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Olavi Virta (27 February 1915,
SysmäSysmä is a municipality of Finland situated in Southern Finland and is part of the Päijänne Tavastia region. The municipality has a population of and covers an area of ofwhich is water. The population density is.The municipality is unilingually Finnish....
,
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
- 14 April 1972,
TampereTampere is a city in southern Finland. It is the most populous inland city in any of the Nordic countries. The city has a population of , growing to approximately 300,000 people in the conurbation and over 340,000 in the metropolitan area. Tampere is the third most-populous municipality in...
,
FinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
) was a
FinnishFinland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
singer, acclaimed as the king of
Finnish tangoFinnish tango is an established variation of the Argentine tango and one of the most enduring and popular music forms in Finland. Brought to Europe in the 1910s by travelling musicians, Finns began to take up the form and write their own tangos in the 1930s...
. Between 1939 and 1966 he recorded almost 600 songs, many of which are classics of Finnish popular music, and appeared in many films and theatrical productions. Of his most acclaimed
tangosTango is a style of ballroom dance music in 2/4 or 4/4 time that originated among European immigrant populations of Argentina and Uruguay . It is traditionally played by a sextet, known as the orquesta típica, which includes two violins, piano, double bass, and two bandoneons...
are
Punatukkaiselle tytölleni (For my red haired girl),
Ennen kuolemaa (Before death) (Avant de mourir) and
Täysikuu (Full moon), while standouts from his other popular music are
Poika varjoisalta kujalta (Boy from a shady alley) (Guaglione),
Hopeinen kuu (Silver moon) (Guarda Che Luna),
Eva and
Kultainen nuoruus (The golden youth). He was also the second tenor of the quartet Kipparikvartetti in the early 1950s. At the beginning of his career he received three
gold recordsMusic recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies, where the threshold quantity varies by type and by nation or territory .Almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories,...
for the songs
Ennen kuolemaa,
Tulisuudelma"El Choclo" is a popular song written by Ángel Villoldo, an Argentine musician...
(El Choclo) and
La Cumparsita"La cumparsita" is a musical piece written by Gerardo Matos Rodríguez, an Uruguayan musician, in 1916. It is among the most famous and recognizable tango songs of all time....
. Olavi Virta's career was cut short by a scandalous arrest for drunken driving in 1962, after which the press mockingly called him "The Singing Meatball." Ten years later he succumbed to alcoholism, living his final years in poverty.