This is a beautiful Swedish melody that I bought from Sweden a couple days ago and I was curious to what it sounded like and you know what I’m glad I bought it.” Autumn Evening” or “Höstkväll” was written by Johnny Bode and Ake Söderblom and was recorded probably around November 1929 on Odeon 162462 in Stockholm Sweden. Enjoy! -Ryan Claybrook
Johnny Bode (6 January 1912 in Falköping, Sweden - 25 July 1983 in Malmö, Sweden) was a Swedish singer, and composer.
After his debut at seventeen years old, Bode recorded hundreds of songs on the gramophone, many of them his own compositions. One of his best-known songs is "En herre i frack" (A Gentleman in Tailcoat), which Gösta Ekman senior sang in 1936. The song later become popularized by famous Swedish singer Jan Malmsjö, who added it to his repertoire. The last gramophone record with Johnny Bode as a singer was recorded in 1942. Bode rebuilt his career several times across his life after numerous setbacks.
Bode lived a more extravagant lifestyle than he was able to afford, was known to fail to pay his debts, and was blacklisted by several Stockholm restaurants. He developed a close friendship with Gösta Ekman, until Ekman discovered that Bode had tried to sell their silverware set to a pawnbroker. Bode was also known to write bad checks.
After being convicted of fraud, he was declared incapable, and put into psychiatric care in the mental hospital of St. Sigfrid in Växjö, Sweden. In connection with the diagnosis, he was sterilized.
Before the Second World War, Bode took an interest in Nazism, which blacklisted him in Swedish show business for the rest of his life. Allegedly, it was the combination of uniforms, marches, and pompous culture that enticed Bode. He was able to get permission from the mental hospital to travel to Finland, where he enlisted with the Nazis. However, the short, out of shape and unreliable Bode soon became a burden and was sent home with an under-officer degree from the Nazi army.
Soon after Bode back on Swedish soil he started to ruin his career once again. By the time of his arrival in 1942, resistance to Nazism was bigger than ever. When the famous Swedish actor Karl Gerhard played his strongly Nazi-critical cabaret "Tingel-Tangel" for the hundredth time, Bode showed up in his Nazi uniform, with his degrees on his shoulders and the Iron Cross highly visible on his chest. After that, he frequently wore the uniform on his occasional visits to Stockholm's nightclubs. As a result, the only friends he had ignored him, and he became blacklisted in the Swedish entertainment industry.
Shortly after that, Bode traveled to Norway, where he put up a cabaret for the Norwegian Quisling-regime. Bode promised gold and sunshine and lived a luxurious life in Oslo. Some of the songs he wrote during this period were seen in Sweden as critical of Sweden, especially the song "Har du hört vad Svensken sier" (NO: Have You Heard what the Swede's Saying?). This irritated the Swedish society and media even more. It was very hard for Bode to get in touch with actors who wanted to play in his cabaret, as nobody was willing to put their career at stake by appearing with Bode. Bode himself sang couplets and imitated Winston Churchill, to the great joy of Nazi sympathizers. After twenty-odd appearances, the show had to close due to lack of audience.
Once again, Bode was making himself unwelcome. He drank too much, was stealing and skipping out on bills again.[citation needed] Bode was even taken in by the Gestapo and was imprisoned in the Grini concentration camp from 22 December 1942 to 30 January 1943.[1] He was labeled a suspicious person due to his own claims to be a spy for the Swedish government, but by then his mythomania was so widely known that nobody believed him, and he was finally sent back to Sweden.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Bode recorded several pornographic comedy albums, with titles such as Bordellmammans visor ("The Brothel Madam's Songs"), Bordellmammans dotter ("The Brothel Madam's Daughter") and Sex-revyn Stig på ("The Sex Revue Step Inside"). He also, under the name of Johnny Delgada, released a gay-themed single in Swedish and German, with the songs "Vi är inte som andra, vi" ("We, we're not like the others") and "Achilles klagan" ("The lamentations of Achilles").
8 июл 2024
