Where is my sweetie hiding-Original Prague Syncopated Orchestra 1993
The Czech singer Ondrej Havelka fronts the Original Prague Syncopated Orchestra and does faithful and charming versions of jazz and popular songs from the 1920s and 30s.
Ondrej Havelka has quite an artistic background: his mother Libuse Havelkova was a well known actress, while his father Svatopluk was a composer.
Ondrej Havelka is a real renaissance man: he is an accomplished actor and director. And, as his career in music began to take off, and he found himself playing at ever bigger venues, he also became a very impressive tap-dancer.
In 1995 he started his own group the Melody Makers.
In the 1980's he sang in English but during the communist days they couldn't perform on Television or on the radio with their English repertoire.
Ondrej said "we could play only Czech songs (laughs) on official television or radio. We played concerts for people in theatres and halls and jazz clubs, and then we could sing in English."
The music they play is from inter-war period, an era many Czechs regard as the greatest in their history. Ondrej Havelka says some people tend to idealise the First Republic, as it's called, but argues that in some ways it really was a golden era.