Vicky Moscholiou

Vicky Moscholiou was born during the German Occupation of Greece, a time of hardship and privation. Her family lived in one room. Her father worked in the vegetable market, and her mother suffered from consumption and received a small allowance. They managed to scrape together the money for a plot of land in Upper Agia Varvara and build a home there. Two more children followed, a brother and sister.

Agia Varvara then, and especially where we lived, was empty. A few houses, endless fields, and quite a few gypsies with their bears and their songs. There was great poverty but I liked it there. I’d wander around barefoot all day, run, play with the other children, fall, hurt myself, get up and do the same all over again. There was however civility and compassion, a feeling for others which I think has slowly vanished with the years.^[1]

Her grandfather and grandmother worked at the National Theatre of Greece. He did the lighting, she the costumes. Vicky would go with her grandfather and watch the shows. She dreamed of being an actress, but ended up a singer.
Her first break came in 1962 through the intervention of her cousin Effie Linda. Grigoris Bithikotsis remembers how she came to him and asked him to audition Vicky when he was rehearsing for a season at Vasilis Cheilas’ club Triana. They arranged a time but Bithikotsis arrived late and nearly missed her.

You know, if I’d been stopped by traffic lights that afternoon, Vicky Moscholiou might not have become a singer. Listen then: I go through a red light, arrive outside Triana, park my car and see a girl and a woman leaving. Afterwards I learnt it was her mother. The young girl recognised me. “Mr Bithikotsis, I’m Vasiliki, Vicky Moscholiou, about whom my cousin told you. Mr Kostas Papadopoulos and the musicians in the band listened to me and they told me I wouldn’t do.” “Come inside,” I said to her, “so that I can listen to you as well.” So we went inside again, and she and her mother sat down. As soon as I approached the stage Kostas Papadopoulos said to me, “The girl sings out of tune…” “Let me hear her as well,” I said. She sang two songs—I forget which—and I realised that her voice was different... ^*wikipedia*