Dušan Jakšić

Dušan Jakšić was a Serbian and Yugoslav singer and actor, loved for his warm baritone in schlagers, old town songs, chansons and Russian and Hungarian romances. He was born on 5 June in Karlovac, Croatia, but grew up in Belgrade, and Belgrade was his home for the rest of his life: it is where he studied, acted and sang, and where he died of cancer on 17 December 2009. That Belgrade life is why he is filed under Serbia on Muzika-Balkan.

He wanted to be an actor, and since Belgrade had no theatre academy yet, he first studied solo singing at the music school and the Music Academy, then moved to the Theatre Academy (today's Faculty of Dramatic Arts), where he graduated in Bojan Stupica's class. After his first engagement in Novi Sad he joined the Belgrade Drama Theatre in 1954, and in 1971 the National Theatre in Belgrade, where he stayed until he retired in 1990. He was best known on stage in musicals, above all as Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha, and he acted in about ten films, from Roj (1966) to Zvezde ljubavi (2005).

His singing career took off in 1955 with the Hungarian romance "Noćas nisu sjale" and Žarko Petrović's schlager "Sve moje jeseni su tužne", which became a hit. At the first Opatija festival in 1958 he sang Miroslav Biro's "More, more" for Radio Belgrade; the song won the first prize of Radio Belgrade's listeners. He was a regular at Opatija until 1968, won it in 1959 together with Vice Vukov with "Mirno teku rijeke", and won again in 1961 with his own song "Julijana". At Belgrade Spring in 1964 his composition "Čerge" took the first audience prize, and "Otišla si sa lastama" became a radio hit.

He recorded around 80 records and cassettes, many of them for Jugoton in Zagreb, with Italian, Russian and Latin American songs beside the domestic ones, and sang "Čamac na Tisi" with Olivera Marković. He has been likened to Yves Montand. His honours include the Zlatni beočug of Belgrade (1976) and the Order of Labour with a Golden Wreath. The playlist is Croatia Records' Zlatna kolekcija.