Łucja Prus was born in 1942 in Białystok. Her parents dreamed of a big family, but only she and her brother Antonii survived, the rest of the artist’s siblings died shortly after giving birth. The Prusians were so enterprising that they ran a local bakery for years. Łucja was to take over the family business.
However, time verified these plans. The communist authorities did not like the Prussians’ business and closed it down. However, Łucja’s parents did not wring their hands and invested in a traveling buffet. “Ms. Prusowa was very enterprising and efficient. She got her driving license as the second woman in Białystok. She drove a Jelcz truck, arousing admiration and a sensation on the streets,” said Antoni Prus, the singer’s brother, quoted by “Kurier Poranny”.
Łucja inherited her diligence and entrepreneurship from her mother, but she did not want to deal with her parents’ business. “I had a terrible desire to appear on stage. I guess every child has this. The desire to show off. And in my opinion this is wonderful and it needs to be cultivated,” she said in the documentary “Stars of those years: Łucja Prus” from 1995, quoted by the Onet portal.
Łucja Prus did not want to take over her parents’ business, she knew she would be an artist
Prus has always been drawn to the stage, she started getting used to the stage already in kindergarten. “It’s a photo that stuck in my mind because there was a play in kindergarten, a nativity play, where I played a snowdrop and then it turned out that my ear hurt and it was the worst memory because I knew I couldn’t go to that show, and I wanted to so badly. It was so important that I went anyway,” recalls Łucja Prus in Krzysztof Wojciechowski’s documentary, in which she talked to her daughter Julia.
The singer really wanted to break through, she studied at school and at the same time took part in music competitions. “When you have the courage and decide to show yourself, there are more difficult moments. And indeed, such a moment for me was the radio competition. When I entered it, as a very young girl and with a microphone, there were 7,000 candidates, luckily it turned out that I received the second prize and a Szmaragd TV. The third prize went to Ula Dudziak, and the first to Zofia Gładyszewska. A singer from Łódź,” she said in an interview.
For her, singing was everything that was noticed by the singer’s surroundings. “I was absolutely sure that she would be an artist,” said professor with conviction. Bożena Chodynicka in an interview with “Kurier Poranny”.
Soon, together with her friends from high school, Prus founded a club where musicians and cabarets performed. Łucja participated in it whenever she could, and her friends affectionately called her Lucynka. Soon, the singer was noticed by Eugeniusz Hryniewski and got a chance to sing in the Seven Club. This is a great honor for such a young and inexperienced person.
“She sang Ludmila Jakubczak’s song ‘Alabama’, a big hit at the time, she got applause, made quite an impression and we even gave her the nickname Alabama,” recalled Jerzy Tomzik, a jazz musician, of Prus’s performance in 1957. “A cool, lively girl. Modest, pretty. She came, sang, performed in the cabaret, as it happens in adolescence” – this is how he remembered the artist.
Zbigniew Wodecki about Łucja Prus: She treated me like a son
“When the high school final exams were approaching and the girls were choosing different universities, she chose the Singing College in Warsaw. And she achieved it. I followed her career all the time. And I paid great attention to all her achievements,” recalls Professor Prus in “Kurier Poranny”, Do Studio She got the PAA Pagart Prus songs the first time. Soon she started recording songs.
The festival in Opole brought Łucja Prus great publicity. In 1965, the artist sang on stage “Nothing twice happens” with words by Wisława Szymborska. The music for the poem was written by jazz musician Jerzy Mundkowski, privately the husband of Łucja Prus. The duo received a special award from the Minister of Culture, but it did not save their marriage.
The 1960s ended with Prus singing with the Skalds and meeting her second husband – Ryszard Kozicz. In the next decade, the artist was known throughout Poland, and her songs were written by the greatest artists of the domestic scene. “I was 21 years old then. I remember that my mother asked her to take care of me during the trip. And indeed: she treated me almost like a son,” said Zbigniew Wodecki about the first concert tour with Łucja Prus, quoted by the Interia portal.
She gave up her career for the family, Osiecka was outraged
Although Prus’s career flourished in the 1980s, she gave birth to her daughter Julia and limited her appearances. This outraged Agnieszka Osiecka, who was a huge supporter of her friend’s career development, and claimed that she was wasting her great talent. However, it was her daughter who persuaded her to return to the stage.
Łucja Prus recorded two more albums in the 1990s, but her career was interrupted again. This time due to a sudden illness. The artist was diagnosed with breast cancer. The cancer progressed so quickly that she didn’t have time to finish her last album. She last sang on stage in early 2002. She died on July 3.
“What was she like? She was the same all her life,” Ewa Cywińska emphasized in an interview with Kurier Poranny. “Sensitive, emotional, very friendly to people, well-read. If you can say that you are a humanist in singing, then she was a humanist in the full sense of the word. It was visible in her repertoire. She felt good in Osiecka’s songs and in sentimental Masurian songs, then was her world. She sang songs that remain in memory for a long time,” she added.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
