FM
History
The band was the brainchild of bass player, composer and arranger Petr Klapka while he studied composition at the Prague Conservatory. In the 1973 he founded Mahagon initially as a singer/songwriter folk duo with his classmate and future Bohemia keyboarder Jan Hála. But soon they became influenced by popular brass-rock groups like Blood Sweat & Tears or Chicago, thus the line-up logically expanded to a much larger combo.
Klapka usually had an excellent taste in choosing his sidemen: one of the first lead singers was "Mr. Soul" himself, Michal Prokop. Unfortunately that period remained undocumented on records. On the Mahagon debut album, recorded in 1977, you can hear for example Klapka's schoolmate Michael Kocáb on keyboards, ETC members Jiří Jelínek on guitar (who died tragically soon thereafter) and violinist Jan Hrubý, as well as a large horn section around jazz saxophonist Jiří Niederle.
