Αμαλία Μπάκα

Amalia Bakas (1897, present-day Ioannina, Greece (then Janina, Turkey) – 1979, Florida, US) was a singer of Romaniote Jew origin. She was sent to the U.S. at 15 years old in 1912 and by her early 20s she was earning a living singing in the emerging coffee houses and nightclubs patronized by Greek and Turkish speaking immigrants. By about 1922, she started recording under the names Amilia or Amelia, initially ten sides for the small independent New York Armenian-owned M.G. Parsekian and Sohag labels and then six sides for the Chicago-based Greek Record Company. Amalia had a short-lived cafe of her own on 8th Avenue around 1930, just around the corner of Marika Papagika’s club. It was Papagika who brought Amalia to Victor, where she recorded 10 12” discs between April 1927 and February 1928. By that time, Amalia had converted to the Greek Orthodox Church to marry Gus Bakas and had taken his surname. In early 1929, she made three more 12” discs for Okeh, accompanied by violinist Nishan Sedefjian (with whom she worked off and on for decades) and cymbalom player Ilias 'Louis' Rassias. Amalia and her daughter Diamond spent the Depression playing the “oriental” nightclubs of 8th Avenue and touring - Detroit, Gary IN, Philadelphia, the Catskills, and Chicago - often with the guitarist, singer, and composer George Katsaros (Γιώργος Κατσαρός (2)). By 1940, she was living in Chicago’s Greektown, but within a couple of years, she moved back to New York and started recording again for the Balkan Records/Metropolitan Phonograph Record Co. circle of labels for whom she made at least seven discs with a rotating cast of accompanists. She and Diamond performed as a mother-daughter act until 1960. Amalia retired from performing in the early 1960s.