Kostas Karipis - guitarist and singer. Kostas was born circa 1880 in Constantinople. Little is known of his life there. He came to Greece after the catastrophe in Smyrna in 1922. He started working in tavernas along with other Greek refugees, and swiftly developed a reputation as an accomplished composer and guitarist.
From 1923 to the early 1930s Kostas played in a company which included Kostas Tsavenou, Mitso Arapaki, Spiro Peristeri and Dalgas at the best taverns of that era. He recorded songs from 1925, mainly amanedhes and rembetic songs. From 1930 Kostas concentrated on composing, writing lyrics and playing guitar on recordings. He had massive hits throughout the decade with the greatest singers of the day and played guitar on hundreds of sides.
Kostas spent most of the war years in the company of the Piraeus rembetes - Markos Vamvakaris, Stratos Payioumtzis etc. After the war, he continued performing and played guitar in recordings for Tsitsanis, Mitsaki and Papaioannou.
Little is known about Kostas’s last years or how or when he died. It is known that he had no family and he disappeared from the music scene in 1951. It is believed that he died in 1952.