"Josipa Lisac & BP Convention Big Band International"

After excellent debut album and compilation that neatly collected all the singles that preceded it Josipa Lisac made a step back into Big Band territory from which she actually escaped - those first few years of mammoth pop festivals, huge orchestras and conductors that were so ubiquitous  in late 1960s and early 1970s were never really her proper place because she was rock singer surrounded with mediocre, mainstream "schlager" performers and today we look at those old festival compilation records and wonder what on earth was she doing between them, I guess this was a necessary step for young singer to get national visibility and promotion. Once Karlo Metikoš stepped in and decided to leave his (very successful) singing career in order to focus on composing for her, she metamorphosed into first-rate rock singer who was backed with all-stars rock band and even made very impressive theatre debut in Croatian first rock opera. 

I always wondered how this album came along because it didn't look like a logical step after Lisac finally left old fashioned music of pop festivals and found her voice in rock music. Having such talented singer in his own home, Metikoš could have continued with leading her in that direction - instead, she recorded single with traditional folk music, was special guest on other artists albums and here went for jazz/rock cover album. Nothing wrong with covers, of course and it probably seemed exciting idea at the time, to show off how Lisac can sing Jazz as well as anything. 

After years of research, I found out that it came as spontaneous idea between Metikoš and great Boško Petrović who at the time was hosting international Jazz festival in Zagreb and had some celebrated Jazz giants at disposal - no less than Art Farmer and Clark Terry amongst others - and as Jazz music is usually spontaneous creation of the moment, they decided to quickly record the whole album of covers where these guys will play behind Lisac. The final results are interesting from music point of view - lady sings like a dream, using every mannerism from her formidable repertoire of vocal ornamentation's (she was really at the peak of her voice at that point), musicians are smoking hot and songs themselves are just fine (famous standards from every corner of than current pop, peppered with occasional American Songbook) but unfortunately it was lyrics that were always the main problem for me - probably faced with lack of time, Ivica Krajač could come up with nothing better than clumsy Croatian adaptation that undermined the whole project. It makes you wonder why they didn't just forget about Croatian lyrics and simply recorded the whole darn thing in English, but who knows what was the political situation at the time and perhaps doing such decidedly noncommercial album was already brave enough. Both critics and audiences were confused with this unexpected release and the album was not a success, languishing in obscurity until Lisac became the very first Croatian singer to have her whole discography published in CD Box.