Singer. A noted folk and Cabaret artist sometimes compared to Edith Piaf, she had a career of nearly nine decades. The child of an opera singer father and a ballerina mother, she received her initial vocal training at home and started performing at nine, at first appearing with her father who by then had switched to nightclubs. By 13 she was soloing and assisting Alex Vertinsky in his Montmarte shows, then after the family relocated to Belgrade in 1929 Alla soon found herself headlining at the Pavilion Ruse of Bucharest. During the 1930s she toured throughout Eastern Europe and the Middle East, had a brief marriage to aristocrat George Ypsilanti, and cut her first discs for HMV and Columbia. Held in a concentration camp from 1941 until 1942 for daring to sing in Russian, she was kept under virtual house arrest until the end of World War II, then resumed her recording and international performing. Exiled to the Soviet Union by the Ceausescu regime in 1988, Alla lived out her days in Moscow and kept her voice well into her 90s. Remaining popular, she was designated People’s Artist of the Russian Federation; at her death from cancer much of her large recorded legacy remained available. (bio by: Bob Hufford)