Charles Masset and studied with renowned Comedy Française actor Paul Mounet, gaining experience as an assistant director and intern in several theaters. He returned to his homeland with a diploma in 1911 and initially worked at the New National Theater and the National Theater and wrote the libretto of the operetta "Moralists".
In the years between the two world wars, the whole of Sofia knew his verses by heart. People were singing his songs in the streets, in the trams, in their homes, and the newspapers that printed his works were the first to sell. Stoyan Milenkov ridiculed negative manifestations in public and political life, even in times when freedom of speech and press was suppressed. In the foreword to his collection ‘Carnival without Masks - between the Cabaret and Parnassus’ is said that Milenkov was the founder of joke, ridicule, mockery, and humor, constructed according to literature standards and would leave a lasting mark that those who underestimate him could only dream of.
The whole of Bulgaria knew who Stoyan Milenkov was and when he appeared in a public place, one had the feeling that he was a close friend of everyone. If he, a graduate of the Paris theater school, had stayed to sing his songs by the Seine and not by the Perlovska River, he would have gained the fame of Maurice Chevalier. Everything he wrote remained in the memory of the people because it was relevant and never neutral. He had a social position in art and defended it in humorous style. In Paris, he heard the chansonniers in the avenues and back in Bulgaria he used to walk in the street with his guitar in hand.
No matter which song or poem from the collection of Stoyan Milenkov you listen to or read, you will see that nothing has changed since the 20s and 30s of the past century and his verses are still relevant today.
With his guitar in hand, Stoyan Milenkov traveled around towns and villages, singing his songs. After the change of the political system in 1944, he moved to the circus stage where he received his last rounds of applause.
His life, full of poetry and art, ended at the age of 64.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes, Stu
______________________
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners.
![Pyotr Leshchenko - Golubyye Glaza [Голубые Глаза/Blue Eyes] (1933)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/G8ACEybyDYg/hqdefault.jpg "Pyotr Leshchenko - Golubyye Glaza [Голубые Глаза/Blue Eyes] (1933)
Performed by: Оркестр Фрaнкa Фоксa [Frank Fox & His Dance Orchestra]
Vocals: Пётр Лещенко [Pyotr Leshchenko]
Full Song Title: Голубые Глаза [Blue Eyes]
Recorded in: Vienna, Austria 1933
Pyotr Leshchenko (born 2 June 1898 – died 16 July 1954), was a popular singer in the Russian Empire, Romania and later the Soviet Union, is universally considered the King of Russian Tango and specifically known for his rendition of Serdtse a tango, sung unusually not in Spanish but in Russian.
He was born as an illegitimate child of the Russian Empire in Isayevo village of the Kherson Governorate into a poor and illiterate Ukrainian peasant family. During the First World War, his mother and stepfather moved to Chișinău, which was later united with Romania. He was drafted into the Russian army, and attended an officers college in Kiev. After graduating he was sent to the front, and was wounded soon thereafter, recuperating at a military hospital in Chișinău. He was proficient in numerous languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, German, and others. In his early childhood, he sang in a church choir and learned how to play the 7-string guitar.
After the war, Pyotr, who had never learned a real trade, worked at various restaurants, serving, dish-washing and performing small theatrical acts. He had a soft baritone voice.
After taking some ballet lessons in Paris, he started performing with his Latvian wife Zinaida Zakit, a dancer. Their act was a mixture of ballet, folklore dance and European tango, which was so popular it led to tours to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Germany, and Great Britain. It was at Riga, when he improvised gypsy music and tango singing to make up for the absence of his pregnant wife, that he discovered he could sing in front of an audience. In 1935, he was at the peak of his success. Though he still included old Russian romances, and even Soviet songs (like Serdtse, which was originally sung by Leonid Utyosov) in his repertoire, songs were now composed for him exclusively (with the tango songs turning Argentine in style and arrangement). One of his favourite non-Russian composers was Jerzy Petersburski, but he also sang work composed by Pavel German, Konstantin Podrevsky and Isaak Dunayevsky. Composers who composed certain songs specifically for him included Oscar Strok, Mark Maryanovsky and Yefim Sklyarov. Many lyrics of Leshchenko songs were written by Boris Fomin.
Leshchenko performed for European nobles and White (anti-Bolshevik) Russian émigrés at his own Leschenko cabaret in Bucharest (dubbed the Eastern Maxims). The first part of every performance would typically be dedicated to gipsy music, but during the second part Leshchenko would dress up in a tuxedo, with a white silk handkerchief and sing and dance Argentine tango.
In the Soviet Union his work was banned both because he was believed to be a White émigré (which he was not legally) and because the style (tango and foxtrot) was deemed counter-revolutionary. Nevertheless, secretly he was very popular: people would even listen to Radio Tehran to hear his music, 78 records were smuggled into the country from the Baltics, and specialists would bootleg his music onto ribs (used X-ray plates). When during the Second World War and the subsequent occupation of Odessa by the Romanian army, Leshchenko was finally able to perform in the country he still considered his own, people would queue for hours on end to buy a ticket to one of his Odessa concerts. It was at Odessa that Pyotr met his second wife, Vera Georgievna Belousova, for whom he would later, back in Romania, divorce Zinaida.
After Romania switched sides in August 1944 and the Soviet army entered Romania, Leshchenko was not arrested, and became the protégé of general Vladimir Ivanovich Burenin, military commander of the Red Army garrison in Bucharest.
In 1951, a week after receiving an official letter granting them permission to settle in the Soviet Union, Vera and Pyotr were arrested by the Romanian police. Vera was extradited to the Soviet Union, where she was condemned to forced labour for amongst other things, marrying a foreigner. Pyotr was detained in a prison near Bucharest, and then was sent to a forced labor camp at the Danube–Black Sea Canal. Both outlived Joseph Stalin, but Pyotr died in a prison hospital in Târgu Ocna on 16 July 1954, without Vera at his side (she had already been released but did not know her husband was still alive). Some friends present when he died claimed his last words were Friends, I am happy, for I will return to my fatherland! I am going away, but I leave you my heart. Vera died on December 18, 2009, age 86.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Stu
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners.")
![Eric Helgar - Ten Past Ten [Zehn Uhr Zehn] (1938)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HidjEz4CK9I/hqdefault.jpg "Eric Helgar - Ten Past Ten [Zehn Uhr Zehn] (1938)
Performed by: Peter Kreuder mit seinen Solisten
Vocalist: Eric Helgar
Full Song Title: Zehn Uhr Zehn
Recorded in: Berlin, Germany on March 16th, 1938
Flip side of: https://youtu.be/pThAIHU6bvc
Peter Paul Kreuder (born on August 18, 1905 – died on June 28, 1981) was a renowned German-Austrian pianist, composer, & conductor.
Kreuder was born in Aachen, the son of a Kammersänger. He began his piano studies at the Cologne Conservatory in 1910, where he gave his first concert just a year later, & at music academies in Munich, Berlin, & Hamburg. After World War I, he ventured into composing music for theatrical productions at the Hamburg Kammerspiele theater, at the Munich Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, as well as for several Kabarett & revue productions.
In 1925, he was employed as Kapellmeister at the Deutsches Theater München, & conducted theater ensembles, first in Munich & then in Berlin, where he worked with Max Reinhardt. In 1930, he met with Friedrich Hollaender, whom he assisted in arranging the musical score of Josef von Sternbergs film The Blue Angel, starring Marlene Dietrich. During the 1930s & 40s, he became one of the most sought-after German musical film composers; his credits run to some 150 movies.
Kreuder joined the Nazi Party in 1932, however, he resigned his membership in 1934. His compositions added to the intended development of a German light music genre as contrasted to the US big band style, though they contained a large deal of jazz & swing elements. He emigrated to Sweden in 1939, but returned to Germany two years later after threats against his relatives were launched by the Nazi authorities.
After World War II, Kreuder adopted Austrian citizenship & conducted radio orchestras in Brazil & Argentina. In the second half of the 1950s, he was occasionally the pianist of Joséphine Baker. He died in Salzburg & is buried in Munich Ostfriedhof, grave number 55-19-2.
Eric Helgar (born February 8, 1910, in Regensburg - died June 14, 1992, in Munich) was a popular German singer, stage, film actor & composer of the 20th century.
Born during his fathers tour, Swiss opera singer Gustl Helgar, Eric Helgar came into the world in Regensburg in 1910. He grew up in Zurich. At the age of 17, he moved to Berlin to live with his grandmother. There, he met Herbert Grenzebach, a friend of his father & the artistic director of the Ultraphon record company. Optimistically, Grenzebach said to Eric Helgar, [...] if your father has such a magnificent voice, you should be able to sing as well!, & invited him for a trial recording. Grenzebachs assumption was correct, Helgar secured his first record contract.
Eric Helgar owed his film career primarily to his popularity as a young record & radio tenor. His initial recordings were made for the Ultraphon label in December 1930 in Berlin, & thereafter, from 1932 onwards, almost exclusively for the newly established record label of Telefunken. However, during the early years, until about 1935, Helgar also worked, sometimes anonymously, for numerous other Berlin record companies. Helgars interesting, diverse, & versatile repertoire was carried by a pleasant, clear, expressive, & easily recognizable voice. It ranged from simple hits to tangos & sophisticated operetta melodies - such as those by Ralph Benatzky (e.g., Telefunken A 1702, 1934); & included equally demanding chansons & cabaret recordings to big-band swing from the late 1930s to the early 1940s. He made his film debut in 1933 with Was Frauen träumen & a year later, he played the lead role in Der Springer von Pontresina The song Wir wollen Freunde sein fürs ganze Leben from this film became a popular hit. From the mid-1930s, Eric Helgar became one of the main vocal interpreters of Adalbert Lutters popular dance orchestra for Telefunken, including at least one propaganda piece for the National Socialists (e.g., 70 Millionen - ein Schlag 1937).
Helgar is occasionally credited as the composer of his own songs, such as the summer tango Wo Meereswogen rauschen (TO Lutter, Telefunken A 2513, 1938, see the list below). He continued to appear in films until the end of World War II, including Gauner im Frack (1937), Friedemann Bach (1941), & Romanze in Moll (1943). In addition, he lent his voice to less musically talented actors like Karl Schönböck in the film Der Blaufuchs (1938). In 1944, Helgar was listed in the Gottbegnadeten-Liste (God-gifted List) of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment & Propaganda.
Eric Helgar recorded well over 1000 records with many leading German dance orchestras, making him one of the most significant German-language vocal interpreters of the shellac record era.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Stu
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners.")
![Coleman Hawkins & Django Reinhardt - Avalon [Rose] (1935)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KxJzb2vOZA0/hqdefault.jpg "Coleman Hawkins & Django Reinhardt - Avalon [Rose] (1935)
Performed by: Coleman Hawkins
Full Song Title: Avalon (Rose)
Recorded in: March 2, 1935 - Paris, France
Guitar – Django Reinhardt
Piano – Stéphane Grappelly
Coleman Hawkins, in full Coleman Randolph Hawkins, (born November 21, 1904, St. Joseph, Mo., U.S. — died May 19, 1969, New York, N.Y.), American jazz musician whose improvisational mastery of the tenor saxophone, which had previously been viewed as little more than a novelty, helped establish it as one of the most popular instruments in jazz. He was the first major saxophonist in the history of jazz.
At age four Hawkins began to study the piano, at seven the cello, and at nine the saxophone. He became a professional musician in his teens, and, while playing with Fletcher Henderson’s big band between 1923 and 1934, he reached his artistic maturity and became acknowledged as one of the great jazz artists. He left the band to tour Europe for five years and then crowned his return to the United States in 1939 by recording the hit “Body and Soul,” an outpouring of irregular, double-timed melodies that became one of the most imitated of all jazz solos.
Hawkins was one of the first jazz horn players with a full understanding of intricate chord progressions, and he influenced many of the great saxophonists of the swing era (notably Ben Webster and Chu Berry) as well as such leading figures of modern jazz as Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. Hawkins’s deep, full-bodied tone and quick vibrato were the expected style on jazz tenor until the advent of Lester Young, and even after Young’s appearance many players continued to absorb Hawkins’s approach. One of the strongest improvisers in jazz history, Hawkins delivered harmonically complex lines with an urgency and authority that demanded the listener’s attention. He was also a noted ballad player who could create arpeggiated, rhapsodic lines with an intimate tenderness that contrasted with his gruff attack and aggressive energy at faster tempos.
Hawkins gave inspired performances for decades, managing to convey fire in his work long after his youth. From the 1940s on he led small groups, recording frequently and playing widely in the United States and Europe with Jazz at the Philharmonic and other tours. Despite alcoholism and ill health, he continued playing until shortly before his death in 1969.
Django Reinhardt, original name Jean Reinhardt, (born January 23, 1910, Liberchies, Belgium—died May 16, 1953, Fontainebleau, France), guitarist who is generally considered one of the few European jazz musicians of true originality.
Reinhardt, who was of Roma (Gypsy) parentage, traveled through France and Belgium as a boy and young man learning to play the violin, guitar, and banjo. The loss of the use of two fingers of his left hand after a caravan fire in 1928 did not impair his remarkable aptitude for the guitar. In 1934 he became coleader, with violinist Stéphane Grappelli, of the Quintette du Hot Club de France, a group whose many records are greatly prized by connoisseurs. In his only visit to the United States, in 1946, Reinhardt toured with the Duke Ellington orchestra.
For most of his career Reinhardt played in the swing style that reached its peak of popularity in the 1930s. Perhaps his most lasting influence on jazz was the introduction of solos based on melodic improvisation, at a time when guitarists generally played chorded solos. His inimitable improvisations, particularly those in slow tempos, were often a curious but beguiling blend of Roma and jazz sounds. Among his guitar compositions transposed into orchestral works are “Nuages” and “Manoir des mes rêves.”
On 16 May 1953, while walking from the Gare de Fontainebleau–Avon Station after playing in a Paris club, he collapsed outside his house from a brain hemorrhage. It was a Saturday, and it took a full day for a doctor to arrive. Reinhardt was declared dead on arrival at the hospital in Fontainebleau, at the age of 43.
Stéphane Grappelli ( born 26 January 1908 – died 1 December 1997, born Stefano Grappelli) was a French-Italian jazz violinist. He is best known as a founder of the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands. He has been called the grandfather of jazz violinists and continued playing concerts around the world well into his eighties.
For the first three decades of his career, he was billed using a gallicised spelling of his last name, Grappelly, reverting to Grappelli in 1969. The latter, Italian spelling is now used almost universally when referring to the violinist, including reissues of his early work.
Grappelli died in Paris on 1 December 1997, suffering heart failure after a series of minor cerebral attacks.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Stu
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners.")
![Max Hansen - Warn Sie Schon Mal In Mich Verliebt? [Have you ever been in love with me?] (1928)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ky9RKyiXyYs/hqdefault.jpg "Max Hansen - Warn Sie Schon Mal In Mich Verliebt? [Have you ever been in love with me?] (1928)
Performed by: Max Hansen
Full Song Title: Warn Sie schon mal in mich Verliebt?
Recorded in: Berlin, Germany, 1928
**English subtitles are included in the video, but I cant verify nor vouch for the accuracy of the translation.**
In my humble opinion, Max Hansen was one of the greatest entertainment stars of the Weimarer Republic. He is one of my personal favorites and it was an absolute pleasure digitizing his record and working on his videos.
By some, he was considered to be the German equivalent of Eddie Cantor. But Id say, Hansen was definitely an original and one of a kind. A master of self-expression, talented singer, actor, made daring choices with his music and with his appearances. For example, risking his life by openly opposing Hitler and the Nazis as early as the mid 1920s. Not many dared to do so, there have been only a handful of entertainers in Germany who had the courage to stand up and resist Hitlers regime. You can already imagine what happened to most of them, some lost their livelihoods and others their lives. For that alone Max Hansen has my utmost admiration and respect.
Max Hansen (born 22 December 1897 – died 12 November 1961), also known as The Little Caruso, was a popular Danish/Swedish/German singer, cabaret artist, actor, and comedian of the 1920s and mid 30s.
Hansen was born Max Josef Haller in Mannheim, Imperial Germany as an illegitimate child to the Danish actress Eva Haller and a Jewish father, by other sources a Swedish Officer Schürer von Waldheim. He grew up with foster-parents at Munich, where he first appeared at the Cabaret Simplizissimus at the age of 17. In 1914 he moved to Vienna and appeared in several smaller theaters as a singer and comedian.
In 1924, Hansen created the tenor role of Baron Kolomán Zsupán in Gräfin Mariza at Hubert Marischkas Theater an der Wien in Vienna. This production moved to the Metropoltheater in Berlin after 900 performances. In Berlin he founded the Kabarett der Komiker with Paul Morgan and Kurt Robitschek. Hansen was engaged by Max Reinhardt for his revival of Offenbachs La belle Hélène and by Erik Charell for his production of Lehars The Merry Widow. Hansens greatest stage success was in creating the role of Leopold the waiter in Ralph Benatzkys operetta-musical The White Horse Inn, a part he also undertook in Richard Oswalds 1926 silent movie.
In 1928, Hansen satirized Adolf Hitler as a homosexual with his song Warn Sie schon mal in mich verliebt? (Have you ever been in love with me?), which caused the bitter hate of the Nazis, which subsequently led to his prosecution shortly after Hitler came to power. In contrast, he also parodied the opera and operetta soprano Gitta Alpár (in drag) in a film recording dating from the same year. He returned to Vienna in 1933 and worked again at the Theater an der Wien. In 1936 he met Zarah Leander on a Scandinavian tour and engaged her as his stage partner at Vienna. After Austria was invaded by Germany in 1938, Hansen emigrated to Denmark, where he founded his own theater at Copenhagen. Richard Tauber had written an operetta Franz im Glück for him, which was due to be performed at the Theater an der Wien in the 1938/39 season; but the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in March 1938 put an end to that.
In 1951 he returned to Germany and was successful once again singing the role of Leopold the waiter (The White Horse Inn) in Hamburg and at Berlins Theater am Nollendorfplatz. In 1953 Hansen moved back to Copenhagen, where he died in 1961.
Hansen was married to Austrian actress Lizzi Waldmüller and after 1939 to Britta Hansen. He had four children. His daughter Ann-Mari Max Hansen, born in 1949, and his son Max Hansen Jr., born in 1954, are both actors.
In 2004 the German director Douglas Wolfsperger portrayed Hansen in his documentary Warn Sie schon mal in mich verliebt?
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Stu
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners.")
