Melody Boys quartet dominated the 1930's Czech music scene
Male close-harmony singing gained worldwide popularity in the 1920s. In 1930's Czechoslovakia the leading representative of this trend was the Melody Boys quartet.
This particular vocal style became all the rage in 1920's Europe and one of its leading representatives at the time was the American band The Revelers, who released numerous recordings.
At the end of the 1920s, their style of singing - acapella, i.e. without instrumental accompaniment, or just with the piano - inspired a group of German singers to establish the ensemble Comedian Harmonists, who soon gained fans across Europe.
Soon after, in neighbouring Czechoslovakia, singer R.A. Dvorský established the band Melody Boys - a quartet which rode on the wave of this trend. Their first gramophone recordings were released in 1930-1931 on Kalliope and Esta record labels – in which they sing acapella.
In the mid 1930’s the quartet had orchestral accompaniment and by the 1940s they had several hundred recordings under their belt.
Czech Radio produced a digitized version of some of their old hits in 2022.
