Karel Gott (14 July 1939 – 1 October 2019) was often referred to as the "golden voice of Prague" and the "Sinatra of the East." The celebrated Czech singer, actor, and painter’s career spanned six decades and yielded hundreds of albums and compilations. As the years progressed he dabbled in everything from pop, rock, and country to opera and swing. Able to entertain in Russian, English, German, and Italian, as well as his native Czech, Gott was hugely popular in Eastern Europe, but also found favour with audiences in Western Europe and the United States.
Born in the town of Pilson, Gott moved to Prague at the age of six. Initially intent on becoming an electrician, he was fascinated by jazz and occasionally performed as an amateur singer and often participated in competitions. In 1958, he was an unsuccessful participant in an amateur singing contest in the Prague Slavonic House, entitled "Looking for New Talent", but succeeded in obtaining his first performance slots at the Vltava Prague Cafe that same year.
By 1960, he was studying opera and voice at Prague Conservatory under Konstantin Karenin, who taught Gott to embrace popular music as well as the classics. He released his first single, a duet with Vlasta Pruchova, on Supraphon Records in 1962. His first solo single appeared in 1963 as a Czech version of "Moon River." Gott subsequently ended his official studies at the conservatory, quickly building an impressive career as a singer and composer.
In 1963 Gott was offered a place at the recently founded Semafor Theater, which was at the forefront of the emerging Czechoslovak pop music scene, his first significant experience of stage performance. In the same year, he released his first solo single, a Czech recording of Henry Mancini's Moon River, followed by his song Oči sněhem zaváté (Snowdrift Eyes), which became the year's best-selling record. Shortly afterwards, Gott received the first of forty-two Zlatý slavík awards, given to the most popular artist of the year.
In 1965 He began composing his own songs, and toured Czechoslovakia and abroad with the Apollo Theater. That year, he released his first album, Karel Gott Sings with Supraphon, followed by an English export album titled The Golden Voice of Prague. He signed with Polydor/Deutsche Grammophon in 1967, where he would remain for the entirety of his professional career, releasing over 100 albums and selling an estimated 50 to 100 million of them. Gott represented Austria in the Eurovision Song Contest 1968 with the song Tausend Fenster, finishing in 13th place. In the same year, Gott spent six months performing nightly at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
In the 1970s, Gott achieved domestic success and appeared regularly on television, including in a ten-part serial entitled Karel Gott in Slany. In Germany, one of his most successful markets, he celebrated his breakthrough in 1970 with the song Einmal um die ganze Welt and was a star in both West Germany and East Germany. He regularly appeared in television shows like the ZDF-Hitparade. On 3 May 1977, he was awarded the title of Merited Artist, and in the following year received the Golden Hat of Cologne, awarded annually to a prominent cultural or social figure.
Towards the end of the decade, Gott began to experiment with other genres outside popular music, including country music and classical compositions, and he appeared at the Fan Fair Country Music Festival in 1979, the first of five appearances. The 1980s were marked by international success for Gott, including the filming of the musical In the Track of Bel Canto in Italy in 1981, with an accompanying German-Italian album, and a duet performance with Sofia Rotaru in the Soviet Union. In 1983, Gott was awarded the Gold Medal of Hermann Löns in Munich, Germany, for his role in the development of German traditional song. On 30 April 1985, he was awarded the title of National Artist for exceptional artistic contributions. In 1986, to mark 20 years with the company, he received Polydor's Golden Needle, previously only awarded to Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan.
In 1990, Gott announced the end of his career and arranged a long farewell tour. However, the success of the tour led him to retract his decision. In March 1991 he was the first artist inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Academy of Popular Music, and he was awarded the Supraphon Diamond Record Award on 8 September 1992, in recognition of record sales of 13 million in Czechoslovakia. During the 1990s, Gott began to focus on painting. The first exhibition of his paintings took place in 1992, at the Prague Christ Child Gallery, and his work was since exhibited in Berlin, Moscow, Munich, Cologne, Vienna, and Bratislava.
In 1996, following renewed public interest in his career, Gott again won the Český slavík (Czech Nightingale), and won the accolade every year since, with the exception of 1998 and 2012. In 2009 he was awarded a Distinguished Merit Medal by the Czech state.
In May 2014 Gott released his autobiography Zwischen zwei Welten (Between two worlds). Gott was diagnosed with cancer of the lymph nodes in 2015 but continued to perform and record.
Sadly, in the summer of 2019, he developed acute leukemia and succumbed to the disease later that October. He released his final single, a duet with his daughter Charlotte titled "Srdce nehasnou" ("Hearts Will Go On"), earlier that year.
(Edited from Wikipedia & AllMusic)