Vice Vukov

Vinko "Vice" Vukov was a Croatian singer from Šibenik, born there on 3 August 1936. His father's family came from the island of Zlarin, his mother's was an old Šibenik family. He first sang on stage as a grammar school pupil in 1953, in the operetta Ševa. In 1955 he moved to Zagreb to study, first chemistry and then philosophy and Italian, and in the student folk ensemble Ivan Goran Kovačić he met his wife, Diana.

His career began in 1959 with an audition, after which the director of the Opatija festival invited him to sing there. He won the festival with "Mirno teku rijeke" and became famous almost overnight. In the 1960s he was one of the most awarded singers in the country: first prizes at the festivals of Split (1965 to 1968 and 1970), Krapina (1967 to 1970), Zagreb (1961, 1969, 1970) and Zlatne žice Slavonije, and three Zlatni vijenac awards of the magazine Studio as the most popular television face. He represented Yugoslavia twice at the Eurovision Song Contest, in London in 1963 with "Brodovi" and in Naples in 1965 with "Čežnja". He toured the United States, Canada, Brazil, the Soviet Union, England, France, Germany, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and recorded more than 400 songs.

From 1972 he lived in Paris for several years, where he graduated from the Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales; back in Zagreb from 1976, he finished his studies of Italian and philosophy and worked for the publisher Matica hrvatska. A new album came out in 1989, and in 1990 he gave fourteen sold-out concerts in a row at the Vatroslav Lisinski hall, a record that still stands.

In 2000 he received a Porin for the importance of his music from 1959 to 1971. Vice Vukov died in Zagreb on 24 September 2008, and in 2009 Šibenik gave him its lifetime achievement award. The singer Tina Vukov is his brother's granddaughter. The playlist gathers twenty of his original recordings.