One of Greece’s most recognizable voices, Dimitris Mitropanos died today, April 17 2012. Mitropanos suffered a heart attack and he was rushed to the hospital where doctors stabilized his condition, but then he suffered a pulmonary edema from which he died.
Mitropanos was born on April 2nd 1948 in the city of Trikala in northwest Thessaly where he lived until the age of 16. He began his musical career in 1964.
Mitropanos worked with some of the best known Greek composers, such as Mikis Theodorakis,Stavros Xarhakos, Madra Mandicencio, Manos Hadjidakis, Marios Tokas and Thanos Mikroutsikos,and had been one of the top performers of Greek popular music for over four decades.
Mitropanos was known to be a heavy smoker, which is evident from the way his voice has progressively changed over the course of his career. Recently the Greek singer was hospitalized with serious health problems but he was feeling better after his exit from the hospital.
From an early age, Mitropanos, worked summers to help his family financially. First as a waiter in his uncle’s restaurant and later at ribbon cutting wood. After the third grade of junior high, in 1964, he went to Athens to live with his uncle. Before finishing high school he began working as a singer.
At the same age, after the encouragement of Grigoris Bithikotsis, whom he met at a gathering of his uncle’s company, where he sang, he visited Columbia. There, Takis Lampropoulos introduced him το Giorgos Zampetas, with whom will work alongside at “Ksimeromata”. Dimitris Mitropanos considers Giorgos Zampetas as a great teacher and a second father to himself. As stated, “Zambetas is the only man in music which helped me without expecting anything. With all my other colleagues they got something and gave something“.
In 1967, Mitropanos records his first album with the song “Thessaloniki”. This followed the recording of “Chameni Paschalia”, a song that was censored by the Greek military junta thus never released.
In the course mapped out on the street of folk art song, 1972 is a milestone. The composer Dimos Moutsis and the lyricist and poet Manos Eleftheriou release “Agios Fevrouarios” with Mitropanos and Petris Salpeas as the song’s performers, marking a milestone in Greek music. In July 1999, Mitropanos and Moutsis will meet again on stage at the “Odeon” with Dimitra Galani and the soprano Julia Souglakou for two nights at the Athens Festival. The concerts were recorded live and released in a double CD two months later. George Katsaros’s “The Road to Cythera” and Giorgos Hatzinasios’s “Ta Sinaxaria” follow suit, projects of high quality with a high profile in Greek society.
In a long career in the Greek music industry, Dimitris Mitropanos collaborated with leading artists of the Laïko and Éntekhno music. Giorgos Zampetas, Mikis Theodorakis, Dimos Moutsis, Apostolos Kaldaras, Takis Mousafiris, Christos Nikolopoulos (“Pare Apofaseis” with lyrics by Lefteris Papadopoulos), Yannis Spanos were composers with whom Mitropanos collaborated, building a career intertwined with the Laïko tradition, until the late 1980s.
In 2010, Mitropanos performed a North American Tour for the first time in over 10 years since his last visit to the United States. During his tour, he performed a concert on July 1, 2010 at Radio City Music Hall in front of a near capacity crowd. He performed many of his famous songs that were written in the earlier stages of his career as well more recent songs that continue to be popular among Greeks, such as “Ρόζα,” “Πάντα γελαστοί,”Tα Λαδαδικα,” and many more. Mitropanos concluded his concert with a passionate performance of his famous song “Αλίμονο,” with all in attendance giving him a standing ovation as he walked off the stage.
Following his performance at Radio City, Mitropanos cancelled the remainder of his North American tour as he felt ill and could not finish his tour.
Watch the last two songs Mitropanos performed live in his career from his tour in New York.
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