Dušan Prelević

Dušan Prelević "Prele" was a Serbian rock and soul singer, journalist and writer, born in Belgrade on 11 November 1948. He was known for his raspy voice, his provocative public persona and, from the mid-1990s, the eyepatch he wore after losing his right eye. As a young man he trained as a clockmaker and played football for Red Star Belgrade and ice hockey, as a goalkeeper, for Partizan.

He began singing in 1965, mostly soul and rhythm and blues standards, with bands such as Orkani, Juniori and Vizije. In 1968 he became the singer of Korni Grupa for a few months and recorded "Čovek i pas" with them. In 1970 he sang "Da l' postoji ona koju sanjam" at Belgrade Spring and won an award at the Youth Festival in Subotica with "Kažu", but went on stage drunk to collect it and was banned from Radio Television Belgrade for a year, which he spent playing clubs in the United States and Germany.

In 1974 he joined the short-lived jazz rock group Oliver with Oliver Mandić and members of Pop Mašina, recording "Tajna", and with the members of Korni Grupa he made the single "Vrati mi snove za dvoje". In 1975 he sang on Opus 1, the only album of the symphonic rock band Opus. Mandić wrote "Gubitnik sam ja", his 1979 Belgrade Spring song, and the music for "Bela soba" (1980), for which Prelević wrote the words.

His first solo album, Na oštrici brijača (1982), had songs by Kire Mitrev, Bora Đorđević of Riblja Čorba and himself, and a cover of Indexi' "Jutro će promeniti sve". U redu, pobedio sam (1991) paired songs from it with jazz standards recorded with the trumpeter Duško Gojković. In 1994 he sang "La Nuit" on Goran Bregović's La Reine Margot. Ja, Prele (1996) featured Radomir Mihajlović Točak of Smak and musicians from Bajaga i Instruktori.

He also wrote for the magazines Rock, Duga and NIN, published books of short stories and wrote the screenplay for the 1989 film Poslednji krug u Monci. He died in Belgrade on 28 July 2007, after a long illness, at the age of 58. A documentary about him, U redu, pobedio sam, followed in 2009. His songs are gathered here in one playlist.