Italian Crooners dominated the airwaves in the 1940s and 50s, between the Big Bands and the Beatles, and Elvis Presley wanted to be Italian 

In the 1940s and '50s "the era between the big bands and the Beatles" Italians dominated the charts during the transition from what we now call "traditional pop" to rock and roll. Crooners like Vic Damone, Dean Martin, Frankie Laine, and Tony Bennett were all sons of Italy, but so were early rockers like Dion (DiMucci) and Frankie Valli. Other singers such as Bobby Darin and Louis Prima were less limited by stylistic boundaries. They could be crooning one moment and rocking the next.

Mark Rotella's "Amore" is the first book to take a look at the entire phenomenon of Italian-American song. Noting in passing that Italian tenor Enrico Caruso was the American recording industry's first major best seller, Mr. Rotella astutely identifies Nick Lucas as the first real Italian-American pop star (he was also American pop's first star guitarist, way back in 1924). Next came Russ Columbo, who briefly was Bing Crosby's closest rival. By the end of the swing era in the 1940s, Italian-American crooners were appearing en masse, led by Frank Sinatra and Perry Como.
Yet though such singers proliferated, they hardly all sounded alike, and Mr. Rotella helps the reader appreciate the wildly divergent styles, including Como's casual croon, Frankie Laine's high-energy belting, and the sculpted beauty of the voice of Vic Damone ("who sang as if all he did was take voice lessons," as Mr. DiMucci puts it to the author). Along the way, Mr. Rotella considers marginal but worthy figures like baritones Alan Dale and Johnny Desmond, as well as the very few female singers in this pantheon (notably, Joni James and Connie Francis).

Though Mr. Rotella unabashedly celebrates these artists' Italian heritage, at the time not all were eager to draw attention to it. Sinatra and Como were virtually the only two who didn't change their names when they went into show business. And while Sinatra's seemingly effortless balladeering had some "bel canto" qualities to it, his attention was mostly directed toward the American songbook, of which he became the foremost interpreter.

Instead, it would be the other godfather of Italian pop?Louis Prima?who showed musicians how to openly embrace their origins. During an era when many immigrant parents didn't even want their kids to speak Italian, Prima trumpeted his ethnicity. Proudly New Orleans Sicilian, Prima was the first to swing the tarantella and sing of lust and linguini. 

Prima was also older than Sinatra and the others, having made his initial breakthrough in the 1930s, after being "discovered" by another New World Italian star, bandleader Guy Lombardo. Leading his seven-piece "New Orleans Gang," Prima was originally a trumpeter-singer with more stylistic allegiance to Louis Armstrong than Enrico Caruso.

It was during World War II, while American forces were still fighting the Germans in Italy, that Prima unleashed his inner Sicilian, with a string of cunningly bilingual novelty hits like "Angelina" and "Josephine, Please No Lean on the Bell," which portrayed Italian men as a bunch of dim "bacciagaloops" but Italian women as both beautiful and clever.

Naturally, there's a fine line between honoring one's culture and parodying it. But Prima earns a central place in Mr. Rotella's book largely because "Amore" is as much about culture as it is about music. Mr. Rotella's previous book, "Stolen Figs," described a journey to his ancestral home in Calabria, and this one is also a kind of odyssey. The author travels to the Caruso museum in Brooklyn; to Las Vegas, that neon-lit desert refuge for so many ethnic tribes; and even to Graceland in Memphis. Along the way, Mr. Rotella listens to records, watches old clips on YouTube and shares memories of listening to these songs with his own typically Italian-American family. "To listen to American pop music," he concludes," is to listen to the voices of Italians as they assimilated into American culture."

One of the joys of "Amore" is that Mr. Rotella took time to track down and interview many of the artists whose music had come to mean so much to him. Indeed, at times, he seems to be writing a book about writing a book: We don't just learn that he spoke to 1960s tenor Lou Christie over dinner, but that they had pasta and sardines. In general, though, details like these lend the book a genial warmth?as when Prima's longtime saxophonist, Sam Butera, takes umbrage at being misidentified as Italian. "I'm no Eye-talian, boy," he barks at Mr. Rotella, "I'm Sicilian!"

Butera's raucous good nature was a big reason why Prima picked him as the bandleader when he and fourth wife, Keely Smith, launched a Las Vegas lounge act. Prima's own zooma-zooma zaniness contrasted acutely with his wife's cucumber coolness?they were an unforgettable pairing of wild man and deadpan. These fun-loving swingers soon became one of the Strip's first big hits. Sinatra's Rat Pack, Tony Bennett once told me, was actually formed in imitation.

Tom Clavin's "That Old Black Magic" concentrates intensely on this period in Prima and Smith's lives, tracking them almost day-by-day from 1954, when they first opened in Vegas, to their divorce in 1961. Though the author provides little new information, his book is nevertheless fun?a testimony to its two colorful main characters.

Still, I gleaned more novel insight into Louis Prima from "Amore," when Mr. Rotella asked Mr. DiMucci where his music came from. "That was all Louis Prima, man!" Mr. DiMucci says. "He was rock and roll, man. Prima would have been the first guy inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame if he didn't sing in Italian." Indeed, Dion's signature tune, "The Wanderer," was clearly modeled rhythmically on Prima's familiar tarantella-shuffle beat and conceptually on "Just a Gigolo."

But Dion, it turned out, was among the last of that line. Other Italian-American pop stars would follow?Mr. Rotella identifies Frank Zappa, Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Madonna and Lady Gaga as all or part Italian?but little pop music after the 1960s shared identifiable Italian characteristics. Nobody sounds Irish or Jewish anymore, either?pop music, like the rest of American pop culture, mostly eschews identifiably ethnic elements. We pride ourselves on diversity, but in truth much contemporary pop music sounds like it could have come from anywhere.

?Mr. Friedwald writes about jazz for the Journal. His "Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers" will be published by Pantheon on Nov. 2. 

Recorded half a year after the armistice between Italy and the Allies, "Angelina" was a breakthrough in Italian-American relations. Probably America's first overtly Italian-themed pop hit, it was also most listeners' introduction to the boldly ethnic style of Louis Prima. When Prima played New York theaters, fans would place pans of pasta at his feet. Later, in his Vegas phase, Prima combined "Angelina" with the traditional "Zooma Zooma Zooma (Che le Luna)" to create the version best known today.

Frank Sinatra
'Stromboli' (1949)

The Chairman recorded only a handful of Italian songs in his long career, always learning them phonetically. This song about heedless romance on the island of Stromboli was the theme for the Roberto Rossellini/Ingrid Bergman film, on which they scandalously fell in love. That makes this song an even more powerful cautionary tale than Sinatra's classic "I'm a Fool To Want You."

Dean Martin
'That's Amore' (1953) 

In his book, Mark Rotella briefly notes that composer Harry Warren (born Salvatore Antonio Guaragna) was the one major Italian-American contributor to the Great American Songbook. The writer of "At Last" and "I Only Have Eyes for You" also wrote the ultimate Italian-American classic, introduced by the former Dino Crocetti in the 1953 film "The Caddy." With its mandolines, accordions, and cooing chorus, Martin's recording enshrined the folk memory of the old country.

Alan Dale
'Stardust' (1960) 

Alan Dale (born Aldo Sigismondi) was a baritone-tenor who scored hits on both sides of the pop-rock transition. This track is part of the little known gem "Alan Dale Sings Great American Hits in Italian," on which Dale shows what such standards sound like in his mother tongue.

Elvis Presley
'It's Now or Never' (1960) 

Elvis actually recorded more Italianate songs than Frank Sinatra. "It's Now or Never" was recorded shortly after his return from the Army. The melody, based on "O Sole Mio," had already been a hit for Tony Martin as "There's No Tomorrow." Presley's track went to No. 1.

?Will Friedwald

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