Renato Carosone & Marino Marini - Grandes Exitos (1991)

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Renato Carosone & Marino Marini - Grandes Exitos (1991)

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Renato Carosone (3 January 1920 – 20 May 2001) was among the greatest figures of Italian music scene in the second half of the 20th century. He was also a modern performer of the so-called canzone napoletana, Naples' song tradition. Carosone was born in Naples. He studied piano at the Naples Conservatory and obtained his diploma in 1937, when he was just 17. Soon after he signed a contract as a band leader for a tour of Africa, which resulted in him working in Addis Ababa as a pianist. Here he would become a prominent figure of the music scene, performing with his band on several occasions. He returned to Italy only in 1946, after the end of World War II. Despite his success abroad, Carosone was a stranger to Italian audiences. He had to start his career afresh, playing the piano for small dance-hall bands. These new performances were strongly influenced by the new rhythms and music styles he had encountered during his ten years' absence from the Italian music scene.

In 1949 he was asked to put together a group for a club's opening night. After some auditions, he signed the Dutch guitarist Peter Van Wood and the Neapolitan drummer Gegè Di Giacomo: the Trio Carosone was born. The trio became a quartet with the addition of the Hungarian Gypsy musician Elek Bacsik on bass, guitar and violin. Afterwards Van Wood and Bacsik left the group to pursue solo careers. Gegè Di Giacomo remained with Carosone, who contacted other musicians to finally form a real band. During the 1950s Carosone became more and more popular, his orchestra was in great demand both in Italy and abroad, and records sales were soaring high. His song Torero - specially composed for a Spanish tour - remained for 14 weeks at number 1 on the US hit parade. Torero was translated into 12 languages and no fewer than thirty cover versions were recorded in the United States alone. On 5 January 1957 Carosone and his band started off a successful American tour with a concert in Cuba. This tour concluded with a triumphant performance at the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York.

At the height of his career, Carosone announced his retirement from music in 1960: I'd rather retire now on the crest of the wave, than being tormented later by the doubt that yè-yè fashion and new armies wearing blue-jeans may wipe away all that I have achieved in so many years of work and worries. His decision caused an uproar. Some even suspected obscure criminal threats. Away from the spotlight, Carosone turned to other interests, mainly painting. On 9 August 1975 Carosone made his comeback in a televised concert. He then resumed his musical debut with live concerts, performances at the Sanremo Music Festival, and TV appearances until the late 1990s.

Marino Marini (1924-1997) was an Italian popular musician who achieved international success in the 1950s and 1960s. He was born into a family of musicians on 11th May 1924 in Seggiano in the Grosetto region of Italy. After briefly studying electronics, he studied piano, violin and composition at the Conservatorio Rossini at Bologna, teaching music on his graduation. In 1947, after military service, he was appointed artistic director of the Metropolitan music hall in Naples, where he developed a liking for Neapolitan music. In 1948 he visited the United States for six months, meeting Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton and Charlie Ventura. American jazz was also a formative influence. On his return, Marini wrote music for films and revues and played in cabaret in Rome and Naples.
In 1955, he placed a newspaper advert seeking “young musicians without experience, singing in tune. If not cheerful, don't apply." From the many applicants he chose Tony “Toto” Savio (guitar), Sergio (drums) and Ruggiero Cori (bass and vocal) for a quartet, Marini playing piano and occasionally singing solo. This quartet played together from 1955 to 1960, a period regarded as the Marino Marini Quartet’s most prolific and successful. They made their first recording on the Durium label in 1955. The following year they appeared on Italian TV. Their recordings of Marini’s compositions Guaglione, Don Ciccio o' piscatore, Rico Vacilon, La Pansè, and Maruzzella were very popular, Guaglione becoming the first European single to sell more than five million copies. (It was used on the soundtrack of the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley.) Following this successful debut, Marini commenced touring with his quartet, in the following years performing in hundreds of concerts in western and eastern Europe, the USA, the Middle East and Japan.

Marini's recordings in the late 1950s and early 1960s included covers of Domenico Modugno’s Volare, Come Prima and Ciao ciao Bambina and Rocco Granata’s Marina. In 1960, he won the first and the second prizes in the Naples song festival with Serenata a Margellina and Uè uè uè che femmena. In 1958 he performed Mikis Theodorakis's The Honeymoon Song in Michael Powell's film Honeymoon. In 1960 the first quartet disbanded and in 1961 new quartet was formed with Marini, Bruno Guarnera (guitar), Pepito di Pace (drums,) and Vittorio Benvenuti (bass, vocal, dance). The quartet was re-formed again in 1963 with Francesco Ventura (guitar), Sergio (drums), and Franco Cesarico (bass guitar and vocal). Marino Marini’s music was rooted in the tradition of Italian song, or, to be more precise, Neapolitan song, as he sometimes performed in the Neapolitan language (e.g. Maruzzela). Many of his numbers are in 4/4 or 4/8 time, but he sometimes used the 6/8 tarantella rhythm with an off-beat tempo accentuated by the piano on the second and fourth beat. He performed in several styles and genres, reinterpreting American standards or current pop songs (e.g. Just Young) and using dance rhythms such as cha-cha-cha, the twist, the letkiss and the samba. He often combined genres (e.g. Neapolitan song and samba in Ciccio 'o piscatore). He made innovative use of the echo chamber (using one made to his own design) and is said to have been the first European performer to use sound mixing on stage, anticipating the techniques used by rock musicians in the 1960s. Among the performers he influenced were the French singer Dalida and the French-Italian Caterina Valente. He retired from performing in 1966 but continued to compose. He died on 20th March 1997.