Judita Čeřovská

Judita Čeřovská (21 April 1929 – 9 October 2001) was a Czech pop and chanson singer.

Career Born in Most, as a child Štěrbová lived in northern Bohemia. She remained there with her German grandmother even after the occupation of the Sudeten regions in 1938 and attended the German school. Her parents lived near Prague in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Because they listened to foreign radio, they were imprisoned for several months. Before graduating from a business school, Štěrbová made a public appearance with school bands. At the age of 27, she began her semi-professional career as the wife of a lawyer and mother of two children.

From the beginning, she sang in the chanson style and was influenced by Edith Piaf among others. In a competition for young talents she took 2nd place and shortly afterwards started singing regularly in the Prague Musikhalle Alhambra. Čeřovská has never become a full-time singer, even though she has recorded a number of successful hits. In 1959 she suffered a serious injury in a car accident from which she was able to recover. Without regular collaboration with a large dance orchestra or a renowned singer-songwriter, she was not perceived as a pop star in Czechoslovakia. She became popular abroad. Nonetheless, she was considered a very attractive and unusually charming woman with a very captivating voice.

In the Federal Republic of Germany she gave concerts and also directed a TV program. She was also successful in other European countries, such as the East Germany, Switzerland and the Soviet Union. In 1967 she sang with some Czechoslovak fellow musicians, among them Karel Gott at the Expo 67 in Montreal. At that time, she came in second in the competition Hledáme mlade talenty and immediately began singing in the Alhambra music hall in Prague. After the Warsaw Pact invasion, she went to tour in Russia.