Mario Feurer is dead: composer of Grüezi, Mrs Stirnimaa! deceased

The Zurich musician and composer Mario Feurer died on Tuesday at the age of 82, as the “Zürichsee-Zeitung” reports. He became known for his hit “Grüeziwohl, Frau Stirnimaa!”, which he released with the band Minstrels in the 1960s. The song became a classic of Swiss dialect music.

Feurer was the band’s violinist. The cult song, which even made it into the German charts and was covered many times, made him famous in Switzerland. In addition to Feurer, the Minstrels consisted of Pepe Solbach and Dani Fehr, who died in 2021.

Mario Feurer was an original from Zurich’s Niederdorf, where he grew up and toured the pubs with his bandmates before the Minstrels gave their first concert in the Hechtplatz Theater.

Even after the band broke up in 1974, Feurer remained musically active, including with the Trio Grande. He was known for appearing in restaurants, close to the audience, as the NZZ once described it.

The hit “Grüezi probably, Ms. Stirnimaa!” has various origin legends, according to the “Zürichsee-Zeitung”. One says that Feurer wrote the text for a traditional central Swiss piece after hearing the exclamation “Grüezi gut, Frau Stirnimaa” in it. Another version says that he heard a street musician in Zurich’s Niederdorf playing the piece. Feurer and his bandmates adapted it and added dialect lyrics. According to Radio SRF, the origin of the song even goes back to Italy, to a song by the Engadine folk musician Cla Genua.

Feurer shaped Swiss music history with his hit and always remained loyal to Zurich’s Niederdorf, where he was often found until the end.

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