It is amazing, since I have a tin ear, that two of my first
cousins were professional singers.
My Mother’s family left Turkey after the Catastrophe and
went to France. My Mothers oldest brother was there to avoid the Turkish draft.
Mom married my Father in Paris and they went to the States
in 1927.
When I went to Paris with my Mother in 1946 as a chubby
American kid, to see my Grandmother, who unfortunately was dying, I met my
Mothers family for the first time.
Mom had an older brother and sister as well as two younger
brothers and a younger sister.
Her older sister, my Thea Fotini, had three sons, Marco,
Jean, and Vasso, they all were tailors, like the rest of the family. I have no
idea why they were tailors; maybe the oldest brother who was there before was
one.
Two of her sons, my cousins, Jean and Vasso, were singers as
well as tailors, the tailors that sang or the singing tailors. Not their stage
names. One, Jean Marco ( Marcopoulos ) became very famous after the war. He
unfortunately died in a car crash in the early 50s, just as he was really
getting famous and about to appear in a movie.
Jean would come to my uncle’s house where we were staying;
he was in his early twenties, handsome and unbelievable charming. The family
gathered there frequently to visit with us, since they hadn’t seen Mom in 20
years. Jean would bring his guitar and sing for us. He sang songs from Asia
Minor, Greek rembetika songs, French ones that he wrote, and I vaguely remember
him singing some popular American songs. I wish I could remember which ones.
All I remember is how happy the family was, he was magnetic
and it was obvious that the whole family loved him and were proud of him.
Jean’s younger brother Vasso , just a few years older than
me sang as well. He taught me to ride a bike with another cousin on the streets
of Paris. I was a chubby American kid being harassed by my French cousins, as I
wobbled down the street on a rusty bike.
God, they were patient but
pretty cruel.
Quite a few years later 1956 or ’57 Vasso the younger
brother came to the States with a group of singers,
“The Street Kids”, or something like that, to appear on the
Ed Sullivan show. He was a very cool guy.
He came out to Coney Island to visit us; he asked me where
he could buy some American Jeans. He wanted to take them back to Paris and sell
them, he told me he could sell them for a fortune in Paris and make more than
he was being paid for the Sullivan show, with the other three guys.
We went to an Army and Navy store on Mermaid ave. and he
bought armloads of jeans, counting the thousands of French Franks in his mind.
He and his older brother could adjust them to fit the buyers, remember they
were first of all tailors.
He was an Asia Minor entrepreneur after all.
He also asked my sisters where he could buy some fancy
brassieres. He was a charming guy and everybody helped him in the stores like
crazy, his English left a lot to be desired but my French still sucks.
I am not too sure what he did with the bras and did he make
them fit to order or were they for one girl.
I remember him on the show wearing a striped tee shirt and
they all wore berets, as they should since they were after all, “The Street
Kids” straight from Paris.
I found a site on the Internet that talks about my cousins
but more importantly there is a note from my eldest cousin Marco’s daughter,
Sophie Marcopoulos. She confirms that Jean was the center of the family and his
death was a devastating event for the full family.
The search
continues, thank heavens for the Internet.
There is more family out there.
http://jacques-helian.pagesperso-orange.fr/Jean-Marco.htm
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