Jussi's father David was born in 1873 at Harmånger in Hälsingland.
In his early years, he followed his parents to Finland and spent the greater part of his youth there. Twenty years old, he went back to Sweden, where he worked at factories in Stockholm and Borlänge among other things. In 1899 he went to America to seek his fortune.
He tried various professions, but decisive for his future was the fact
that he was accepted at the Metropolitan Opera School and got his beautiful tenor voiced trained there. When he returned to Sweden,
he was heard by King Oscar II, who took a keen interest in music,
and got a stipend for studies at the Vienna Conservatory.

Among those who recognised David's talent was Vilhelm Stenhammar (the composer of "Sverige"), but David had several disputes with the manager of the Royal Opera in Stockholm and would never sing there. Instead, he became a concert singer and a singing teacher. In 1909, he married Ester Sund from the village of Stora Tuna (today part of the city of Borlänge) and settled there. Even before the wedding, their first son, Olle, was born. Johan Jonatan, who would become known as Jussi, was born on 5th February 1911 in a house on Magsinsgatan Street in Borlänge. Ester was there with relatives, while David was on tour. The exact date is found in the midwife's registers, but the church birth register gives 2nd February, and this is the date which Jussi himself celebrated as his birthday. In 1912, David and Ester had a third son, Gösta.

David had developed ideas about teaching children to sing at a very early age, which he also developed in print in a little booklet "How to Sing". He began to teach his children according to those principles; Jussi later said that he knew how to read notes before he could read letters. In December 1915, David's three sons made their public debut at the Trinity Church in Örebro, where David was then a singing teacher. The boys appeared together with the father's adult pupils.

After this successful debut, David began touring with his boys. In 1917, a catastrophe struck the family. Ester had been suffering from tuberculosis for a long time, and she was already dying at a hospital in Uppsala when she gave birth to her fourth child in April. In spite of the tragic circumstances, a healthy boy was born, who was named Karl (Kalle). Ester died a few days later, on her 35th birthday.
Relatives took care of Karl, and when he had grown up,
he, too, joined the family ensemble.

In the autumn of 1919, David Björling went to America with his three oldest boys and for 1 ½ year he toured with his boys as "The Bjoerling Male Quartet" primarily in states with a large Swedish population. At the beginning of this tour, the "juvenile trio" was given the opportunity to record six songs. After the family had returned to Sweden, they settled down in Dalarna again and bought a house at Karlsarvet in Leksand on Lake Siljan, which was to remain their
home as long as David lived.

At the beginning of 1926, David and the boys were touring intensely in Skåne (Scania, in southernmost Sweden), when the father fell ill with ulcer and spent a period in hospital. After the end of the tour, the family went to Västervik in Småland (the south-eastern part of the country), where he fell ill again. This time the illness proved to be appendicitis, but David Björling was treated far too late and died in Västervik on 13 August 1926.

The boys' quartet now tried to continue touring for a period with assistance from a friend of the family, but the group soon dissolved and Jussi went back to Ystad in Skåne where he worked for a short period in a shop. There he came to know the pharmacist, bass singer and honorary professor Salomon Smith who knew the manager of the Royal Opera in Stockholm, the famous baritone John Forsell, and contacted him regarding the young singing talent. Forsell promised to give Jussi an audition, and during 1928 the opera manager heard him several times. After one of these, Forsell wrote in his diary: "Only 17. A phenomenon. Should be taken care of. Might become something.".

In the spring of 1928, Jussi Björling also made his first radio appearance. He entered the Conservatory and the Royal Opera School, where Forsell became his singing teacher in both places. Forsell also had Jussi boarded with a headmaster's family, helped him to get a stipend and agreed to become his guardian. During his early days in Stockholm Jussi had been boarded with a family Hellström. In 1928, he fathered a son, Rolf, with Linnea, the daughter in that family. Rolf also became a tenor singer. In September 1929, Jussi Björling made his first recordings.

Jussi was a quick study and already on 20 August 1930, he made his debut on the opera stage in a major role, Don Ottavio in Mozart's Don Giovanni (already on 21 July, he had appeared in the Lamplighter's minor role in Manon Lescaut). In the same autumn, he was noticed still more as Arnold in Rossini's Wilhelm Tell. As Jonathan in Carl Nielsen's Saul and David, Jussi sang in January 1931 the third and last of his "official" debut roles and signed in May his first permanent contract with the Royal Opera. On 29 July the same year, he had a sensational breakthrough at a recital at the Tivoli in Copenhagen, and in the next summers he returned there as a great favorite with the public.

In June 1935, Jussi Björling married Anna-Lisa Berg, a soprano whom he had met at the Conservatory. They would have three children, Anders, Lars and Ann-Charlotte, the two youngest of whom would also be active as singers. (Jussi also had a daughter outside of the marriage, Kickie, adopted at her birth by his lawyer.) Anna-Lisa Björling devoted the next years to her family, but in the late forties the couple would begin to sing together in public, primarily on the concert stage but also in opera.

Jussi Björling was now established as first tenor and public favourite at the Royal Opera in Stockholm, but could not until 1936 and 1937 take leave for guest performances of his own at foreign opera houses. In March 1936 he gave recitals in Vienna and sang opera in Prague; later in the spring his opera performances in Prague and Vienna attracted much attention. In the same year, Canio in Pagliacci, Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly and Tonio in La fille du régiment were among his new roles in Stockholm. In 1937, he returned for a longer period to the Vienna Opera, and sang also at several German opera houses and at the Budapest Opera. In the autumn, he made the only film where he had a main role, Fram för framgång (Head for Success), just before he went to the US for the first of his many tours as a tenor there, giving his first London recital on his way to the US.

Jussi Björling's American tour became a great success, including three broadcast concerts and his American opera debut in Chicago, in Rigoletto and Bohème. Jussi was offered a contract with the Met for the next season, and his very well-received debut there in Bohème on 24 November 1938 was a milestone in his career. After his return to Sweden, he gave notice of cancellation of his contract with the Royal Opera, but he would often return there as a guest until his death. During 1938, Jussi's last new role in Stockholm under the old contract was Vasco da Gama in L'africaine.

In 1939, Jussi made his opera debut in London in Trovatore and worked for the first time with Arturo Toscanini in Verdi's Requiem at the Lucerne Festival. His American tour 1939-40 was also extended to Canada and Cuba, and in the spring he made his first US recordings. He had now made an impressive number of recordings in Sweden, both in the classical and in the lighter repertoire, in the former and often also in the latter together with Court Conductor Nils Grevillius.

Jussi's last American tour before the events of war closed the Atlantic took place autumn 1940 - spring 1941, including his opera debut in San Francisco, where he became a frequent guest singer. In December, Jussi opened the season of the Met as King of Sweden, in costume as Gustavus III in Verdi's Ballo in maschera. For the rest of the war, he remained mostly in Sweden, and gave many concerts all over the country, partly as a Field Artist. However, he made some appearances abroad, mostly in Denmark and Finland, and made his Italian operatic debut in 1943 in Florence in Il trovatore.

After the war, and just after his autobiography "My Throat is My Luggage" had been published, Jussi Björling returned in October 1945 to America for a long tour which included opera performances at the Met and several radio concerts. During the following years, he mostly spent a larger or smaller part of the winter season in the USA, but in the summers he always returned to Sweden. At his summer house on Siarö in the Stockholm archipelago, he could relax fishing for pikes, but he always found time for those open-air recitals where he met the wider public, e.g. at Skansen and Gröna Lund in Stockholm and at Furuvik near Gävle. In the US, Jussi included two new operas with his repertoire: Puccini's Manon Lescaut in 1949 and Verdi's Don Carlo in 1950, the latter at the performance which began Rudolf Bing's era as general manager of the Met.

In Europe, Jussi Björling remained very active in Sweden. He also sang often in the neighbouring Nordic countries and in the 50s, he gave many recitals in Britain, but he was seldom heard on the European continent. The main exceptions were two series of guest performances in Milan: in Rigoletto 1946 and in Un ballo in maschera 1951. The 1954/55 season, he did not make his usual American tour, but found time instead for a concert tour to South Africa. In the autumn of 1955, he appeared with the Lyric Theatre of Chicago, a company to which he would regularly return. Chicago was the place for his only two performances opposite the artist who often competes with him on the lists of the century's great singers, Maria Callas (in Il trovatore).

In the late 50s, Jussi Björling began to have problems with his heart and spent several periods in hospital. Still, he continued his touring, and it caused much attention when he, in spite of acute heart problems, insisted on singing a Bohème performance at Covent Garden in London in March 1960 (the first time he appeared there since 1939). Just before this, he had sung what would prove to be his last performance on his "home stage" in Stockholm (Trovatore). In the night of 9 September 1960, a heart attack during his sleep took Jussi Björling's life at his summer house on Siarö, at 49 years of age. Today, it is clearer than ever that the world lost one of its greatest artists then. His art is unforgettable; ample evidence of this is found for instance in a constant stream of record issues and the many international polls won by him.
(see the website of the Jussi Björling Museum, where there is
also a more comprehensive biography).