He was one of the greatest legends of Greek song. star of its time. It wasn’t just his velvety, laid-back voice, his softness and smile, but his elegance, along with his quirky style and oversized sideburns. All this contributed to a huge publicity in the 60s and 70s, when the magazines of the time wrote about crazy money, 5000 drachmas per night!

OUR Stamatis Kokotas loved singing, speed, expensive cars, antiques, rode jaguars, owned a Rolls-Royce and racehorses. “When I realized it wasn’t for me, I dropped it. Something left of the machines…” He didn’t define it.

“At the time, he was making the most money, but most of the money went to his hobbies. Buying a ship, a fleet of racing cars, a racehorse stable and much more,” wrote Takis Pananidis in the book “Legends of the 60s-65s and Others” (Defi publishing house). He took a lot and gave a lot. With open arms, his companions confirmed. “Then I didn’t miss anything. Many of them are journalistic exaggerations,” he said.

It was even said that his well-tailored jacket had an inside pocket to allow the bills to enter vertically so that he could pull them out by the collar instead of being folded. “Is this really true?” I asked him. interview with “K” in 2011. “Yes indeed. Most of the people who asked were liars, but I also helped a lot of good people,” he replied. As for the pocket on the jacket, when I asked the question again, he let out a flattered smile: “Well, okay …”.

In addition, he was also the favorite singer of the public. OUR Onassis he didn’t feast on Scorpio without Stamatis, he said of himself. “Onassis was a close friend, and he and Fireplace and you call. And when one day a French newspaper wrote that Jackie loves the Greek sky and the singer with sideburns, he took them and raised them. We had a pure friendship. Maria adored me. I remember when the doctors forbade her to sing, she sang at home. Like a nightingale in a cage. Except we haven’t seen such talent since then. Aristos adored his children, but duties did not allow him to be near them. To the tycoon’s consolation, he also presented him with his Lamborghini “Miura”. For decades it sat in the underground garages of the Hilton Hotel.

Of Kokota’s generosity, he must say the same. Lefteris Papadopoulos. In his television “Meetings” on ERT, when the singer was visiting him in 2008, he mentioned a typical case. It was after the hit “My son” that he was given to sing with Apostolos Caldara. Returning from a trip to America, he called the “president” to visit him. When they got closer, she took a watch case from her pocket and handed it to him. “Inside was a very valuable platinum watch with diamonds,” Papadopoulos said. “For you,” Kokotas told a popular lyricist. “While I was singing My Son, someone came up and gave it to me, and I decided that it was appropriate, that it was for you,” Kokotas added at the time, publicly telling this story.

Credit

“Master of his craft”, “absolute” – were also his praises. Grigoris Bitikotsis. “But he was so good that I admired him,” he confessed to Panos Gheramani in his biography “I Sir” (published by Kohlias). “In the store where we worked, he was great. He didn’t make a single mistake.”

St. Kokotas spoke of himself in the third person. He liked this. Sitting on the patio of a hotel on Syngrou Avenue in 2011, dressed in black, with his once thick long hair and thinning sideburns, he smoked a cigar while drinking tea while posing for the camera of Nikos Kokkalias. He talked about how he managed to make such a career, so many good songs, so many hits, for which queues line up at the tracks he sang. In dozens, he created traffic jams on the streets of Athens, drivers shouted out the names of songs from the windows: “Deceptive dream”, “Ena mesimeri”, “Siga whitefish”, “Prophet Elijah”, “Ase ton czelo” and others.

Stamatis Kokotas was a child from a large family who lost his father early and worked hard to become a musician.

“Work and work again” was his motto. “Stamatis wanted to be perfect. And he was the first,” he said. A child from a large family who lost his father early and worked hard to become a musician. First he sang on a ship, then went to France for several years to study medicine, as he said, but became a singer, as he loved, and found him there Stavros Harchakos and brought young Kokota to Greece. “One Day” with Nikos Gatso was an immediate success. The collaboration that followed this with Dimos Moutsis, Apostolos Caldara, Giorgos Zambeta, Mikis Theodorakis, Giannis Spanos, Giorgos Hatsinassios, Haris Limberopoulos, Vangelis Pitsiladis and with prominent lyricists: Nikos Gatso, Eftychia Papagiannopulou, Lefteris Papadopoulos, Giorgos Papastas etc. also was special. .a.

Composer and poet

“Today the song is deeply sad because it does not move anyone. He complains that he does not have the signature of a great composer or a small but talented one. Today’s songs are like lines after pages of old diaries.” Polished, he called it. “Everything has changed from the moment we moved away from the origins of the song: the composer and the poet. If songs didn’t have the right melody and lyrics, they didn’t become hits. I, madam, sang the gods. They were all the same.”

Is there anything left of it all, I asked at our last meeting in 2019, meaning if he saves with the legend he carried. He skillfully skipped a few questions: “Okay, we are good, there are worse, not to mention the bottoms.”

“Rich in feelings, not in money. Because he scatters money, he doesn’t pay attention to it,” he said. George Zampetas for Kokota in “And the noose fell … through and through” (published by Defi – Ioanna Klassiou). “The best kid ever. A pure psychopath,” he praised him on a TV show on public television.

“I pursued the love of the whole world and won it. The secret of my success was that I gave my soul to the song,” the singer said, which G. Katsaros also confirmed. As if he was a “master of collaborations.” “What can we say. Like Stamatis, I’m happy. He gave me what I expected from the world, and I gave him what he did not expect,” he described his own success.

Many people recognized him when they saw us talking. And he enjoyed it, exchanging majestic handshakes. How much did the legend of the Beatles influence the 25-year-old with sideburns? “Their neighborhood was what they sang, and mine was the folk song. I didn’t copy anyone. The hair and bangs were my idea and I’m not going to cut them.” He put me in my place. He admitted that in his appearance he paid attention to everything. “From the neck to the laces. That’s why I became who I am.”

The velvety-voiced Stamatis Kokotas was loved in Greece, which wanted to escape the occupation syndrome, indulge in glamorous entertainment and expensive tracks, the privileges of the few at a time when the other side of him was rotting in the prisons of the junta. . “I healed every sick person,” he said. “My song was for all walks of life.”

He sent a message to the younger ones that he worked hard. “If you don’t rehearse, if your pants are torn in your chair, you won’t become a singer. Singing is a very complex thing. You are aging prematurely. (…) As far as catching sukse, you need 20 years in the chair,” he said on Lefteris Papadopoulos’ TV show.

I don’t offend young people, he said to “K” among many others. “All I want to say is that they should have a dream. A crazy dream, even if it’s illusory. Hope is built. That’s what Stamatis says!