Background
Waldemar Matuška was born in Košice, then Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), and spent his whole childhood in Prague. His mother was a singer in the Vienna operetta theatres.
Waldemar Matuška was born in Košice, then Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), and spent his whole childhood in Prague. His mother was a singer in the Vienna operetta theatres.
In 1986, he emigrated to the United States. He worked as a glassmaker and performed on various musical instruments with many different bands. In 1960 he recorded his first song Suvenýr (Souvenir).
Later he became an actor in the theatre Semafor.
On the stage he performed with Karel Štědrý, Jiří Suchý and, starting in 1961, with Eva Pilarová. As his popularity grew he started acting in movies and writing songs for movies.
Waldemar and Eva Pilarová left Semafor and joined the ensemble of the theatre Rokoko. But Pilarová soon returned to Semafor, and Matuška began singing with Helena Vondráčková, Marta Kubišová, Jitka Zelenková and others
He participated in other projects besides the theatre, mainly duets with Hana Hegerová and Karel Gott.
His popularity at home was high, and he also gave concerts abroad. Meanwhile, in Czechoslovakia, the Communist party banned all his songs, destroyed recordings of Jsem svým pánem ("I"m My Own Master"), deleted his opening song in the popular television series Chalupáři (just the melody remained) and changed the title of the series Rozpaky kuchaře Svatopluka ("Doubts of cook Svatopluk"). Matuška continued to perform in the United States, mostly for emigrants from Czechoslovakia.
After the 1989 in Czechoslovakia, his songs were returned to their proper place in the television series.
He lived in Florida, at times performing in the Czechoslovakian Republic. He died in Florida on May 30, 2009, of pneumonia and heart failure, aged 76.
Asthma may have contributed to his death.