Krawczyk learned to play the guitar on his own, whereas his vocal abilities were practised when he attended secondary school of music in Łódź. However, he had to quit his musical studies and become an errand-boy, because his father, an actor, died and his mother suffered from
depression. He was the only member of the family to earn a living. In 1963 he founded, together with Ryszard Poznakowski, Marian Lichtman, Sławomir Kowalewski and Halina Żytkowiak, one of the best known Polish
beat music bands of the 1960s, Trubadurzy, which combined elements of
rock with Polish
folk music.
Solo career Ten years after that band's establishment, Krawczyk started his solo career. In the 1970s he recorded several successful songs such as
Parostatek (
The steamship),
Pokochaj moje marzenia (
Love my dreams),
Pamiętam Ciebie z tamtych lat (
I remember you from those years) or
Ostatni raz zatańczysz ze mną (''You'll dance with me that last time''). He had numerous performances at festivals in
Opole,
Sopot and
Kołobrzeg. He also toured in all the countries of the
Warsaw Pact as well as in
Sweden,
Greece,
Belgium,
the Netherlands and
Ireland. His work of the 1970s was considered to be
kitsch by some critics. Nevertheless, his songs of that time have been genuinely popular to this day. He collaborated with a famous
cabaret performer,
Bohdan Smoleń. They released several humoristic songs around 1985, e.g.
Mężczyzna po czterdziestce (
The man in his forties) and
Dziewczyny, które mam na myśli that borrowed melodies from
Willie Nelson and
Julio Iglesias'
To all the girls I loved before (1984). All these songs were very different from what he had performed before. In 1981 Krawczyk moved to the
U.S. to perform and to record an album in Indianapolis for TRC Records. The 1982 LP, "From a Different Place", was distributed nationally; a single, "Solidarity", received heavy airplay in several cities, especially Chicago. John Cascella, later to become John Mellencamp's keyboardist, composed many of the songs on the album, which was produced by Gary Schatzlein. For U.S. audiences, Krawczyk's name was shortened and anglicized to "Krystof". While in the U.S., Krawczyk's wife Ewa helped him overcome addictions to
alcohol and
drugs. After a return to Poland in the mid 1980s, he underwent tonsil surgery and spent a year living in Kołobrzeg to recover his voice. In 1988, he was driving his family and fell asleep behind the wheel. As a result, he suffered numerous injuries that required long months of therapy. In the 1990s, he was in the US again. He returned to Poland in 1994. When he encountered lack of interest from esteemed music producers, he got involved in the
disco polo business. He later admitted that this decision helped him to survive the "hard times", because the albums he made at that time were very successful. However, this did not protect him against constant criticism. In the late 1990s Krawczyk changed his image from a "discotheque playboy" to a mature middle-aged artist who propagated family values. In this way, he successfully came back on stage with such hits like
Jestem sobą (''I'm myself
), Wiarygodny
(The credible
) or Bo jesteś Ty
(Because you are''). He sang with other artists, such as
Andrzej Piaseczny,
Edyta Bartosiewicz,
Muniek Staszczyk,
Goran Bregović and
Rod Stewart. In 2000, Krzysztof Krawczyk performed for
Pope John Paul II in
Saint Peter's Square in
Vatican City.
Personal life He was married three times. His first wife was Grażyna Adamus, whom he knew from school, but that marriage lasted only a short time. He had a grown-up son with his second wife, Halina Żytkowiak. Krawczyk lived in a small village of
Grotniki near
Łódź with his third wife, Ewa. They didn't have any children, so he informally adopted Ewa's sister's three daughters. Krawczyk said that he "lived without God" for 20 years, but was a devout believer. ==Death==