The Blues Company Duo will close the Blues & Boogie Days on June 7 at the Kunsthalle Kühlungsborn.
White man can't play the blues - Todor Todorovic can only smile wearily at this cliché. For 48 years, the man everyone just calls "Tosho" has taken the blues from Osnabrück to the rest of the world with his Blues Company: whether in Europe, Russia, Asia or the Middle East, no distance was too far for the charismatic mastermind and exceptional musician. From the very beginning, the Blues Company and Tosho had the blues so authentically in their musical DNA that even American legends such as Sunnyland Slim and James Booker had the band accompany them on tour.
No wonder that today, 48 years after their first appearance, 4500 successful concerts and 35 award-winning album releases, no other band represents the blues in Germany as successfully as Tosho Todorovic and his Blues Company. This band has become synonymous with contemporary blues, because Tosho has never seen himself as the master of this music, but has focused on his own compositions from the very beginning. The success of the Blues Company albums is not limited to Germany, where they are among the best-selling recordings of the genre. No, the Blues Company's music sells internationally and is listened to worldwide - which is not only due to the skillfully celebrated blues, but also to the excellent sound of the recordings, which is highly appreciated not only in audiophile circles.
Another very important building block in the Blues Company's wall of fame is the continuity of personnel: guitarist and singer Mike Titré has been Tosho's congenial partner since 1980. Florian Schaube (drums) and Arnold Ogrodnik (bass) have been the band's groove guarantors for over 15 years. This stable Blues Company foundation has been completed for some time by the "Fabulous BC Horns", Uwe Nolopp (trumpet) and Volker Winck (sax), as well as the background singers Seda Devran and Elif Batman aka the "Soul Sistaz". Muddy Waters, the father of the electric blues, once sang: "All you people, you know the blues got soul!" Anyone who has ever seen Tosho & the Blues Company live will understand Waters' statement.
Tosho's singing, his virtuoso guitar playing, his inimitable phrasing - it's full of soul and has an emotional depth that makes authentic blues so unique. Tosho also preaches the old blues credo: "It's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play! The blues needs a great soul to transport and express the enormous range of human emotions in 12 bars!"
Nobody in Germany does this as brilliantly and successfully as the oldest blues band in the country: the Blues Company. What still drives Tosho Todorovic after all these years? More prizes and awards for the band (German Jazz Award, Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik e.V., Blues Louis) or for himself, the recipient of the Citizens' Medal of the City of Osnabrück? Or is it simply the case, as with most legendary musicians, that the joy of the music and the happy faces in the audience are motivation enough? Tosho Todorovic owes a lot to the blues and he makes no secret of this: "I'm not going to stop, I don't know why. Music is my life, my life is music. The blues has been good to me!"
The blues has been good to me - that is and remains the motto of this tireless ambassador of the blues: "As long as I can remember, I wanted to play the blues. So I will play it as long as I can. I owe it that, the blues, because without it my life wouldn't have been so wonderful!"
