An intimate glance at Italian popular songs of the 1950s
by Franco Dell'Amore (Dell'Amore Management)
Questa pagina in Italiano

Giuseppe Palmas documented Italian popular singers of the 1950s with the eye of someone who consciously communicated an achieved intimacy with the artists. His subjects, caught in intimate and indiscreet poses, reveal the protagonistþs complicity and the photographer's professionalism. Looking into these artistsþ private lives or otherwise mundane situations is almost embarrassing; yet the photographs bring back the atmosphere which the songs themselves can no longer bring to life.

The fifty images exhibited, which also document the debut of Italian popular songs, are arguably among the best in Giuseppe Palmas' photographic archive; they were chosen according to esthetic, documentary and sentimental criteria, resulting in a very personal selection for which I feel tremendously responsible. The years 1951 and 1960 are the extreme chronologies between which popular singers and their pursuers moved. Both years are not insignificant; 1951 marked the beginning of the Sanremo Festival, and 1960 closes one musical era and opens that of rock.

The journey must begin with an indiscreet glance at Nilla Pizzi's neckline in September, 1951. Her real name was Adionilla Pizzi, and she is one of the most frequently portrayed subjects in the archive. The photos reveal both her admirers as well as her sinuous but always elegant poses. She claims to have launched her career in 1951 at the Sanremo Festival which she won with Grazie dei fiori. At the time, however, she had already made a dozen recordings of romantic themes, rumbas, sambas and conghes. In 1952 she won first place at Sanremo with Vola colomba, second place with Papaveri e papere and third place with Una donna prega, a record still unbeaten in Italy's biggest competition. In 1953 the "queen of song" came in second with Campanaro, an insufferable tune dedicated to the young Alpine troops of Adamello. In any case, thank you Nilla for a lifestyle that others should imitate.

Achille Togliani was also invited to the 1951 Sanremo Festival by maestro Angelini. This was a year of success with fansþ growing requests for autographs. During the shooting of a photo romance he met a certain Sofia Lazzaro (later Sofia Loren) whom he perhaps enchanted with his persuasive voice and his charme, as he did with so many other girls who admired his convertible. Achille Togliani invented the "canzone confidenziale", replacing old provincial tunes and popular canons with a refined melodic style of Italian popular song in the early 1950s.

The photo of the Carosone Trio is from October 1951. The group formed two years earlier to open the Shaker Club in Naples, owned by the impresario Pacenza. Next to Renato Carosone's piano was Gege Di Giacomo's lively percussion and the Dutchman Peter Van Wood, who was immortalized for his electric guitar which produced strange sounds. The trio's repertory was still all American; Carosone started mixing this with Neapolitan songs a few years later with Tu vuo fa' l'americano (1956), in which boogie-woogie rhythm accompanies a Neapolitan text. On June 4, 1955 the group inaugurated the club Bussola di Viareggio, and in the same place a month later they were photographed by Palmas' camera. In 1960 Renato Carosone withdrew from every public forum. The times were changing, and the Neapolitan sniffed the air and didn't want to get caught up in the movement of 1968 in Italy, which was set off officially by the demonstration that year at the famous Bussola Club, a traditional venue for Italy's high class popular singers and artists.

After having worked for Radio Trieste and passing himself off as an American secret service agent Teddy Reno, pictured in 1951 and 1952, founded the recording house "Cgd" (Compagnia Generale del Disco). He became a performer of the genre "confidential-song", in which he mixed American classic standards with Italian songs like Piccolissima serata or Adormentiamoci così. In 1950 Teddy Reno sang for Juan and Evita Peron in Argentina at a party which turned into a comedy of errors. The Italian ambassador mistook him for Giacomo Rondinella and he received the applause meant for John Wayne. For several years he organized the Festival degli sconosciuti (Festival of the Unknowns), where he met a spunky girl named Rita Pavone, whom he married in 1968.

The pictures from 1951 conclude with the Quartet of Stars, an female group including Mariuccia Barbesini, Mariolina Gai, Enrica Pereno and Santina Della Ferrera. The photos from 1952 begin with the glass and cigar of Luciano Tajoli. Famous for his "fluttery" vocals, Tajoli should be remembered for his beautiful voice and his virtuosity. He was tremendously popular at the beginning of the 1950s and he performed in a movie written about his life, entitled Il romanzo della mia vita.

In January, 1952 Palmasþ lens captured a young actor with guitar in hand called Febo Conti, who eventually rose to popularity as a radio and television show host. His singing talent was never recognized and the photo depicts his initial association with the theater. At the time of the shot he had still not entered the world of television, where in the 1960s he was enshrined as the host of a kids' show called Chissa chi lo sa?

Gorni Kramer, pictured at the piano in March, 1952, was already a well-known accordion player as well as a director of jazz and Argentinean tango orchestras. He had already made several recordings for Fonit. Then came the year in which he met Pietro Garinei and Sandro Giovannini and dedicated himself to composing for musicals. He composed for the musical revue Attanasio, cavallo vanesio in 1952-1953, performed by Renato Rascel and Lauretta Masiero.

Another photo from March, 1952 portrays the singer Ariodante Dalla from Bologna. Related to Lucio Dalla, he won the competition for new voices sponsored by RAI (Italian national television). He made recordings for the Cetra Quartet and sang with the orchestra of Beppe Mojetta, Pippo Barzizza, Carlo Savina and Nello Segurini. For his elegance, not captured in the photo, he was nicknamed Lord Brummel. In 1953 after a period of silence he returned to sing under the name of Dario Dalla, but then his career was interrupted by a heart attack.

Nineteen fifty-three was a particularly intense year during which the great names of Italian popular singing alternated in front of the most desired microphones, and consequently in front of Giuseppe Palmasþ camera. In Naples a certain personality called "'O chiagnazzaro" (cry baby) for the tones of his songs and his use of vibrato, which conveyed emotions of an utterly Neapolitan nature. His name is Giacomo Rondinella and his pose is emblematic. Among his recordings is an anthology of 116 Neapolitan classics significantly entitled Napoli fonte perenne di melodia (Naples, perennial fountain of melody). Not far away in Capri the singer/guitarist Scarola was active. As a performer of classic Neapolitan songs he became well-known in Italy as well as among international VIP's on a par with Piazzetta and the Faraglioniþs, and he was idolized in America. It was possible to meet another singer/guitarist circulating among restaurant tables in 1953 named Domenico Modugno. He composed and sang songs in Sicilian and Puglian dialect such as U pisci spada. Later he went on to compose songs in Italian such as Lazzarella, performed by Aurelio Fierro in 1957, Resta cu'mme, recorded by Roberto Murolo and La donna riccia sung by Renato Carosone. His real triumph occurred at the 1958 Sanremo Festival with the songs Nel blu dipinto di blu or Volare, which ushered in a new era of Italian melodic song. The 1959 photograph portrays Domenico Modugno at the apex of his popularity, but his success did not stop here; in that same year at Sanremo he sang Piove, in 1960 he performed Libero, in 1962 he sang Addio...addio and in 1966 Dio, come ti amo! Together with Ornella Vanoni he won first place at the Festival of Naples with the unforgettable Tu si 'na cosa grande.

Returning to Italy we meet, with his ever-present guitar, Fiorenzo Fiorentini, scholar of Roman traditions who wrote extremely popular songs such as Ho giocato tre numeri al lotto (sung by Peter Van Wood), Vengo anch'io (no tu no) in collaboration with Dario Fo and Enzo Jannacci, and La fine del mondo. He also contributed greatly to the popularization of Ettore Petrolini's repertoire.

In August, 1953 when Tina Allori was still unknown, she won a small amateur singing contest and in anticipation of future success, listened to the radio. It took her one year to achieve popularity, after being billed as the "best new voice in Italy" at an important competition organized by the National Radio in 1954. Also pictured next to the radio is Antonio Basurto, who had already launched his career in 1939 by winning a singing competition put on by RAI (Italian National Radio), the most important trampoline for singers prior to television. He became popular after the second World War working with Renato Rascel's revue company, with Aldo Fabrizi and Lydia Johnson. Another woman who d¹buted on the radio in 1953 was Lina Lancia, the stage name of Angela Tonti. The only woman photographed by Palmas driving an automobile, Lina Lancia was known for the fact that she loaned her singing voice to actresses such as Sofia Loren, Silvana Pampanini, Marisa Allasio, Antonella Lualdi and Diana Dors. She thus earned the nickname "lady of the screen". Also connected to the cinema was the composer and orchestra conductor Armando Trovajoli. In the 1950s he directed a major orchestra and in 1953, the year in which he is pictured at the piano, he directed the Sanremo Festival. Later he joined his passion for jazz, his first love, with composing sound tracks destined for the movies, of which today there are about 250.

After having entrusted his success almost exclusively to producing records, Natalino Otto participated in the Sanremo Festival in 1954, the year preceding his photo, with five songs. Four of the songs made it to the finals (Mogliettina, Notturno per chi no ha nessuno, Donnina sola, Con te) but none of them approached the success, the quality, the irony nor the interest of the songs of years past, such as Parlami d'amore Mariu, Mister Paganini, Mamma voglio anch'io la fidanzata, Trotta cavallin, and Ho un sassolino nella scarpa. The Sanremo Festival managed to obliterate all the novelties and musical rhythms which had been imported with great difficulty from America to Italy during the twenty-year Fascist era, and set back Italian popular singing by many years. Natalino Otto recorded more than three thousand songs and his contribution to innovation does not go beyond 1953.

Innovation during the 1950s consisted essentially of simple attention to and imitation of the new rhythms coming from the US. One of the groups most sensitive to this was the Cetra Quartet, composed of Tata (Giovanni) Giacobetti, Luzia Mannucci, Felice Chiusano and Virgilio Savona. The quartet, born in Rome in 1940, recorded the first boogie-woogie in Italian in 1945 with the title Pietro Vughi il ciabattino. An old Irish nursery rhyme, re-elaborated in their style, became their biggest hit record in 1949 and a motif known by all: Nella vecchia fattoria. In 1953, the year they were photographed in Rome, the Cetra Quartet had already defined their unmistakable style of singing and acting on stage.

The curtain-raiser and the variety show were the most popular venues of musical theater in the 1950s. One singer who thus became known to the Italian public was "il piccoletto" (the little man), 5 feet 3 inches tall, named Renato Rascel. During the 1952-53 season he starred next to Lauretta Masiero in the above-mentioned Attanasio, cavallo vanesio. The same protagonists did a repeat the next season (1953-54) with Alvaro piuttosto corsaro. Rascel authored and performed historic songs such as Arrivederci Roma, written in 1955. Renato Rascel, who was also called Harry Slaven and Ronny Boy (his real name was Renato Ranucci) created a surreal impression, extemporaneous and nonsensical, which crisscrossed the whole of Italian comic theater from the curtain-raiser to the revue, and transformed itself into melodrama in some films or into the middle-class humor of Italian television comedy.

Descended from an illustrious circus family, the Nava Sisters (Pinuccia, Diana and Lisetta) formed a trio which joined the Tonini sistersþ quartet in 1953. They performed as ballerinas, often acrobatic, and were brilliant actresses and singers with an exuberance and vitality which made them irresistible. The photograph captures them at the end of their careers. In 1955 Lisetta went solo, portraying much-loved TV personality Scaramacai the clown.

In 1954 a smiling Gino Latilla won the Sanremo Festival with the song Tutte le mamme. It is said that as soon as he started singing in Cinico Angelini's famous orchestra, the young Gino Latilla, who at the time sang Bongo Bongo Bongo (sdare bene tu nel Congo...), fell hopelessly in love with Nilla Pizzi, who did not reciprocate his feelings. Later he paired up on the screen and in real life with Carla Boni, with whom he sang duets such as Timida serenata. In the mid-1950s one of their fan clubs, l'ABLA (Amatori Boni Latilla Associati) was founded.

Wandissima, a dream character for an Italy just emerging from the impoverishment of war, had in 1954 already achieved all the success that a soubrette could have wished for. During the 1953-54 season Wanda Osiris starred along with the Macario Company in the revue Made in Italy, memorable because her entrance onto the stage was met by 3 minutes and 22 seconds of applause. In 1954 she also sang the song Ti portero fortuna taken from the Festival revue. Her entrances and descents from stairways conveyed an indelible impression of a divine, sensual and unreachable figure.

The vocal group Due + Due was founded by Nora Orlandi in 1952 and sang until 1963, participating in thousands of festivals, recordings, and radio and television programs. The original group formed in 1952 consisted of Nora Orlandi, Rosetta Fucci (vocal soloist), Macello Fabrizi and another member whose name is unknown and was soon replaced by Massimo Cini. In 1954 Rosetta Fucci broke away to take up a career as a soloist and Marcello Fabrizi also left the group. In their places came Paola Orlandi and Alessandro Alessandroni. This is most likely the combination represented in the photo.

When the Sanremo Festival was broadcast live on TV in 1955, Cinico Angelini's orchestra reached the apex of its success. The legend of the Angelini Orchestra began in 1930 when it was called to play dance music at the Sala Gay in Turin, the most famous dance hall of the time, from where concerts were broadcast live by Italian National Radio. Maestro Angelini introduced for the first time in Italy the presence of a permanent singer in the make-up of the orchestra in the style of the great American orchestras, from which he also took his repertoire. His perennial rival was Pippo Barzizza, another orchestra conductor.

In 1955 Claudio Villa arrived at the Sanremo Festival expecting to lip-sync his numbers. Laryngitis forced the singer to skip the last evening, the evening of live performances broadcast around the world. The organizers were forced to play Villa's record. Someone grumbled about a clever move, but the "little singing king" won first place with Buongiorno tristezza and second with Il torrente, both sung with Tullio Pane. Prior to his "pedestal speech" which was attacked by the press for its presumptuousness, and before considering women "Danger number one" (both events took place in 1957) Claudio Villa posed with his feet not on a pedestal, but on the pedals of his motorcycle and waved at Palmas' lens - obviously next to the Colosseum - and at his fans with a postcard destined for everyone in the "Claudio Villa Fan Club", founded by himself. His passion for motorcycles never stopped. In 1975 he married the 17-year-old Patrizia Baldi and they departed on their honeymoon in the saddle of a motorcycle with a tent. He recorded around 3,000 songs, sold 45 million records world-wide and played in 25 musical films. Not a bad record.

Jula De Palma's innovative style, her sensuality and nonconformist attitude distinguished her from other performers of Italian popular songs who, like she, participated in the Sanremo Festival from 1955 onward. The 1959 Sanremo version of her song Tua provoked scandal for alluding to physical love, thus depriving her of the popularity that television, still prudish, could have given her. In a completely different vein, the Fasano Duo created a genre of melodic swing which, in the late fifties, the time of this portrait, was overshadowed by the "shouters". At the end of the 1950s that element of the "old guard" was represented by Narciso Parigi, who won the 1959 Velletri Festival with the song Il postino innamorato. Narciso Parigi became popular in the post-war era with songs like Firenze sogna, Porti un bacione a Firenze, and Sulla carrozzella. He was an interpreter of songs in dialect and serenades, with a light tenor voice which would have been suited for operetta as well. Another classical interpreter of Neapolitan songs was Aurelio Fierro, who won the Naples Festival three times. In 1959 his activity was divided between the Sanremo Festival, the Naples Festival and numerous tours abroad. He dedicated and continues to dedicate his life to Neapolitan culture: from founding a recording studio (la King) years ago to more recently establishing an academy to promote Neapolitan music, from his political activity on the Naples City Council to publishing a grammar book (Grammar of the Neapolitan language), and recently opening a restaurant in the historic center of Naples 'A canzuncella).

The world of jazz also impacted Italian popular song and Giuseppe Palmasþ work: from the orchestra of Flavio Carraresi, who launched his career in 1950 at the Jazz Club of Milan playing with Basso, Vallambrini and Stan Getz, to the jazz pianist Lelio Luttazzi, much more famous as an announcer even though he composed pieces such as Souvenir d'Italie, Quando una ragazza a New Orleans sung by Jula de Palma, and Bum ahi che colpo di luna and Una zebra a pois sung by Mina.

When portrayed by Palmas in 1959, Bruno Canfora was not yet director of such popular TV shows as "Canzonissima" and "Studio Uno". He composed countless hits and TV signature tunes which were sung by Mina (Due note, Vorrei che fosse amore, Brava, Conversazione, E sono ancora qui, Un bacio e troppo poco, Sabato notte, Né come né perché), Rita Pavone (Fortissimo, Il geghegé, Il ballo del mattone), Ornella Vanoni (Tutta la gente del mondo), the Kessler twins (Da-da-umpa), Silvye Vartan (Zum zum zum) and Rocky Roberts (Stasera mi butto), to note only the most famous. Another conductor, Arturo Strappini, had already stepped out of the concert circuit to dedicate himself to film music and teaching by opening a school in Rome which carries his name.

The year 1959 was a particularly prolific one for Palmas. Among others, this is when he portrayed Arturo Testa with his head (testa in Italian) between Giovanna Avena's legs, as well as a man in slippers by the noble name of Antonio De Curtis. What is there to say about Totò and the world of song? Of the 70 songs he wrote, not to mention those destined for the revue, only Malafemmina (1951) is remembered by the greater public. Initially performed by Giacomo Rondinella, Malafemmina is a love song which, sooner or later, all Italian men had to sing. He was portrayed on a balcony, a candid shot which brings the actor back to every day life, to the solitary private life which he led.

Giuseppe Palmas could not have taken a more appropriate snapshot of Ornella Vanoni. Bored with a life of wealth and idleness, her rough, sharp voice made her an unusual character. In 1959 Ornella Vanoni is the "dark lady", a role desired by Giorgio Strehler, to whom she was sentimentally attached, and who put together a play made of songs by Jacque Brel, Brecht-Weill and other old popular ballads. The play was also performed at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, when the photo was taken.

Still in 1959 a young actress found herself in front of Palmas' lens. She had recently returned to Europe from Egypt, where she was born to parents from Calabria. Her name was Dalida, and her musical success started in France, but her fame was bound to the tragic gesture of Luigi Tenco, who in 1967 took his life after taking part in the Sanremo Festival. Dalida, on that occasion, sang with Tenco the song Ciao amore ciao. She shared the same sentiment with him and later committed suicide as well.

At the end of the 1950s heroic-comic songs such as Che bambola! (1956), Teresa non sparare (1957) and Eri piccola così (1958) inaugurated a genre, never repeated, which was inspired by American gangster movies of "guys and dolls". The character interpreted by Fred Buscaglione, built by the lyricist Leo Chiosso, was a playboy with tough looks and a soft heart who gets into trouble with explosive blondes who are apparently dumb. His fascination consisted of the following elements: a gravely voice, a delinquentþs mustache, a glass of whiskey, the eternal cigarette and a halo of perfume which blondes (presumably) have just left hovering over him. The 1959 photo, taken the year before the womanizer from Turin died, contain nearly all these elements (excluding the last one). Buscaglione crashed his pink Thunderbird into a truck at the age of 39 while suffering a broken heart for his lady (Fatima Robins) who had just left him after he had done everything for her.

On the female side, the young Maria Paris used seduction as a weapon with the fishermen of the Neapolitan quarter Pallonetto di Santa Lucia, where she was born. In the early fifties she became the star of Neapolitan song, incarnating the role of the spoiled, willful mamma's daughter, so dear to the Neapolitan public. When her fiancé/manager's jealousy forced her to cut back on her contracts, she almost disappeared from the scene, until she rebelled and in 1958 returned to the Naples Festival, performing Tuppe tuppe mariscia. The photo of Maria Paris is an example of an appreciable part of Palmasþ photographic archive in which soubrettes, actresses, starlets and singers are pictured in captivating poses. These photos deserved a more representative section since posing was an integral part of their success strategy in the world of show business. An entire exhibit could be dedicated to the legs photographed by Palmas, but...that will have to wait.

This photographic survey must conclude with Milva, whose two snapshots taken in short succession reveal two diverse sides of the singer from Goro. Two different glances, in a way illustrating her moment of passage from the dance halls of Emilia Romagna where she sang under the pseudonym Sabrina, to the national scene alongside two other female rising stars of those years, namely Mina and Ornella Vanoni. Notwithstanding the chronological order of Palmas' archive, this section dedicated to Italian popular song ends with a scene typical of the approaching decade: a cafe with a juke-box where the American dream, voices of English bands and tepid Italian melodies form a musical mix which could only have been emulated.

Franco Dell'Amore