Beti Jurković

Beti Jurković, born Elizabeta Jurković on 6 October 1936 in Opatija and also known as Betty, is a Croatian singer and songwriter of popular song, chanson and jazz. Her mother, Dinna Van Loenen Boersma, was a Dutch language teacher and her father, Ivan Jurković, a microbiologist from Opatija; the composer Ivan Matetić Ronjgov was her uncle.

She started singing while studying English and German in Ljubljana, where the conductor and composer Bojan Adamič took her on as vocal soloist of the dance orchestra of Radio Ljubljana. In 1958 she was the first to sing "Vozi me vlak v daljave" at the Opatija festival, and at the early Opatija festivals she also sang Ljuboslav Kuntarić's "U sjeni palme" and, in 1959, "Autobus Calypso" with Ivo Robić and Marko Novosel.

At the Slovenska popevka festival "Mandolina" won the first audience prize in 1962. In 1963 the songs she sang at Bled took all three audience prizes, led by "Malokdaj se srečava" and "Enkrat še", and the weekly Mladina named her the best singer of the festival. In 1964 "Poletna noč" won the audience prize again.

In 1960 she married the composer and pianist Boris Ulrich and moved to Zagreb, where she sang at the Zagreb festivals: Kuntarić's "Nina" was a success, and in 1962 she sang "Oglas" by Alfi Kabiljo and Arsen Dedić. From 1965 she also wrote her own songs, such as "Ljuljačka". She recorded for Polydor and Cetra and sang with Louis Armstrong. On Jugoton, "Kazačok" and "Jedna gitara, bezbroj divnih snova" (1969) sold more than a hundred thousand records.

In the 1970s she sang mostly at the Melodije Istre i Kvarnera festival, with her own music to Chakavian verses; her greatest success there was "Barke faren" in 1974, to words by Drago Gervais. She later stepped back from the stage to devote herself to her daughter and family, though in the 1990s she wrote "Srebrni dah" and "Nisan šla za ten" for the revived festival. In 2017 the City of Opatija gave Beti Jurković its lifetime achievement award. The playlist follows Croatia Records' chronological collection of her original recordings.