I am on vacation and since its raining outside, its time to return to my favourite hobby and write some music reviews. It is perfect brain exercise + goes very well with my first morning coffee. With greatest pleasure I dived into old Croatian schlager discography and started unearthing records from the artists that I never really listened before, to find out is there something to discover.
Ivica Šerfezi - "Šerfa" - belongs to the same generation as Karlo Metikoš and the whole team of early 1960s singers who brought new, fresh air to local music scene. But where Metikoš pursued rock, Šerfezi pursued less adventurous and more profitable path of festivals, schlagers, covers (everything from country to Mexican and Greek hits) which made up very successful and long career as family entertainer both at home and in tours trough Soviet Union back than. I still recall Russian lady who asked me where I'm from and her face lightened up instantly when she heard "Croatia" - to her, it was instant association with Adriatic sea, Tito and Ivica Šerfezi. It turned out she was one of the millions of Russian fans who adored Šerfa and welcomed him with true love.
Šerfa was such ubiquitous presence on radio during my childhood that he probably epitomises schlager-singer of 1970s. Sure, he was much beloved by moms and his clean cut, good looks & showmanship made him perfect for family TV shows. This also means younger listeners would find him too square. So it took me the whole lifetime to actually go back to his records and listen carefully. This, his first LP album (recorded when he was already veteran at 38) sounds exactly as I expected, it is a time capsule of hard-core schlager music, innocent, simple and perhaps just a little bit too safe for my taste. Šerfa knew what his audience liked and he gave it to them without much introspection - he croons gently without ever lifting up a voice (kind of Julio Iglesias) trough one ballad after another (courtesy of composers like Stipica Kalogjera and Đorđe Novković), throws in several German covers and even waltz/polka medley that probably worked well in live performances as audience sang along. The fact that of all Elvis Presley songs he chose to cover "Blue Hawaii" perfectly describes who Šerfa was as an artist.
It is very easy to dismiss this kind of family entertainers today, because in the meantime we got used to all kind of different gimmicks, carefully planed images and constant scandals & public excesses. Šerfa belongs to innocent 1970s and his music today instantly brings us back to family kitchen on Sundays. Like Proust's Madeleine cookie, to me this is (for better or worse) soundtrack of childhood. It might not be exactly the most adventurous or coolest music ever, but it does have sentimental value. No wonder he moved so successfully to Russian and German market.
Around this time Šerfa broke seriously into German pop market and to my knowledge he was really successful there, perhaps the only one to seriously follow mighty Ivo Robić on German hit charts. What he offered to German audience were romantic schlager ballads with carefully tuned hint of Adriatic melodies and in a way he worked almost like promoter for tourism. His music persona & image was at this point so well established that he don't sound any different than when singing in his native language, its basically same simple singalong happy songs crooned gently - where in 1960s he covered international hits, here he covers himself for foreign market. With one exception, material is exclusively written by home-grown composers and they served him well with music tailored for presentation of Croatian Julio Iglesias.It might not be the most adventurous music but as marketing & step into foreign territory it was very successful.
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