Kićo Slabinac

Krunoslav "Kićo" Slabinac was a Croatian singer, born on 28 March 1944 in Osijek. As a schoolboy he played the tamburica and acted in a children's theatre, but in the late 1950s, after hearing Elvis Presley, he swapped the tamburica for the guitar.

In the early 1960s he co-founded the rock groups Tornado and Kon Tiki and then Dinamiti, which won rock contests in Zagreb and Belgrade and played clubs in Germany. When he left for military service, Dado Topić took over as the band's singer. He then chose a solo career as a pop singer and moved to Zagreb, where Nikica Kalogjera heard him in a club and gave him his chance.

He appeared at the Split festival as a newcomer in 1969 with "Samo zbog ljubavi", and in 1970 he won the Opatija festival with "Više nećeš biti moja" by Aleksandar Korač. In 1971 he represented Yugoslavia at the Eurovision Song Contest with "Tvoj dječak je tužan", finishing 14th. "Zbog jedne divne crne žene" was the big hit that made his name, and other pop hits were "Plavuša", "Pokloni mi jedan dan" and "Tri slatke riječi".

In the 1970s legal troubles and time in the United States set his career back. After coming home he turned to the folk music of Slavonia and the tamburica, with great success, while still singing at pop festivals. Albums such as Hej bećari (1975) and Seoska sam lola (1979), and songs like "Slavonijo, ja sam tvoje dijete", "Kad čujem tambure" and "Hej, bećari", belong to this side of his work. His Christmas with Kićo became the best-selling Croatian Christmas album of its time, and "Letaj mi" became an evergreen in Macedonia, above all after he sang it in Macedonian at MakFest in 1989.

Later albums included Ako zora ne svane (1995), Dignite čaše svatovi (2008) and 50 originalnih pjesama (2015). He received the Order of Danica Hrvatska with the image of Marko Marulić and, in 2015, the lifetime achievement award of Osijek-Baranja County. Kićo Slabinac died in Zagreb on 13 November 2020, aged 76, after a long illness, and in 2021 he was given the Porin for lifetime achievement posthumously.