Marie Rottrová

singer

It was a “wooden” time of the rock music in the Czechoslovakia ...

When I recall those times I feel almost the same euphoria than back then.

In 1962 when I got married, we got a wedding gift from my parents, it was a big, wooden modern radio. Both my husband and I were musicians, and soon we started to tune to Radio Luxembourg and thus heard the Beatles for the first time. We were excited! Later came the era of soul and we discovered on “Laxík” Otis Reding, Stevie Wonder, Tina Turner, James Brown, Carla Thomas and other brilliant American singers. We had a band called Majectic in Ostrava and started to play soul, rock and rhythm & blues at the Sunday ”tea parties”. We recorded the music from Radio Luxembourg to a tape recorder, a Sonet Duo, my husband Vlastík Kučaj with other musicians re-wrote the music and those who spoke English, “downloaded” the texts. Later, I sang these songs at the Sunday “tea-parties” with big enthusiasm, happy like a honey bee.

It was a “wooden” time of rock music in Czechoslovakia, and we were a different kind of keen pioneers. Radio Luxembourg gave me crucial stimulus and I started – in its spirit – my career of a singer.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!