Ivica Šerfezi

Ivica Šerfezi was a Croatian pop singer, born Ivan Šerfezi on 1 December 1935 in Zagreb. Known as "Šerfa" and called the golden boy of home show business, he trained and worked as a teacher of geography and physical education, spoke Russian, English and German, and saw himself as an entertainer rather than a pure vocalist. Many of his songs drew on Mexican and Greek folk music, his main composers were Nikica Kalogjera and Ivica Krajač, and over a career of 46 years he earned fifteen gold records.

He began singing in dance halls, and his first real success was a duet with Domenico Modugno at the Maksimir stadium in Zagreb. His early records include the EP "Jukebox" (1961), the single "Crvene ruže" with Crveni koralji (1964) and the EPs "Vrati mi srce" and "Suze liju plave oči" (both 1966). "Suze liju plave oči" was a Croatian version of Willie Nelson's "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" and "Ruže su crvene" one of Bobby Vinton's "Roses Are Red", and he also made the first Croatian cover of "Kansas City".

In the 1960s and 1970s he toured Yugoslavia, East Germany and the Soviet Union, where he gave about 150 concerts, and one of his singles was 13th on the Soviet best-seller list for 1974 to 1993, with more than 270,000 copies sold. His albums include "Sjećanja na rodni kraj" (1969), "Vratit ću se jednog dana" (1975), "Serenada za tebe" (1977), "Šapni mi" (1982), "Moj život, moje pjesme" (1983), "Pjesme južnih mora" (1987) and "Pjesme za dušu" (2001). He sang many duets with the Macedonian singer Ljupka Dimitrovska, among them "Malaika" (1977), and they made the albums "Wo Der Wildbach Rauscht" (1985) and "V dvoje je lepše" (1999) together.

At the start of the Croatian War of Independence he took part in Croatian Music Aid, and on 16 January 1992 he sang at the "Moja domovina" concert in the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall. He was a keen tennis and golf player, and in 2001 he stood for the Zagreb City Assembly for the Croatian Peasant Party.

Ivica Šerfezi died of stomach cancer in Zagreb on 29 May 2004, aged 68, a few days after his last concert, in Dubrovnik, and with a summer tour of the Adriatic and an autumn tour of Germany with Ljupka Dimitrovska already planned. He is buried at Mirogoj. His best-known songs include "Suze liju plave oči", "Ruže su crvene", "Ksimeroni" and "Elada".