I seldom am the recipient of such a strong outpouring of nostalgic affection for an Italian American Idol. So I am transmitting a 2nd Nicola Paone obituary, this one from the New York Times.

The Times describes Paone as a Crooner or a Troubadour, whereas I see him more in the clever comedic styles of Victor Borge, or Stan Freeberg.

Paone appealed greatly to the lesser privileged of the Italian immigrants, who were most sorely in need of an opportunity to laugh at their own "personal predicaments",
to make their life more bearable, even though the hyphenated Italians remained warm, open, full of life, despite the oppression of the society and the times.

Paone's success persuaded the jazz musician Louis Prima to perform similar Italian-style material.
===============================================
Thanks to H-ITAM

Nicola Paone, the 'Italian Troubadour' and a Restaurateur, Dies at 88

New York Times
By Douglas Martin
January 4, 2004

Nicola Paone, whose dialect-inflected songs about the joys, sorrows and insecurities of Italian immigrants sold millions of records and made him "the Italian Bing Crosby," died on Dec. 25 in Albuquerque, said Lawrence Auriana, his friend and longtime neighbor in Scarsdale, N.Y. He was 88.

Mr. Auriana said that Mr. Paone and his wife, Delia, had lived in an Albuquerque nursing home for about a year. They had moved there to be near their son, Joseph, who died in August.

Mr. Paone, whose last name was pronounced pay-OH-nee, was popular in Italy and South America as well as the United States, but his appeal was greatest for Italian-Americans still not quite embedded in American life. In songs like "The Bigga Professor," he encouraged immigrants to laugh at themselves unashamedly.

"The consistent theme is that hyphenated Italians are warm, open, clever, insightful people who are full of life," in the words of an article presented to a symposium of the American Italian Historical Association in 1994. The article, "Nicola Paone: Narrator of the Italian-American Experience," was written by Pamela R. and Salvatore Primeggia and Joseph J. Bentivegna and published in the book "Italian Americans in a Multicultural Society" (Forum Italicum, 1994).

Mr. Paone went on to a second career as a restaurateur, opening Nicola Paone, an Italian restaurant at 207 East 34th Street, in 1958. His customers included every mayor from Wagner to Giuliani as well as William F. Buckley Jr., a regular who named a fictional spy after Mr. Paone. They were drawn by décor that included an imitation Roman marketplace, and by solid fare like a well-reviewed rack of veal.

There was also what Mr. Paone called the salad show, an elaborate production that ended in a garlicky Caesar salad. He sometimes accompanied the show by singing a 17-verse song he had written about Caesar salad.

"I like to make people smile," he often said.

Nicola Paone was born in 1915 in Barnesboro, Pa., as the only son among a coal miner's five children. In 1923, the family returned to Sicily, and the boy grew up in a village, absorbing elders' stories and learning music. His mother died when he was 9, an event that he said helped him sing about heartbreak.

At 15, with his father's blessing, he returned to the United States to live with his sister in the Bronx. He worked as a shoeshine boy, hat blocker and busboy at an Italian restaurant. He learned the jewelry trade to pay for instruction to be an opera singer. He was a baritone.

He opened a jewelry store in 1942 and became known for his singing of radio commercials, an act he repeated in the early 1990's when he crooned jingles promoting his restaurant on the radio. He soon became a regular guest on radio programs in New York and other cities.

When he could find no company willing to record him, he set up his own company, Etna Records. His first record, "U Sciccareddu," or "The Little Donkey," became an overnight hit and established his "from the heart style of bittersweet storytelling," in the phrase of the 1994 academic article.

In the late 1940's, he formed a vaudeville troupe that included midgets and trained bears. He ranged beyond the Italian theater to find a wider audience for the act, playing the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Palace Theater on Broadway. He signed briefly with Columbia and RCA but preferred his own record label.

His songs were more and more in broken English and less and less in Italian. "The Telephone No Ring," in which an Italian-American is exasperated by the insensitivity of an American operator, sold five million copies. He wrote about 175 compositions in Italian and English, and his success helped persuade the jazz musician Louis Prima to perform similar Italian-style material.

Mr. Paone was also popular in South America, where he was known as the Italian troubadour and performed in a black cape with silver lining. On May 1, 1954, he sang his trademark song, "Uei Paesano," or "My Countryman," to more than 700,000 people who had gathered in Buenos Aires to protest against the government. They left peacefully.

Mr. Paone is survived by two grandchildren in addition to his wife.

In 1958, when he was touring Italy and called home, he did not recognize his son's changing voice. "My God, I lost my son," he said in an interview with The New York Times in 1992.

He soon quit singing professionally, just after he opened his restaurant, around the time that Cash Box magazine listed his "Blah, Blah, Blah" as the No. 1 song in the nation on Jan. 31, 1959. But he continued to warble each morning as he personally baked all the day's desserts, including a legendary chocolate cream cake.

At evening's end, he followed another ritual. He brushed his shoes with the same brush he had used as a shoeshine boy in the Bronx. It was worn almost bare.

Nicola Paone, the ’Italian Troubadour’ and a Restaurateur, Dies at 88
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/nyregion/
04PAON.html?ex=1074249098&ei=1&en=d44a8d86a0e14528