Tramp freedom in the wheels of normalization entertainment
Stáhnout obrázek
František Hacker was born on 3 August 1937 in the family of František Hacker Sr., a Prague waiter. He grew up in Pankrác, where as a child he witnessed the street fighting during the days of the Prague Uprising in May 1945. A year later, on 22 May, he witnessed the execution of K. H. Frank. At the beginning of the 1950s, he apprenticed as a turner in the ČKD in Vysočany, but at the same time he was one of the „cool guys“ hated by the regime, drawn to Prague bands, played guitar and ran away to tramp in the countryside. After his military service he worked as an instructor for Svazarm, but at the same time he participated in the thriving of the Czech country scene in the first half of the 1960s. In 1963 he founded the band K.T.O. (Kamarádi táborových ohňů), with which he performed professionally from 1968. During the 1970s, the then very popular Waldemar Matuška began to perform with the band. K. T. O. was then performing in the West, recording on Czechoslovak television and it belonged to the middle stream of Czechoslovak pop music at the time, which was, however, redeemed by concessions to the communist regime. Moreover, at the beginning of 1977, František Hacker had to join the Appeal of the Czechoslovak Committees of Artists‘ Associations, the so-called Anticharter, which was the regime‘s response to the declaration of Charter 77. In 1981, one of the founding members of the K.T.O., Vlastislav Morava, emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the West. Surprisingly, the singer Waldemar Matuška also stayed in the USA in 1986. Especially the second emigration had fatal consequences for the band: František Hacker lost the opportunity to earn a living by giving concerts and selling musical instruments in a shop in Prague on Wenceslas Square. After 1989 he continued his musical career.
