“Tough thing, seventy years to be away every night from home. How Eleni kept me, I don’t know.” The 95-year-old Mike Daniel met two loves in his life: his wife and music. And they gave him everything: love, family, inspiration, adventure, glory, riches. Sixty-seven years after the first long trip to America on the ship “Queen Frideriki” and with 50 dollars in his pocket, the founder of the legendary “Mike Daniel’s Orchestra”, the band that thrived for decades, entertaining the Greek-American community seven days a week -and not only that, in every state of the USA and Canada, he returned in August to his birthplace, Morphi Voiou Kozani, where he was honored by the Cultural Association of the village for his contribution to culture and dedicated to his beloved Eleni Nanopoulou the “I remember “, the song he wrote and sang to her for the first time in 1953, outside the door of his grandmother’s house, where he confessed his love to her and shared their first kiss.

Michalis Daniil was born on October 20, 1928 in Morphi and was the youngest of the four sons in his family. Two of his older brothers were involved in music. One was the Byzantine cantor of the village, while the other was a violin teacher. And so, the violin was to be young Michael’s first instrument. “Even as a child, such was his passion for music that during the German occupation of his village in 1941, Michael hid in the water collection tank in the cistern to practice the violin. After the occupation, in the rocky years of the civil war, he fled to Tsotili, where he studied privately with a Greek-American music teacher”, said the teacher Kostas Tsonis, introducing his fellow villager and honored person of the evening, which was organized on the eve of August 15th in Morphis square.

“If you love a person, you do a lot”

In 1949, after losing his mother, Mike went to Thessaloniki to study at the Conservatory and spent two years working in nightclubs. The demands of the job forced him to leave the violin and switch to a more popular instrument, the accordion. In 1954 he married his beloved Eleni.

“I loved you for three years, but I couldn’t find the words to tell you, but one night with the stars I found the words to tell you, that I love you. I remember. I remember some old door. This happened here, at my grandmother’s door. And there I remember her sweet kiss”, softly sings Michalis Daniil, pointing to the door of an old stone house in the Morfi mansion and tells APE-MPE how the tale of the American dream began and a love that seven decades later does not hide, as he looks at Eleni of him, which complements him: “He used to come to see his grandmother and he sang from there for me to hear too. Those years were strict, you didn’t have to love to get married. Others told you who to love. My parents didn’t object, but his father, my in-laws and his first cousin didn’t want our wedding, even the pope was told not to give us permission.”

“I left the house one night when everyone was asleep, because dad would lock me out. It was midnight and it was snowing, I took the violin and walked at night 15 kilometers to Tsotuli, they were looking for me, my brother was afraid that the bears would eat me. I beat her. If you love a person, you do a lot,” remembers Michalis Daniil.

“Dream trip with a violin ticket and fifty dollars in your pocket”

The newly married couple left the village, settled in Thessaloniki and the then young Michalis started working as a musician in the “Hortatzides” night club. There he also met a promising young singer at the time, Grigoris Bithikotsis.

The money he made, however, was just enough for the rent. “We were married for two years. I say to Eleni, aren’t we going to America? We have no life here. My father-in-law and son-in-law were also there. Of course we said America, but we didn’t know what it was. There was fear. I spoke little English, I could get along, but there was no other choice, we could not live in Greece.”

So, in search of a better life, in 1956 Michalis and Eleni made the decision and with the violin under their arms and 50 dollars in their pockets they left for America and settled in Astoria.

“The first job in New York”

Eleni, an accomplished seamstress, got a job sewing in a New York factory. There he met a young woman whose husband worked in a Mediterranean nightclub on New York’s 8th Avenue called Britannia.

“At the Britannia he had sixty tables. We were eight musicians, three singers and five musicians. The first night they tested me, they needed an accordion. The children start playing and I join them. I start to sing and my voice went to everything, either Tsamika or Gounaris. At the end I see the boss and he says: “you got a job from tonight”. In America I stayed a total of 2-3 months without work, without music. I got a job from Eleni and everyone loved me there, I was always busy, my instrument was strong. The bouzouki didn’t play Kazantzidis’ difficult songs, I did. The accordion. That’s how I started. Since then I have never been without a job. Seventy years.”

In Britannia for two years, Michalis – now Mike – played the accordion, until the owner of a neighboring club in the area, named Englesos, heard him perform songs by Nikos Gounaris and hired him at “Egyptian Gardens”, a famous nightclub in New York . One night in 1960, a party came to this store, which included Sammy Davis J. and Shirley MacLaine, who took part in the program having a lot of fun with the “rain” of dollars, the so-called paper money.

The boss at “Egyptian Gardens” gave the musicians Sunday off, which Michalis used to play at weddings and baptisms. He was at the christening of the child of a prominent personality of the time from Nisyros, where his music and his voice invited such enthusiasm to the guests, that he booked jobs for the whole year. “That’s it. But leaving the Englishman, he says to me: Mike your chair will always be waiting for you. I want to see you intervene, I want to see you, but if you lie to me and sell me for another shop…”. And the pistol appeared.

So in 1963, Mike left Egyptian Gardens and formed Mike Daniel’s Orchestra. Following the popular Big-Band Era style of the 1940s and 1950s, the first version of the band had 12-16 musicians with a repertoire of European, American, Greek traditional, and later, folk repertoire.

As the demands of Greek music changed in the late 60s, Mike left the accordion and took up the then dominant instrument, the bouzouki. After all, it was hard to find a reliable bouzouki, as he remembers. “The violin and the bouzouki have strings. I stayed for six months and studied and calmed down. I couldn’t find a bouzouki, they were always drunk, others didn’t come and they were expensive. I laid down and learned bouzouki.”

It was the beginning of a 40-year successful career for one of the most beloved Orchestras of the Greek-American community. The band at its peak in the 70’s and 80’s worked non-stop with an average of 5-9 gigs each week. “I used to close the job for 6,500-7,000 dollars,” recalls the 95-year-old.

Mike Daniel and his orchestra accompanied many great artists, such as Nana Mouschouri, Jeni Vanou, Giorgos Zambetas, Yiannis Papaioannou, Nikos Gounaris, Andreas Barkoulis, Doukissa, Michalis Violaris, Trio Bel Canto, Laoura, Eva Styl, Marion Siva, Fotis Gonis, Dinos Oikonomou, Jim Apostolou — among many others.

“The night Chiotis parted”

The friendship he developed with Manolis Chiotis, with whom he worked for a while in neighboring shops, was special. “We were very close. I had asked him to bring me his songs in sheet music,” he says, while he cannot forget the night of his breakup with Linda. “He had a soft spot for Linda, he adored her. That night she had told him they were breaking up. And you see Chiotis full of tears… They go to play last night, Linda starts to sing “since you want it this night, with a heavy heart and poor old man”, Chiotis goes to play, he couldn’t, they played the song lame- wrong and that was it, he couldn’t do it anymore”.

A big moment for Mike was when he was hired to play for Nana Moushouri in her first show with the legendary American singer Harry Belafonte. In 1967 he recorded his first LP, which was a huge success. Soon after, he and his orchestra were regulars for many years on Maria Papadatou’s Greek TV show on Channel 47 in New York.

During the summers at the Catskill Mountain resorts of New York, Mike’s orchestra was in demand every year. The local Greek communities of all the surrounding states flocked to the Monte Carlo, Starlight, Nea Olympia, Kallithea and other nightclubs where he performed. Until the coronavirus pandemic, he continued to work in the summers, on cruise ships, taking advantage of the opportunity to travel to beautiful places with his beloved Eleni.

Their son Paul became a pilot and Aphrodite continued the family tradition of music as a singer and concert producer with Synphonia Entertainment Inc.

“In 80 years”

Today, Michalis and Eleni live in Bergen County, New Jersey. They think that maybe this year was the last summer they returned to Morphy, as their children say that they will not allow them to make the long and tiring journey from the USA to Greece again. Michalis’ fellow villagers, however, continue to hope for an anniversary celebration in the square of Morphis in 2025, 80 years after his first artistic appearance in the village, at the dance party with the small band he had set up with his friends at the time.