Ανεστης Δελιας (1912-1944)
Anestis (Anestos or Artemis) Delias was born in Smyrna in 1912 and with Markos Vamvakaris, Giorgos Batis and Stratos Payoumtzis made up "The Legendary Quartet of Piraeus", which defined the Piraeus school of rembetika that lasted until 1937 when the Metaxas regime cracked down on the music and those who played it. Delias was badly affected by the suppression of rembetika and in 1938 got mixed up with Katerina or Koula the Skoularikou (Koula the Earring), a prostitute and heroin addict, who, the rembetologist Ilias Petropoulos claims, was so fearful of losing Delias that while he slept she would insert a paper cone up his nose, blow heroin through it and in this way induced him to become dependent on the narcotic and on her. Indeed, Delias, despite all the songs rembetes wrote about drugs, was the only rembete to become involved with heroin, and to succumb to it; for, having done everything he could to escape heroin and the clutches of Koula the Earring, including joining the army and fighting on the Albanian front in 1940-41, the Earring tracked him down in Athens and drew him back into her orbit, soon after which, in the winter of 1944, Delias was found dead in the street outside the teke Seraphim in Metaxourgio of a heroin overdose, clutching his bouzouki.
Source: John Akritas (http://hellenicantidote.blogspot.com/2008/05/radio-akritas-anestis-delias.html)
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