Spiros Peristeris was born in Smyrna in 1900 and died in Athens in 1966. He was a gifted multi-instrumentalist who for many years was recording director at Odeon/Parlophone and often participated on records he supervised. Spiros Peristeris was one of the most influential figures in early Rebetika music. His activities as a composer, multi-intrumentalist and recording director had a major impact on the music. He went to Italian night school in Constantinople and became famous as chief mandolinist in a prestigous Smyrna string ensemble. He was recording director at Odeon/Parlophone. As recording director, he arranged for the first recording of Markos Vamvakaris after the success of the bouzouki record “Minore Tou Teke” by the Greek-American Ioannis Halikias. He played on many of the recording sessions he supervised, playing mandolin, bouzouki, guitar or piano. He worked with the all the famous musicians from the 1930’s; Kostas Roukounas, Markos Vamvakaris, Stratos Payoumtzis, Roza Eskenazi, Rita Abadzi, Antonis Dalgas, Kostas Skarvelis, Kasimates, Keromitis and more. He also recorded many songs under his own name or various pseudonyms. His bouzouki playing was nothing short of spectacular. The instrument he is heard playing on many of his recordings is not known. It may have been a bouzouki or a guitar, or possibly a trichordo bouzouki with single strings instead of pairs, thus making it a 3 string bouzouki.