Karel Vlach

Karel Vlach ( born October 8, 1911 in Prague, † February 26, 1986 ) was a Czech big band leader of jazz and popular music.

Vlach learned in elementary school violin and made a business education. He then worked as a salesman and later as general manager in a department store ( Kauder ). Become unemployed in the early 1930s he formed the band Blue Music, Blue Boys (formerly Charles Happy Boys) and 1939 his first orchestra. It was oriented to Benny Goodman and performed with the ( oriented to the Andrews Sisters) Allanovy sisters ( 1940). In his band were at that time during the German occupation temporarily Kamil Běhounek and Jiří Traxler and Fritz Weiss wrote from the concentration camp Theresienstadt arrangements for the band. After the Second World War, based on his big band Glenn Miller with the singers Arnost Kavka, Inca Zemánková (1915-2000) and Jirina Salacova ( 1920-1991 ). 1947/48 they played in the theater Divadlo Osvobozené. From 1954, he moved with the band to ABC Theatre ( Divadlo ABC) and since 1962 the Karline Theatre.

From his orchestra many important Czech musician emerged from the fields of jazz and popular music. He took on a lot for the state record company Supraphon, both classical music and jazz and pop. He also worked as a film composer in 1940.

Vlach was with the singer Yvetta Simonová ( b. 1928 ) who married his orchestra sang from 1958, as well as Milan Chladil. In the late 1950s he also worked with the British singer Gery Scott.

He died of a heart attack in the preparation of the musical Some Like It Hot.