Apostolos Kaldaras’ first recording

Apostolos Kaldaras, with Giannis Papaioannou's intervention, met with Matsas and recorded his first song, "The Dude came out for a stroll," sung by Markos Vamvakaris and his compatriot Vasilis Tsitsanis which instantly became a great success. On February 27, 1947, he recorded his career's milestone song, as he described it, Night Without a Moon with Stella Haskil. The song refers to the difficult years of the civil war, and the composer himself remarks on how the song was born: "In the joint I was working at the time, in Thessaloniki, there was a nice guy who played bouzouki, Christos Thessalonikios. We used to go to his house in Eptapyrgio. The prison of Eptapyrgio was nearby. One evening at dusk, as we were leaving, I noticed the walls of the Eptapyrgio prison. That's when all the images of the communists' arrests and imprisonments came to mind. With these images in my mind, I wrote the song, which was censored, and I had to change most of the lyrics for it to be taped and released.” As Kaldaras wrote them, the song's lyrics go as follows: It's night, and the darkness is deep, but at Yedi (the prison's colloquial name), a man cannot sleep. I wonder what he is waiting for/ all night until morning/ by the narrow window/ that lets light in the cell. The door opens, the door closes/, but the cell is heavy/ what has the boy done to be thrown in jail?"