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Yuliya Zapolskaya
Yuliya Zapolskaya was one of the most remarkable and talented singers of the second wave of Russian emigration (post-war, 1944-54), who splendidly performed true genre songs and old Russian romance songs.
Yuliya Aleksandrovna Zapolskaya (Yulya Whitney) was born in Moscow in 1919. Her father Alexander Zapolsky, an economist, and her mother Estella Khokhlovkina met each other in Liege University, and in 1914 returned to Moscow, where Yulya was born. The girl graduated the famous Gnesins Music Academy, but instead of the safe career of a classical pianist she preferred a thornier path of a composer and singer of popular songs.
During the war Yulya Zapolskaya performed with Konstantin Smirnov-Sokolsky's variety group, where she sang her own songs to the bayan accompaniment. In the late 1940s Yulya sang at a cinematheque by the Nikitsky Gate; it was then customary for performers to sing before film shows. After the war she also had several performances with Leonid Utyosov’s Orchestra.
In 1945 she was destined to meet the American journalist Thomas P. Whitney, who then worked in Moscow and fell in love with the Russian beauty. The young couple soon got married, and thereby Yuliya irrevocably doomed her music career in the USSR. However, only after 8 long years of attempts and efforts of Yuliya's husband the Soviet authorities permitted her go with her husband to the USA. It was only after Joseph Stalin 's death in 1953 that Yulya Zapolskaya-Whitney could finally immigrate together with her husband to America. The couple settled in New York, where in spite of enormous competition in the music sphere, Yuliya decided to resume her career as a singer and composer. She was rather successful in that.
Thomas Whitney helped her to record a series of albums for the well-known American firm Monitor Records, which released the so-called “world music”.
Her first record was called “Moscow After Dark” released by DECCA studio; it was quite a wide success. Lots of critics and fans consider it to be her best album. In spite of the fact that the original records had been lost, this edition was copied and remastered from the original disc released by the MONITOR sound recording studio in the 1960s.
Yuliya recorded the album Sings songs of the Russian Street Urchins on a tape to give as a present to her husband on the 20th anniversary of their marriage in 1965. Her husband Thomas P.Whitney had repeatedly asked her to record a cycle of street songs. Unfortunately, only 9 songs from the cycle consisting of 12 songs have been recorded on this album. These songs had a very special meaning for Yuliya Zapolskaya since they were rooted in her childhood.
Altogether the singer recorded and published 10 vinyl disks. She also wrote a book of children's fairy tales. Yulya Whitney repeatedly participated in entertaining American television shows and radio-programs. She recorded one long-playing English-language disc of her own songs Twelve Faces of Love in light jazz style.
Yuliya Zapolskaya died quite early of cancer in the USA in 1965. She was not even 50 then.
Yuliya Zapolskaya’s first official disk was released in Russia in 2002. In the early 1990s and in 2007 the entire series of Yulya Zapolskaya Whitney was rereleased in the USA.
