Yiorgos Batis

Yiorgos Batis was one of the first rebetes influential to rebetiko music.

Life and career

He was born in Methana in 1885 and moved to Piraeus when he was very young.
He served in the Greek army from 1912 to 1918. In the mid-1920s, he opened a music school called "Carmen". He opened a café named "Georges Baté" in 1931 and formed one of the most important scenes of rebetiko music. He continued to work as a quack salesman, improvising treatments for toothache and other minor ailments. He kept a collection of many instruments and also used to name them. In 1933, Yiorgos Batis did his first sound-recording with bouzouki in Greece. In the 1930s, he dedicated himself solely to music and collaborated closely with Anestis Delias, Markos Vamvakaris, and Stratos Pagioumtzis in a rebetiko band.
He died in Piraeus on March 10, 1967.