People’s Artist of Russia Eduard Khil has died of a stroke at the age of 77. It’s hard to believe he is gone. Khil was always known for the humor and optimism that permeated his songs, and he remained lively and energetic to the end. Khil possessed a calm but powerful lyric baritone voice, fantastic diction and great artistry.
His life was not easy. At age seven, he was evacuated from Smolensk an hour before the Germans arrived. The specter of death hung over his head – sinister planes with black crosses bombed a train carrying wounded people, to which a car with children was attached at the last moment. Eduard remembered for the rest of his life the metallic glint of low-flying aircraft and the blood of the newly killed soldiers and children who were buried almost every day.
Then he was sent to an orphanage in distant Buryatia because his mother had lost him in the chaos of fleeing (by that time she was divorced from her husband). Eduard made two failed attempts to get to the front lines. He suffered from malnutrition. Later he recalled that he often dreamed about bread at night.
Eduard survived. He took part in concerts for the wounded. Toward the end of the war his mother found him and took back home to the destroyed Smolensk.
It is no accident that Khil had so many military songs in his repertoire. “Those who survived the war are not afraid of anything,” he used to say.
Having witnessed so many horrors as a child, Khil looked at the bright side for his whole life. He not only survived, he became a professional singer after graduating from Leningrad Conservatoire in 1960.
His first performance was in 1949, when he was a student at a vocational printing school. As he recalled later on, he was paid in crackers.
Where did this son of a mechanic and an accountant get his talent? He probably inherited it from his grandfather Vasily. He was the conductor of a church choir before the revolution, but he was purged by the Soviets.
Why didn’t Khil become an opera singer? After all, he played the role of Figaro in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro; he performed in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville; he sang Yanush from Monyushko’s Galka and the leading parts in Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades.
Khil probably wanted to transcend the classical genre. He launched his career as a variety singer in 1962 and soon became one of the country’s best performers.
But he did not forget about other musical genres, either. As the anchor of a program “By the Fireplace” on Leningrad television, he described the history of the classic Russian lyrical songs and sang them himself.
Khil was loved by audiences in many countries, and not only the Eastern bloc. Apart from his vocal talents, Khil had an important skill of always being in synch with his era. It is no accident that in the 1990s when many Soviet performers lost their jobs, Khil and the youth band Prepinaki presented a project, Khil and Sons, offering updated version of popular Soviet songs.
In 2010, Khil became popular all over the world. Young American Internet users fell in love with a video of him singing in Ostrovsky’s 1966 “I Am Glad, 'Cause I'm Finally Returning Back Home.” Khil became known as “Mr. Trololo” after the sound he repeats throughout the wordless song.
This is how he recalled this moment of international fame: “I was sitting at home, peeling potatoes. A grandson rushed in and said: ‘What are you doing, Granddad! They are showing you on the Internet!’ I don’t even know how many people saw me but I was immediately showered with invitations from all over the world.”
Several generations were raised on Khil’s songs. As one of his fans wrote, “he was a great singer with a unique voice. He sang as if reading novels out loud, and it was impossible to be unmoved by his singing.”
Khil once remarked: “Only fools believe that variety singing is a simple genre. Many still consider show business easy. But all these things are very difficult.”
