GREEK SONG: Helen J. Pappas (Ελένη Παππά) / Tis Néifies (Τις Νυφες) / Niki 5009-A

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Helen J. Pappas on the Niki ('Nike') label accompanied by Kostas 'Gus' Gadinis (Κώστας Γκαντίνης) on clarinet and John K. Giannaros (Γιάννης Κ. Γιάνναρος) on accordion. Helen’s Niki recordings are likely from the late 1940s. (1)

Helen J. Pappas released at least 30 songs (and possibly as many as 40) on the Niki label, with the Gadinis/Giannaros combination accompanying her on most of these recordings. (Pete Mamakos [Παναγιώτης Μαμάκος] on clarinet and possibly Giannaros on guitar appear on Niki 5019.) Who and what was recorded on other Niki releases is not known (possibly they are all by Helen!). The Niki Phonograph Company was reportedly run by Gadinis and Giannaros (2), whose musical partnership ran from the late 1930s to the mid 1950s. Helen also had four songs released on 45s on Yiayia’s Records in the early 1970s. (One had the song “Onassis” backed by “Spiros Agnew.”) (3)

Helen J. Pappas was born in Langadia (Λαγκάδια), Arcadia, Greece, on 11/24/1891, one of seven children of Vasilio K. and Panagiota (Nicolopoulos) Socorelis (d. 9/27/40). (4) At the age of seven, she and her nine year-old sister (likely Mary), sent for by her parents who had emigrated earlier, traveled thirty six days by boat to Massachusetts, with Helen earning money by singing and dancing to entertain her fellow passengers. “Anyway, I had something like forty-two or forty-four dollars from my singing, and when I gave these to my father . . . he said it was exactly what my ticket had cost.” The Socorelis family lived in Lowell and nearby Dracut, towns about 35 miles northwest of Boston, near the New Hampshire border. Lowell was known as "America's Acropolis" and its textile mills employed many of the 35,000 Greek immigrants living there by 1925. In the mills is where Helen worked 12-hour days as a “twister” of thread, singing above the noise. “Once when I stopped singing because I was tired, my boss called out, ‘Don’t stop Helen! It makes us happy to listen to you.’” (5)

At age seventeen Helen was a waitress at the Groton School, a private college-preparatory boarding school in Groton, just west of Lowell. At age eighteen she married James Pappas (1888-1961), an immigrant from Macedonia, who was proprietor of Central Fruit Company for many years (Helen sold fruit by horse and wagon at age 14 and may have met her future husband in this way). The couple had three children: Vasil (1921-), Elpenice (1927-), and Leonidas (1931-). The Pappas family, and later Elpenice and her husband, lived at 230 Dracut Street, Dracut, MA (where the picture of Helen and her sister Mary in the video was likely taken). (6) At some point after having children, Helen’s English was sufficiently good that she worked as an interpreter at Pollard’s Department Store in Lowell “for a long time.” (5)

A 1971 profile of Helen in the Lowell Sun (5) states that “the chance to make records came” in 1949, but that “she passed up the invitation to go to New York” to “do Greek folk songs.” This is puzzling, as folk songs were definitely recorded under her name about that time, but perhaps not in New York. The voice from the Niki releases clearly matches the voice in the singles from the 1970s, and “Niki” is the name her daughter Elpenice went by. As for the Yiayia recordings (the profile continues), “in her late seventies and ten years a widow, Helen was suddenly consumed by the desire to write, compose and sing . . . and off to New York she went by herself, made arrangements for rehearsals and recording with a bouzouki player [Fotis Gonis] and a guitarist.” The result was Yiayia HJP 101 (Onassis/Spiros Agnew) and Yiayia HJP 102 (Μακεδονία/ Τι σε μέλει). (Neither recording scenario seems plausible as stated.)

Helen’s life in America was spent in Dracut and Lowell, Massachusetts, where she passed away at the age of 79 on July 18, 1971, a few months after she was profiled by the Lowell Sun newspaper. (4)

(1) The dating of '1930' in the Maniatis discography is almost certainly a typographical error carried over from adjacent entries in his list.
(2) Bucuvalas, Tina et al, “Greek Music in America”, University Press of Mississippi, 2019, p. 386
(4) Obituary: Lowell Sun newspaper, July 19, 1971
(5) Profile: Lowell Sun newspaper, January 27 and 28, 1971

[Tis Néifies (The Brides) [Τις Νυφες], Ελένη Παππά (Helen J. Pappas) (Gadinis, Gianaros), Niki 5009-A]