Echo Kvartet

 Echo Kvartet - República Checa (antiga Tchecoslováquia) 1955-1992 (3) 

In the first notes of the Charleston recording Yes Sir, That's my Baby everyone immediately remembers the jingle from the legendary radio program Pozor, zukruta, which was broadcast for over fifty years and is still broadcast from Bratislava, although now it is only a program from Slovak Radio. The sounds of the Echo Quartet might also remind you of another well-known radio show - The Journal of Foreign Correspondents...

The Echo Quartet was formed in 1955 from the original trio of the Kachlíř brothers and in the same year they won a gold medal at the national festival of popular artistic creativity in Prague. Other awards followed shortly afterwards at various international harmonica competitions: In 1957 in Luxembourg, a year  later at the World Championships in Pallanza, Italy, where Rudolf Kachlíř won in the soloist category for diatonic harmonica, and in 1959 the Echo Quartet celebrated the success in an international competition in Austria. Rudolf Kachlíř, leader and founder of the group, was its leader until the end of his life – he died in 1986 at the premature age of 62. After his passing, Otakar Odehnal, a longtime member of the Echo Quartet, founded a harmonica ensemble in Slavkov under the name Echo Trio, with which he performed occasionally until 1992. Various musicians passed through Kachlíří's Echo Quartet, including Karel Charvát, Jiří Opřiatko, Věra Novotná-Kachlířová, Helena Dubovská, Messrs. Havel, Hotárek and the aforementioned Otakar Odehnal The Echo Quartet was very popular and played thousands of shows. Based on his model, dozens of similar ensembles were formed here - in Brno, for example, the Harmonikon Quartet - and the harmonica became a popular musical instrument in the 1950s. Think of the movie Music from Mars, for example. 

(Information about the Echo Quartet was provided in 1994 by Rudolfa Kachlíra's sister-in-law, Mrs. Mirka Suchomelová from Žamberk.)

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