Ok, for starters, let me tell you every single song this guy released in the sixties is just a creative masterpiece. He can make you cry with "Oh Mío Signore" and then he makes you dance like crazy with his greatest tune: "Guarda Come Dondolo". His beach tunes are outstanding: "Abbronzattisima" is a time machine that put you on a mediterranean beach in the summer of 1962, with cute babes, sun and a smooth breeze. A total must. Completely.
01- Il Peperone 02- La Tremarella 03- Sei Diventata Nera 04- Stessa Spiagga, Stesso Mare 05- Guarda Come Dondolo 06- Hully Gully in Dieci 07- I Watussi 08- Sul Cucuzzolo della Montagna 09- Oh Mío Signore 10- Abbronzatissima
Gigliola Cinquetti (born 20 December 1947, Verona, Veneto) is an Italian singer, TV presenter and journalist. At the age of 16 she won the Sanremo Music Festival in 1964 singing "Non Ho L'Età" ("I'm Not Old Enough"), with music composed by Nicola Salerno and lyrics by Mario Panzeri. Her victory enabled her to represent Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest 1964 with the same song, and she went on to claim her country's first ever victory in the event. This became an international success, even entering UK Singles Chart, traditionally unusual for Italian material. It sold over three million copies, and was awarded a platinum disc in August 1964. In 1966, she recorded "Dio, come ti amo" ("God, How I Love You"), which became another worldwide hit.She returned to fame in Eurovision Song Contest 1974, again representing Italy. Performing the song "Sì" ("Yes"), the music and lyrics of which were written by Mario Panzeri, Daniele Pace, Lorenzo Pilat and Carrado Conti, she finished second behind "Waterloo", sung by Sweden's ABBA. According to author and historian, John Kennedy O'Connor's, The Eurovision Song Contest - The Official History, the live telecast of her song was banned in her home country by the Italian national broadcaster RAI, as the event partially coincided with the campaigning for the 1974 Italian referendum on divorce which was held a month later in May. RAI censored the song because of concerns that the name and lyrics of the song (which constantly repeated the word 'Sì') could be accused of being a subliminal message and a form of propaganda to influence the Italian voting public to vote 'Yes' in the referendum. The song remained censored on most Italian state TV and radio stations for over a month. An English language version of the song, "Go (Before You Break My Heart)", reached number 8 in the UK Singles Chart in June 1974. One of her other songs, "Alle Porte del Sole" (released in 1973), was re-recorded in English (as "Door of the Sun") and Italian by Al Martino, two years after its initial release, and reached #17 on Billboard's Hot 100 in the United States. Cinquetti's own English version of the song was released as a single by CBS Records in August 1974, with her original 1973 Italian version on the B-side. Cinquetti went on to co-host the Eurovision Song Contest 1991 with Toto Cutugno, who had brought the event to Italy with his victory in Zagreb the previous year - the country's first win in the contest since her own twenty-six years earlier. In the 1990s she became a professional journalist and TV presenter, and she currently hosts the current affairs programme Italia Rai on RAI International.
01- Dio Come Ti Amo 02- Rosa Nera 03- Mille Anni 04- Piccola Città 05- Grazie Amore 06- Ho Il Cuore Tenero 07- Non Ho L'Età 08- Guando M'Innamoro 09- Sera 10- Domagne, Domagne 11- Una Storia d'Amore 12- Tutte Meno Una
Beniamino Gigli, (March 20, 1890 - November 30, 1957) was an Italian opera singer. The most famous tenor of his generation, he was renowned internationally for the great beauty of his voice and the soundness of his vocal technique. Critics sometimes took him to task, however, for what was perceived to be the over-emotionalism of his interpretations. Nevertheless, such was Gigli's talent that he is considered to be one of the very finest tenors in the recorded history of music. Gigli was born in Recanati, in the Marche, the son of a shoe-maker who loved opera. His brother Lorenzo became a famous Italian painter. In 1914, he won first prize in an international singing competition in Parma. His operatic debut came on October 15, 1914 when he played Enzo in Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda in Rovigo, following which he was in great demand. Gigli made many important debuts in quick succession, and always in Mefistofele: Teatro Massimo di Palermo (March 31, 1915), Teatro San Carlo di Napoli (December 26, 1915), Teatro Costanzi di Roma (December 26, 1916), La Scala (November 19, 1918), and finally the Metropolitan (November 26, 1920). Two other great Italian tenors on the roster of the Met during the 1920s were also Gigli's chief rivals, Giovanni Martinelli and Giacomo Lauri-Volpi. Some of the roles with which Gigli became particularly associated during this period included Edgardo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, Rodolfo in Giacomo Puccini's La Bohème and the title role in Umberto Giordano's Andrea Chénier, both of which he would later record in full. Gigli rose to true international prominence after the death of the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso in 1921. Such was his popularity with audiences he was often called "Caruso Secondo", though he much preferred to be known as "Gigli Primo." In fact, the comparison was not valid as Caruso had a bigger, darker, more heroic voice than Gigli's honey-toned lyric instrument. Gigli left the Met in 1932, ostensibly after refusing to take a pay cut. Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the Met's then general manager, was furious at his company's most popular male singer; he told the press that Gigli was the only singer not to accept the pay cut. There were in fact several others, Lily Pons and Rosa Ponselle among them; and it is well-documented that Gatti-Casazza gave himself a large pay increase in 1931, so that after the pay cut in 1932 his salary remained the same as it had been originally. Furthermore, Gatti was careful to hide Gigli's counter offer to the press, in which the singer offered to sing five or six concerts gratis, which in dollars saved was worth more than Gatti's imposed pay cut. After leaving the Met, Gigli returned again to Italy, and sang in houses there, elsewhere in Europe, and in South America. He was criticized for being a favorite singer of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and toward the end of World War II was able to give few performances. However he immediately returned to the stage when the war ended in 1945, and the audience acclaim was greater and more clamorous than ever. In the last few years of his life, Gigli gave concert performances more often than he appeared on stage. Before his retirement in 1955, Gigli undertook an exhausting world tour of Farewell Concerts. This impaired his health in the two years that remained to him, during which time he helped prepare his Memoirs (based primarily on an earlier Memoir, fleshed out by a series of interviews). Gigli died in Rome in 1957.
01- Marechiare 02- 'O Sole Mio 03- La Donna e Mobile 04- Qual Turbamento 05- La Danza 06- Santa Lucia 07- Una Furtiva Lagrima 08- Torna a Surriento 09- Dicitencello Vuje 10- L'Ultima Canzone 11- Santa Lucia Luntana 12- 'O Surdatto 'Nnammurato 13- Amore Ti Vieta 14- Solo Per Te, Lucia 15- A Canzone 'e Napule 16- Core 'Ngrato 17- Povera Pulcinella 18- Quanto e Bella 19- Funiculi, Funicula 20- Nessun Dorma 21- Casarella 22- Maria 23- Mamma 24- Ave Maria
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, where he studied piano at his hometown's Conservatory and obtained his diploma in 1937, when he was just 17. He soon signed a contract as a band leader for a tour of Africa. After that job, he ended up in Addis Ababa working as a pianist. In a short while he became quite famous there and had several gigs as band leader. He returned to Italy in 1946, after the end of World War II. Those ten years spent abroad had exposed him to new rhythms and new sounds, but, in spite of his international success, Carosone was a stranger to the Italian audience. He had to start his career afresh, playing the piano in some small dance-hall bands. 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 Napolitan drummer Gegè Di Giacomo: so the Trio Carosone was born. The trio became quartet with 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 1950s Carosone became more and more popular, his orchestra was on high demand both in Italy and abroad, and records sales were soaring high. A hint of his world-wide success: his song Torero - specially composed for a Spain tour - remained for 14 weeks at number 1 on the US hit parade, 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. The last tour concert was a triumph at the prestigious Carnegie Hall in New York. Several of his hits were the result of this long and fruitful cooperation with the lyricist Nicola Salerno, who used the pseudonym Nisa. They could understand each other perfectly: just one hint by Carosone, and Nisa wrote a funny, witty little story about it. Among their greatest hits, "'O suspiro", "Torero", "Tu' vuo' fa' l'americano", "Caravan Petrol", "Pigliate 'na pastiglia,"'O Sarracino". Only a few famous songs in Carosone's repertoire were not written by Nisa: "...E la barca tornò sola" (a lively parody of a song performed by Gino Latilla at Sanremo Music Festival in 1954), "Tre numeri al loto", "Maruzzella" (dedicated to his wife Marisa), "'O russo e 'a rossa". He and his group even participated in some Italian films as “Totó, Peppino e Le Fanatiche” (1958). Carosone surprisingly announced his retirement in 1960, when he was still at the top of his success: "I'd rather retire now on the crest of the wave, than after being tormented 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 from Napolitan maffia. Away from the spotlight, Carosone turned to other interests, mainly painting. On 9 August 1975 Carosone made a comeback in a televised concert, and then he resumed his musical career with live concerts, performing at the San Remo Music Festival and other various TV programs, until late 1990s. He died in Rome in 2001.
01- Tu Vuo' Fa' l'Americano 02- Caravan Petrol 03- Torero 04- Io, Mammetta e Tu 05- Piccolisima Serenata 06- La Pansè 07- 'O Russo e A'Russa 08- Pigliate 'Na Pastiglia 09- 'O Sarracino 10- La Donna Riccia 11- Maruzzella 12- Mambo Italiano 13- Chella Llà 14- 'A Sunnambula 15- 'Stu Fungo Cinese! 16- T'è Piaciuta 17- 'A Casciaforte 18- Scapricciatiello 19- E la Barca Tornò Sola 20- Buonanotte
Nicola Di Bari (29 September, 1940) is a famous Italian singer. He was born in in Zapponeta (Foggia, Apulia, Italy) as Michele Scommegna. He started his professional career in 1965 and won the San Remo Music Festival in 1971 and 1972. In 1972 he also represented Italy at the Eurovision Song Contest with the song "I giorni dell'arcobaleno". He is also a well-known singer in Latin America, specially in Argentina due to the huge quantity of Italian immigrants, and due to that reason he also recorded several albums in Spanish. Here's a compilation 50% in Italian and 50% in Spanish. I want to add that these songs were the soundtrack of my own childhood...
01- I Giorni dell'Arcobaleno 02- Paese 03- La Prima Cosa Bella 04- Se Mai Ti Parlassero di Me 05- Il Mondo Gira 06- Sai Che Bevo, Sai Che Fumo 07- Se Potessi, Amore Mio 08- Amore, Ritorna a Casa 09- Lontano, Lontano 10- La Hierba de Mi Casa 11- Vagabundo 12- Ojos Claros 13- El Corazón es un Gitano 14- Agnese 15- Como Violetas 16- Guitarra Suena Más Bajo 17- Zíngara 18- Trotamundos
