Eduard Khil

Picture this, it's somewhere between 2009 and 2010, your friend sends you the link to a YouTube with the caption somewhere along the lines of something unlikely has happened like some celeb has been caught on the wrong side of the law. You think, "That's shocking but what if it's that Rick Astley video again?" so you click on it and instead of the music video to Rick Astley's Never gonna give you up, you are treated instead to a brown double breasted suit garbed Russian seemingly singing a lot of made up words. That Russian was Eduard Khil, a crooner from the Soviet era singing (well, vocalizing) a song called I Am Very Glad, As I'm Finally Returning Back Home. Vocalizing being the key word as the song was supposed to have lyrics but they were left on the cutting room floor. The most common reason being that the lyrics which were about a man riding home on his stallion in a prairie and their beloved Mary is thousands of miles away knitting the man a stocking. Most common reason for the lyrics being replaced with vocalising is due to the lyrics being anti-communist while another reason states that it was due to an argument between two songwriters which resulted in the songwriter for the song deciding the song was better off without them. Either way the lyrics were gone with vocalizing by Eduard Khil taking their place.

However, behind the cherry and sweet smile, Eduard's childhood was difficult. He had been born in Smolensk in September 1934 during Stalin's years as Soviet leader. During World War 2, the Nazis invaded Smolensk and Eduard was separated from his family for most of the war. Despite ending up in a badly facilitated children's home in Bekovo, Khil performed to wounded soldiers who were recovering in a nearby hospital. Eduard Khil was reunited with his mother who was an accountant in 1943 following the liberation of Smolensk.
Cheerier years would follow with him moving to Leningrad, graduating from printing college, studying singing and opera at the Leningrad Conservatory and marrying a ballerina with whom he had a son who went on to give him a grandson in his name. Other than I Am Very Glad, As I'm Finally Returning Back Home, Eduard Khil sand other songs like Mama, Such a Miracle, Song about a Friend among others that were uploaded to his official YouTube in recent years. One his other songs, Land of the Living was about French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry which was featured in Russia Today's obit of Eduard Khil. Before retiring, Eduard Khil spent some years doing cabaret in Paris, France. He had no idea that his iconic song had been rediscovered by the internet until his grandson started humming the song around him prompted him to make a comeback that took up the remaining 3 years of his life that involved him performing I Am Very Glad, As I'm Finally Returning Back Home. Following a New Year performance, Eduard Khil suffered from a stroke and slipped away from complications on 4 June 2012 at the age of 77. He was buried in Smolensky Cemetery. In 2017, an animated, abridged version of the music video was created by search engine Google as Google Doodle for what would've been his 83rd birthday.