Friday,
October 12
Bravo
The
ANNOTICO Report
Nick
Clooney, Syndicated Columnist is the Father of George Clooney, and the Brother
of Rosemary Clooney.
Clooney recognizes the achievement of
But
in this article, Clooney chooses to focus on Italian American
contributions to American Popular Music
Italians
Gave Their Music to
Happy
Columbus Day, everyone. Forget last Monday. That was only Faux Columbus Day. We all
know this was the actual day the Great Navigator made landfall in the
This
is also the day we should take the opportunity to salute those among us of
Italian ancestry. I'm not exactly sure why. It is true that Chris was born in
[RAA
NOTE: What does Steinbrenner get credit for Reggie Jacksons accomplishments, because he paid
Still,
Much
of this week, I have been focusing on the Italian-American influence on our
popular music. I could have chosen literature or science or sports or politics
with just as much success, but I was nagged by the sound of music. Of course, the
overwhelming contribution of Italian singers, composers and musicians to the
world's classical music needs no drum beating from this corner.
From
the time my friend Walt Sheppard told me that "Giussepe
Verdi" meant "Joe Green" in English, I have never been
intimidated by the work of those geniuses. Any fellow named Joe Green who can
write that kind of superlative melody line is all right with me.
Now
to popular music.
It is impossible to imagine what shape the hit parade would have taken over the
last 75 years without the likes of Tony
Bennett (Benedetto) or Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin (Crocetti) or Perry
Como.
Try to
chart the music we sang and danced to and whistled without the names of Henri Mancini or Frankie Laine
(LoVecchio) or Vic
Damone (Farinola)
or Mario Lanza
(Cocozza) or Julius
LaRosa or Johnny Desmond (Giovanni Desimons) or Al
Martino or Guy
Lombardo and his brothers or Louis Prima or Ray Anthony (Antonini)
or Jerry Vale
(Vitaliano) or Ralph
Martiere, who was born in Naples, or
the Four Aces,
three of whom were of Italian ancestry.
My
impression was that when rock and roll hit in the mid-1950s, the influence of
Italian artists, with their emphasis on melody, intonation and lyrics,
diminished. Research proved that impression to be only partly correct. In fact,
two Italian-American women helped break the male stranglehold on No. 1 hits as
the 1950s and 1960s morphed into the 1980s and 1990s. Connie Francis (Concetta Franconero), then the
more controversial Madonna
(Madonna Louise Ciccone).
The
men were not shut out of the new music by any means. Who doesn't remember Annette Funicello's movie beau Frankie Avalon (Avallone)? We should add one more successful than most in
bridging the gap between jazz and classic pop on the one hand and rock and roll
on the other, Bobby Darin
(Cassotto).
The
falsetto strains of Frankie Valli (Castelluccio)
marked the era as did the emphatic bar lines of Dion (DiMuccio)
and the
The
subject is personal to our family, too, in spite of our largely
Irish-American roots. My sister Rosemary's major singing career was launched by
a novelty tune called "Come On -A My House," which she sang in a
caricature of an Italian-American accent. She learned it from bandleader Tony Pastor (Antonio Pestritto), for whom she and our sister Betty worked. In
fact, Rosemary went back to that pseudo-Italian accent twice more -
"Botch A Me" in 1952 and "Mambo Italiano" in 1954 - with great success.
Most
of the emphasis here has been on artists, but how about the songs themselves?
How many knew the Elvis 1960 hit "It's Now or Never"
was actually "O Sole
Mio"? Or that Brenda Lee's No. 1 hit that same
year, "I Want to be
Wanted," was really "Per Tutta
La Vita"?
Without
the unique Italian seasonings, our pop stew would have been bland, indeed. Do I
hear a "Bravo!" somewhere?
E-mails
sent to Nick at nickclooney@cincypost.com
will be forwarded to him via regular mail.
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