"Teško mi je zaboravit tebe" by Dušan Dančuo (1971)

The phenomenon of romantic gypsy music seems to be particularly beloved in Eastern Europe and tradition seems to go way back to times of Austrian-Hungarian empire when travelling musicians worked they way trough Vienna, Prague and Budapest - this type of music (often backed with violins and played to bleary-eyed audiences who cried in their beer) left its mark all over the place, including Croatia where "starogradska muzika" was somehow always perceived as more urban and distinct from traditional folk - nowadays we accept venerable Zvonko Bogdan as the king of this type of music, but long before Bogdan ever entered recording studio, there was already a towering figure of Dušan Dančuo who mellifluously crooned very much the same repertoire. Both men can be seen as continuation of old tradition that simply goes on under various disguises to this day.

Compared to Bogdan, Dančuo was technically superior singer - both men were gifted with seductive, soft voices but Dančuo was simply born with one of the most beautiful sounds and he used it very much like popular Italian singers of post WW2 generation (in fact, "Buongiorno Tristezza" was one of his earliest recordings from 1958.) Instead of going in that direction, like many of his contemporaries (Marko Novosel for example) Dančuo found his niche in music that combined Hungarian and Gypsy elements and was hugely popular all over Yugoslavia at the time. During 1960s he released three volumes of EPs titled "Popular romances" with songs of mostly Hungarian background - all of them are collected on this 1971. LP which serves as compilation and recapitulation of his work up to that point. At that time concept of LP abum was still new for "Jugoton" where they preferred playing safe and albums were mainly compilations of previously released singles. Dančuo will of course, continue for decades in very much same style, but today his work seems to have been little obscured which is a pity because he was really a great artist and important link between pre-WW2 tradition and later success of Bogdan and his followers.