Alena Tichá was one of our most popular singers in the 60s and 70s
February 1, 2023 1:41 p.m
After all, Alena Tichá was at home in Slovakia. Already in 1967, she recorded the song Prvý krok for a TV hit show there, and as she later recalled, it was also her first step in front of a Slovak audience, to which she always liked to return.
Teach or sing?
The charming blonde was born in Zlín, but grew up in Nové Jičín, where her family moved. From the age of seven she went to the “liduška”, where she learned to play the piano, and she continued with music during her studies at the gymnasium. Her singing went very well – at the age of 18 she won the final of the Hledám nové talenty competition, which took place in Brno. After graduation, Tichá began studying at the Faculty of Philosophy in Olomouc, but a year later she transferred to the Faculty of Education in Brno, where she graduated as a teacher of music education and Russian.
For a while she sang while teaching, but in 1969 she left her teaching job and began to devote herself fully to her singing career. “I had to cut it then,” Tichá mentioned in one interview. “How many times has it happened that the band drove me to school at four in the morning after the concert, where I slept a little and then went to study. It worked for a while, but really only for a while. And because I was doing well in my career as a singer, I started to do this profession to the fullest, even though I knew that one day I would still return to my job as a teacher.”
She also jumped for Hanka Zagorová
During her twelve-year singing career, Tichá collaborated with the biggest stars of the time, including Karel Gott (✝80) and the Ladislav Štaidl Orchestra. She gave concerts not only at home, but also abroad. In the Zlatý slavík survey, she was regularly ranked among the ten to fifteen most popular female singers. She was so good that she even managed to drop in for the sick Hana Zagorová (✝75) on a foreign tour.
She had to learn her repertoire quickly, which took a lot of courage, but she did it with flying colours. In 1971, she also dominated the closely watched poll of Moravian pop performers Brnoský vrabec and became the most popular Moravian singer ever.
It is interesting that Tichá never had a manager and was able to take care of all her commitments and projects by herself. She collaborated with a number of our leading orchestras, including Karel Vlach, Josef Vobruba and Václav Zahradník, and the best composers wrote for her: Vítězslav Hádl, Pavel Vrba, Jiří Štaidl, Pavel Bukovič…
Family first
In 1974, son Marek was already born. When he went to school six years later, Tichá hung up singing on a nail so that she could devote herself fully to him. They walked to “škamen” together – my son to the first grade, she to the department where she taught German, Russian and singing. Her students often had no idea that one of our most popular singers was hammering the intricacies of German grammar into their heads. Alena Tichá returned to the audience only once. On the occasion of his, he sang several of his fifties hits in a Slovak TV show. ■