Tango from Russia: Pyotr Leshchenko Wino Lubwi, 1936

Pyotr Leshchenko The King of Russian Tango, owner of a breathtaking, soft baritone voice was born on June 14, 1898 in a village Isaeva in Ukraine. His father was a clerk, mother illiterate. During the First World War, his mother and stepfather moved to Kishinev (now part of Moldavia). As a result Leshchenko has been claimed as a national by Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Romania. In his early childhood he sang in a church choir and learned how to play the guitar and the balalaika. After the war Pyotr worked at various restaurants performing small theatrical acts, mostly dancing. After the revolution, in Paris he took some ballet lessons to perform with his Latvian wife Zinaida, who was a dancer. Their act was a mixture of ballet, folklore dance and European tango, which was so popular it led to tours to Egypt, Persia, Turkey, Germany and Britain. It was at Riga, when he improvised a kind of a gypsy, tango singing to make up for the absence of his pregnant wife, that he discovered he c