Miki Volek

Miki Volek , actually Michael Vítězslav Volek (born May 21, 1943 in Uherské Hradiště , † August 14, 1996 in Prague ) was a Czech rock musician and one of the most famous rock 'n' roll singers in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s .

Life

Miki Volek, the son of an army officer who died early, played the piano, guitar and drums as a child and adolescent, but was not accepted to study at the conservatory . In 1956, when he was already living in Prague, his interest in rock 'n' roll was aroused by an article about Elvis Presley in a magazine: the genre was described there as a "new decadent style of music", which in "rotten, rotten imperialism" was created. In 1961 he and a friend founded the band Crazy Boys , named after Bill Haley's first great bestseller "Crazy Man Crazy". Blond-haired and always with large black glasses, he preferred to interpret models of the “hard line” of rock such as Little Richard , Fats Domino or Chuck Berry , including the voice, the screams and hectic movements - the important music critic Jiří Černý , the Volek with similar attributes already described positively and enthusiastically at the time, was an exception at that time. In January 1963, when the Semafor Theater invited the band Crazy Boys to perform in Prague's Palais Lucerna concert hall , Volek was celebrated by over 3000 enthusiastic spectators. After that, Volek took a short break: to avoid military service, he volunteered to be admitted to a psychiatric clinic.

Volek appeared from 1963 with the Prague band Olympic , which was one of the pioneers of Czech rock at the time. In 1963 he celebrated great success with the band in the Semafor rock performance Ondráš podotýká , in which he sang some of the then usually English lyrics in the Czech language. With the band he took on a few more singles, but was dissatisfied with the departure from rock and the increasing orientation of the band on Mersey Sound , a beat music named after the industrial area Merseyside of Liverpool . The “standards” of his repertoire such as Long Tall Sally , Rip It Up or Shake, Rattle and Roll found no place and he left Olympic in 1965. During this time he belonged to other soloists such as Petr Kaplan , Pavel Sedláček , Karel Černoch and Pavel Bobek , Yvonne Přenosilová and Josef Laufer among the stars and idols of the Czech rock scene. His nickname "Král českého rock'n'rollu" - king of Czech rock'n'roll - comes from this period.

Volek's best period peaked around the mid-1960s. After he left Olympic in 1965, he performed with the band as a guest until 1966. In 1966 he helped found the rock group Old Stars , in which he appeared together with Pavel Bobek and Rudolf Rokl . He had several appearances with Karel Gott and in the country beat group of the piano player Jiří Brabec , and was a guest at the Semafor Theater in the production Tak co, pane barone (1967). On various occasions Miki Volek, who also called himself Mickey, put together his "All Stars", be it as Jolly Jokers or Mickey & Rock'n'roll All Stars . From spring 1968 he worked with Petr Kaplan in the (newly founded) rock revival band Mickey & The Samuels , which was based on early rock 'n' roll and with which he also recorded some songs - and the 2nd Czechoslovak Beat Festival opened in the Lucerna room in December 1968. In the 1970s and 1980s, when he was rumored to have had alcohol and drug problems and dropped out of the studies he had begun during his short marriage, he only had occasional guest appearances (Transit, Classic Rock 'n' Roll Band, Erastus, Metropolitan Jazz Band). In 1980 he was invited to the anniversary concert Čtvrtstoletí rock and rollu (quarter century of rock'n'roll), in 1984 he was able to record his first and only album.

Miki Volek's grave in Prague (Olšany cemetery)

Miki Volek was found dead in his apartment in August 1996.

Trivia

• Volek received his first rock singles from his aunt in Linz , including Bongo Rock with Olive Moorefield . Because Volek mastered the German language, he began to sing in German. Shortly thereafter, it was his friend and singer Pavel Sedláček who informed him that “real” rock is sung in English.
• "I hate Beatles - they robbed me of my bread," Volek is said to have said several times, especially after his separation from the band Olympic, which around 1965 increasingly oriented itself towards the Mersey Sound and the hard rock'n'roll of earlier years deleted from the repertoire.
• In the summer of 1969 Volek visited with a friend in Berlin . Due to the existing visas, they were able to move freely between the two parts, east and west. In West Berlin, they acquired the then widely available brochure Prague attacks with image documents from the invasion of the troops of the Warsaw Pact countries in August 1968, with posters, Brezhnev - and Honecker -Karikaturen etc., as well as a book on Brezhnev's daughter. In East Berlin they wanted to deposit the packaged brochures with a friend, but because she was not at home, they asked a neighbor to do the favor. When they went to pick up the brochure, it turned out that the neighbor was a loyal MP and they were arrested by the Stasi . After long interrogations, they were sentenced to one and a half years imprisonment for anti-state agitation, which they served in Dresden. After 13 months they were released and brought with a Stasi escort to the border with Czechoslovakia.

Discography

Singles, EP's, individual recordings
partly with other artists

• Fůra chyb (with Olympic), SP, Supraphon 1965
• Smutný holič z Liverpoolu (with Olympic), EP, Supraphon 1966
• Cinderella (with Olympic), appearance on LP Night Club 1966, Supraphon 1967
• There's A New Moon Over My Shoulder (with Samuels), SP, Panton 1968
• Caldonia (with Samuels), performance on LP 2nd Československý Beatfestival, Supraphon 1969
• Hey, hory, hory , SP Supraphon 1972
• Já hvězdu ti dám (with Monika Hálová, Rudolf Rokl, Jezinky), Panton 1972
• Rip It Up (with others on) Čtvrtstoletí Rock'n Rollu, EP, Supraphon 1980
• Long Tall Sally et al. a. (and others, with Olympic), LP Rokenrol, live 1980, Supraphon 1982
• Píšu ti Sally , SP, Panton 1981

Album The only own album:

• Miki Volek. Miki Volek? Miki Volek! , LP, Panton 1984, reedited as CD 1993

Later compilations
After his death, various compilations of old recordings were released, including:

• Miki Volek & Transit , The Complete Rock and Roll Collection, LP / CD, Prague-Data 1998
• Rock and roll ze Sonetu CD, archive recordings with Crazy boys, B complex a. a., Prague-Data 1999
• Pop gallery (with different bands), LP / CD, Supraphon 2008
• To Nejlepší (with different bands), LP / CD, Supraphon 2010

Filmography

• 1964: Horečka (documentation of the Semafor production Ondráš podotýká )
• 1982: Malý pitaval z velkého města (TV series)
• 1997: Nesmrtelný život a smrt Mikiho Volka, rokenrolového krále (Immortal life and death of Miki Volek, the King of Rock'n'Roll) (TV documentary, two-part)
• 1998 Bigbít (TV series, documentary)

Filip Menzel, Volek's friend and student at the film academy, made an amateur documentary film with Miki Volek, which later became the basis of the television film by director Igor Chaun Nesmrtelný život a smrt Mikiho Volka , which was made in 1997, i.e. after Volek's death.

Remarks

1. ↑ Miki Volek was found dead in his apartment on August 14, 1996, as is consistently formulated "two weeks after his death"; the often mentioned date “1. August “probably refers to it.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Oleg Kapinus: Miki Volek jako syn slavného spisovatele Kožíka? Možné to prý je , portal idnes.cz, online at: denik.cz / ...
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Miki Volek , broadcast of the Czech television ČT, date unknown, online at: ceskatelevize.cz / ...
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Ondřej Suchý: Život v rytmu rock'n'rollu , biography and considerations of the portal czsk.net, online at: ŽIVOT V RYTMU ROCK'N'ROLLU ( Memento from October 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e} (abbreviation -JH-) Volek , short biography of the online encyclopedia CoJeCo, online at: cojeco.cz / ...
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Aleš Opekar: MIKI VOLEK: Rock'n'roll z nás nikdo nepřežije , portal of the Popmuseum, online at: popmuseum.cz: www.popmuseum.cz/
6. ↑ Franz Goëss, Manfred R. Beer: Prague attacks, a Ullstein book, Ullstein, Berlin 1968
7. ↑ ^{a b c} Miki Volek , discography on Discogs, online at: discogs.com: Miki Volek
8. ↑ Joseph "sator" Čtvrtníček: Miki Volek. Biography , biography and database of Česko-Slovenská filmová databáze ČSFD.cz (Czech-Slovak film database), online at: csfd.cz/