Karel Gott

Karel Gott (14 July 1939 – 1 October 2019) was a Czech singer, considered the most successful male singer in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. He was voted the country's best male singer in the annual Český slavík (Czech Nightingale) national music award 42 times, most recently in 2017.

He achieved considerable success in the USSR and the German-speaking countries, where he was known as "the Golden Voice of Prague", winning the Goldene Stimmgabel award three times (1982, 1984, and 1995).

Over the course of his career he released over 100 albums and 100 compilation albums, and sold an estimated 50–100 million records worldwide, 23 million of them in the German-speaking market, and about 15 million in Czechoslovakia and its successor states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Gott was born in Plzeň in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic), and lived in Prague from the age of six. Gott initially wanted to study art, but failed the exams at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM), and so trained as an electrician. On completing his studies, he began working as an electrician, but also became interested in the Prague music scene, especially jazz. He experimented with playing the bass and the guitar, but eventually decided to focus on singing, studying privately. During the 1950s, he occasionally performed as an amateur singer and often participated in competitions.

In 1958, he was an unsuccessful participant in an amateur singing contest in the Prague Slavonic House, entitled "Looking for New Talent", but succeeded in obtaining his first performance slots at the Vltava Prague Cafe that same year.

In 1960, he decided to become a professional singer. He studied opera at the Prague Conservatory under Konstantin Karenin, a student of the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin. Knowing of Gott's interest in current musical trends, Karenin instructed him not only in classical Italian pieces but also in popular music. Around this time Gott travelled abroad (to Poland) for the first time, with the Czechoslovak Radio Jazz Orchestra, conducted by Karel Krautgartner.

In 1962, Gott released his first single with Supraphon, a duet with the jazz singer, Vlasta Průchová entitled Až nám bude dvakrát tolik (When we are twice as old). That year Gott appeared in the first Zlatý slavík (Golden Nightingale) national poll, placing 49th with three votes. Shortly afterwards, in 1963, Gott left the conservatory to continue with private singing lessons until 1966.

In 1963 Gott was offered a place at the recently founded Semafor Theater, which was at the forefront of the emerging Czechoslovak pop music scene, his first significant experience of stage performance. In the same year, he released his first solo single, a Czech recording of Henry Mancini's Moon River, followed by his song Oči sněhem zaváté (Snowdrift Eyes), which became the year's best-selling record. Shortly afterwards, Gott received the first of forty-two Zlatý slavík awards, given to the most popular artist of the year.