Dezider Ursiny, also known as Dežo Ursiny (; 4 October 1947 – 2 May 1995) was a Slovak rock musician and a television and film screenwriter and director. He is considered one of the most important personalities of Slovak rock music and one of the most talented and unique Slovak popular music composers. He belongs to a wide group of legends of Czechoslovak Big Beat. Dežo Ursiny was a member of big beat bands The Beatmen, The Soulmen in the 1960s and since the mid-1970s, until his death he pursued a solo-career, composing sophisticated artistic and critically highly praised music, which varied slightly from one album to another and is sometimes hard to define, can be described as jazz rock, or more widely – progressive rock. He composed music to several films, including the popular musical "Neberte nám princeznú" and also shot several documentary movies during his lifetime.
History
Ursiny was born and raised in Bratislava. He attended electrotechnical high school where he made his first musical contacts. He started playing guitar at the age 11, and in the early 1960s he is known to play in the amateur bands Fontána and Jolana. At the end of 1964 he joined The Beatmen as a lead guitarist and singer, and the following year they gained nationwide success in Czechoslovakia. The group played Beatles-like music and wrote critically praised songs, of which 4 were released on two singles. Ursiny, being only 17, wrote their best song, "Let's Make A Summer". However, their success didn't last long and the band didn't manage to build themselves a stable position on the scene and after their breakup they soon disappeared from people's memories. In 1966 the band decided to emigrate to West Germany in search for wider success, limited by the unfriendly political regime, but Ursiny refused to leave his homeland. The band, with a replacement for him soon broke up because of disappointment from the lack of success in the west.
In 1967 Ursiny started studying film and television dramaturgy at the Musical Arts College in Bratislava and from mid-1967 to mid-1968 he was a founding member of The Soulmen, the group that was proclaimed the best at the 1st Czechoslovak Beat Festival in Prague in December 1967. They played Cream-like music and released 4 songs on an EP in the early 1968. In late 1968 he founded The New Soulmen who however disbanded soon thereafter, and didn't release any songs. After the 1968 occupation of Czechoslovakia the situation much worsened for musicians, and it was more difficult to perform and release as freely as before. The normalization removed English from the band names and song lyrics and the song themes were undergoing very strong censorship.
In 1970 he founds the band Provisorium after meeting his lifelong mate, keyboardist Jaro Filip. The band existed shortly in two line-ups, and played only two shows during their existence but managed to arrange a recording deal, before they finally broke up. Ursiny and Filip recorded an album with Czech musicians Vladimír Kulhánek (bass) and Jaroslav Erno Šedivý (drums) from the band Flamengo, whom they first met three days before recording. The album "Dežo Ursiny & Provisorium", with all lyrics in English, was released to a miracle in 1973. It consisted of four songs, with side long track "Christmas Time". Full of jazzy melodies it is now considered a classic and one of the best Slovak albums ever recorded (as would later be probably every Ursiny's album), but at the time of its release it remained practically unnoticed by the public.