Sdban Records is proud to present Doo’s Blues, a collection of previously unreleased radio recordings capturing Serbian jazz trumpeter, composer and band leader Dusko Goykovich (1931-2023) at the moment he definitively established himself as one of Europe’s most distinctive jazz artists.
Dusko Goykovich was born and raised in Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina, at the time part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He studied at the Belgrade Music Academy from 1948 to 1953, playing trumpet in Dixieland bands and joining the big band of Radio Belgrade at the age of 18. After leaving Yugoslavia in 1956, Goykovich spent the next ten years developing his sound. Moving to Frankfurt he first established himself on the West German jazz scene, where he played with the renowned big bands of Kurt Edelhagen and Kenny Clarke & Francy Boland. Then, after appearances at the world’s largest jazz festivals such as Comblain-la-Tour in Belgium, Antibes in France and Newport, Goykovich moved stateside where he spent four years studying at the world famous Berklee College and worked with the likes of Woody Herman and Maynard Ferguson.
Returning to Europe in the mid-sixties Goykovich soon introduced the world to his innovative Balkan jazz sound with Swinging Macedonia (1966), an album characterised by the melancholic melodies and sophisticated rhythms reminiscent of his native land. Today Swinging Macedonia still stands as one of the most important and sought-after works of European folk inspired jazz and demonstrates how Goykovich was not merely an excellent instrumentalist, but also a gifted composer and versatile artist in his own right.
Not long after Swinging Macedonia’s release Goykovich was invited to record two sessions for BRT (Belgian Radio & TV), which he performed with three different ensembles. For the first session, recorded in late January of 1967, Goykovich was accompanied by Belgian vibraphonist Fats Sadi’s quartet. Later that same day Goykovich was also joined by the BRT Jazzorkest, Belgium national radio’s in-house jazz orchestra then playing under the direction of alto saxophonist Etienne Verschueren. Less than two months later Goykovich found himself once again ensconced in BRT’s Brussels studios, this time heading up an international quintet that also included Bent Jædig (tenor saxophone and flute), Scott Bradford (piano), Jimmy Woode (bass) and Al Jones (drums).
Whilst the metaphor ‘jazz with an accent’ has been widely used to describe the music that European jazz artists created in the 1950s and 1960s, it fails to do justice to the entirely new language that Dusko Goykovich was developing. No mere dialect Goykovich’s jazz was a delicate, multi-layered language, one that owed just as much to the folk music of the Balkans as it did to the modern music of America. And to the blues. For this is Doo’s Blues.
Sdban Records is an independent, groove-obsessed record label based in Ghent, Belgium. The label started off as a 60’s and 70’s compilation and reissue label. The very first release, the acclaimed ‘Funky Chicken: Belgian Grooves from the 70’s’, was a milestone right away. Recent releases include reissues and retrospective compilations from artists like André Brasseur, René Costy, and Jack Sels, as well as the compilations ‘The Belgian Soundtrack’ and ‘Hip Holland Hip’, which respectively cover the musical connection of Belgium with cinema and modern jazz in the Netherlands between 1950 and 1970. Doo’s Blues was compiled by Lander Lenaerts, a DJ and writer who plays an important part in documenting the rich jazz history Belgium has to offer.
