Todor "Tosho" Todorovic
The name of the small but excellent company tells you all you need to know. For 48 years they have been marketing a catchy, extremely successful product: Blues music! Company headquarters: Osnabrück. Name: Blues Company. Annual turnover: six figures. Workforce: 8 employees. Boss: Todor „Tosho“ Todorovic.
The Blues Company boss seems to be a bit stiff as he walks toward our table in a café on Osnabrück’s market square. “It’s my back!”, says the 73-year-old, known as “Tosho” in Osnabrück and throughout the Blues world. Over the last almost 50 years, he has become something of a celebrity, and not just among lovers of Blues music. And yet his parents wanted him to become a banker. He
did so too. But not for long. The Blues called, and Tosho followed, even if “under cover” to start with. More about that later. Even so, the “Company” also needs to keep its financial affairs on track. So Tosho’s financial training was a great help when he started the firm which he still runs today.
The “business data” speak for themselves: the “Company” has been around on the music market for 48 years. 35 albums have been produced to date, including some award-winners. The firm has appeared at more than 4,500 gigs. The accounts are OK then are they, Tosho? “Profits are down”, is the terse answer from the Blues and finance expert. Reasons: Covid, Spotify, increased concert costs. “It’s getting more and more difficult to live from music, particularly for younger performers”, says the pensioner, who always paid attention to his retirement provisions throughout his whole career. “Like many other colleagues, I always kept working at music schools, gave lessons or worked as a studio musician for other artists. After all, it’s hard to make a living just from records, CDs or live gigs.” That was already the case decades ago, which is why his father decided Tosho should train as a bank clerk. A sensible job. His strict father wouldn’t let him pursue a career as an artist.
His parents who had immigrated to Germany from former Yugoslavia, had strict rules: work hard, be successful, find acceptance. A career in music just wasn’t the right thing. So they packed him off to the Deutsche Bank in Osnabrück. Tosho gritted his teeth and got on with it, completed his training and then left home every morning as good as gold in his suit and tie – before donning cool gear to study at a University of Music. Without his parent’s knowing. This went on for a year. Then his “coming out”. “There was no way back, I had to look ahead. Now that I’d finished my training, all I wanted to do was be a musician.” And that’s what he did. He was extremely successful too.
Whether Europe, Russia, Asia or in the Middle East: the charismatic mastermind and exceptional musician was prepared to go anywhere. The Blues Company and Tosho had so much authentic Blues in their musical DNA that even American Blues le-gends asked the band to accompany them on tour. It’s no great surprise that no other band represents Blues as successfully in Germany as Tosho Todorovic and his Blues Company.
They’ve become synonymous with contemporary Blues. Tosho has never seen him-self as the “Keeper of the Seals” for Blues music. Instead, he has composed his own music right from the start. The success of the Blues Company’s albums is not just limited to Germany, where they belong to the best-sellers of the genre. Actually, the Blues Company’s music sells on the international market and is heard all over the world, thanks not just to the expert way they celebrate the Blues but also to the excellent sound of the recordings, which is appreciated not just in audiophile circles. So much for the fame. And what about the finances?
“Record labels have come under enormous pressure since download platforms have become so widespread, with a drastic impact on the results in money terms. And we put a huge amount of work into producing music”, explains Tosho, and adds the pithy comment: “It’s all well and good if you’ve inherited your own home and got a steady job, at Osnabrück Institute of Music, for example.”
Like some of the members of his band. But the “Company boss” always has to take things into his own hands. His working day often goes on past midnight and is still packed full of jobs to do, even though he’s well into retirement age:
rehearsals, interviews, organising gigs, website, agency meetings, negotiations about fees, negotiations with the banks, tax returns, and even servicing the band’s bus. The last one might sound profane, but in fact it’s one of the most important jobs. “Meanwhile we try to keep our gigs fairly close together, rather than travelling hundreds of miles and not being back in Osnabrück until dawn.” While this is partly due to Tosho’s age, they also have to bear in mind that many of the band members have a job of work to go to, like every other employee does, even if this might usually be in the rehearsal room or music school. What’s more, the budget’s not big enough to pay for hotel accommodation, nor for roadies. “If we want to live at least partly from Blues music, we’ve got to save where we can: nearly all of us have got families and children, and none of us are youngsters any more”, says Tosho, putting things in a nutshell. And anyway, the boss likes coming back to “his” town, which he loves.
“We’ve meanwhile become a successful brand for Osnabrück, and we get hired by many companies and firms, for example”, says Tosho, who was awar-ded the Citizen’s Award by the city council in 1993 for his many years of voluntary commitment to combating xenophobia as well as working to promote cooperative co-existence among people of all nationalities in Osnabrück. The ”Company” boss sets great store by commitment and social interaction. “That’s something music does really well, Blues in particular, because we musicians like to get involved in things or make the city and the region a better place to live, which is meanwhile also an important location factor for the regional economy. Skilled workers from other places will only consider moving here if we can offer the right sort of quality of life”, analyses Tosho. His conclusion about life itself and the quality of life in Osnabrück: “The many young students keep the city young too. Whether creatives in drama, music or art, Osnabrück has a lot to offer. Unfortunately, not enough people outside the city are aware of this. That’s why Osnabrück’s city marketing put a far greater focus on cultural aspects to make more people enthusiastic about our great city”. The cultural life of the Osnabrück region and thus also the Blues of the Blues-Company is a location factor as well as being an economic factor and marketing aspect – with all the positive monetary and social consequences. The “Company” and its Osnabrück Blues: no-one else in Germany is quite as brilliant and successful as this oldest Blues band in the country.
What keeps Tosho Todorovic still going after all these years? Even more prizes and awards for the band (German Jazz Award, the German Record Critics’ Award, Blues Louis) or for himself, already holder of the Osnabrück Citizen’s Award? Or is the pleasure he gets from making music and the happy faces in his audience simply enough, as is the case with most legendary musicians? Tosho Todorovic makes no secret of the fact that he owes a lot to Blues music: “I’m not stopping now, I don’t know why I should. Music is my life, my life is music. The Blues has been good to me!“ that is and always will be the motto of this tireless ambassador of the Blues: “I’ve wanted to play the Blues for as long as I can remember. So I’ll play the Blues for as long as I can. I owe it to the Blues, because without it, my life would never have been so wonderful – even in Osnabrück!“
Blues Company
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