Dajos Béla Tanzorchester plays tango from Berlin, 1929

DAJOS BÉLA (Leo Golzmann), violinist and a bandleader of the Weimar Republic. Born in Jewish Russian/Hungarian family in Kiev (1897), died in La Falda, Argentine (1978). As a 9 y.o. boy he gave his first violin public performance in Kiev. During WWI he was a soldier of the Tzarist army and when the war was over, he attended conservatory studies in Moscow, in the violin class of prof. prof. Michajl Press and Issay Barmas. After completing education, he left for Germany, where he started performing as violinist in the night cafes and clubs of North Berlin, using a pseudonym „Dajos Béla“ (Dajos was his Hungarian mother’s maiden name). It did’t take long when he was invited to record his first sides for Carl Lindström Aktien Gesellschaft (labels: Odeon, Parlophon and Beka), using the nick names of Take Banescu, Arpád Városz, Jenő Fesca, Sándor Jószi) and, in following years, for Homocord label as Giorgi Vintilescu, Nicu Vladescu, or Joan Florescu for Gram