WTI Magazine #77    2016 March 18
Author : Giovanni Verde      Translation by: Giulia Carletti

One can easily recognize the unmistakable smile of Renato Carosone. His smiling face while playing the piano, as it were an easy job, reveals Carosone's slight greatness. Renato Carosone (Naples, 3 January 1920) studied piano from a young age, encouraged by the will of his father, who was a theatrical impresario and a mandolin player. He graduated in piano at the Conservatorio di Napoli in the church of Saint Peter in Majella, at the age of seventeen.

Carosone's first relevant experience took place in Africa. On August 1937, he landed in Eritrea: he would stay in Addis Ababa working as orchestra leader until the outbreak of the First World War, when he was called up to fight in Somalia.

In 1949, Carosone was asked to put together a trio for the Shaker club in Naples. He signed the Dutch guitarist Peter Van Wood, the introducer of the guitar pedal board, and Gegè di Giacomo, nephew of the famous Neapolitan poet Salvatore di Giacomo.

The artist's first commercial success was the song Maruzzella, composed by him in 1954, on a text by Enzo Bonagura. Besides Maruzzella, Carosone's songs are primarily inspired by the rich repertoire of Neapolitan hits such as Malafemmena by Totò and Anema e Core, which he reinvented according to his personal taste and rhythmic style.

In 1956, Carosone met the lyricist Nisa (his real name being Nicola Salerno), with whom he would establish a long-lasting friendship. The trio would subsequently comprise the singer Piero Giorgetti to then turn into a six-person group.

Carosone's sextet exhibited in an international tour in 1956. In 1957, he wrote his and Nisa's greatest success: Torero. For 14 weeks, Torero remained at number 1 on the US hit parade. It was translated into 12 languages and 32 cover versions were recorded in the US.

After a series of concerts in Europe, the sextet – which now included the drummer Aldo Pagani – landed in Cuba, starting off a memorable American tour. The group performed in Caracas, Rio de Janeiro, and, on 6 January 1958, in New York at the prestigious Carnegie Hall, which up until then had been reserved to classical music – only exception being the jazz clarinet player Benny Goodman and his quartet's performance in 1938.

At the height of his career, on 7 September 1959, Carosone unexpectedly retiremed from music. Some scandal-seeking newspapers of the time wrote about religious reasons lying behind this choice. On 9 August 1975, after 15 years of retirement, Carosone came back to the stage with a band of 19 people and a televised show.

On 15 March 1993, Carosone had an intracranial aneurysm. He was then urgently hospitalized in the neurosurgery department of San Camillo hospital in Rome and underwent a delicate operation. However, his strong character would made him overcome the disease and dedicate himself to music and to his other great passion, painting, nurtured until his death.

In 1999, the United States paid homage to the Italian artist – already suffering from respiratory and circulatory problems – through the movie The Talented Mr. Ripley by Anthony Minghella, in which the actors Rosario Fiorello, Matt Damon, and Jude Law got wild in a nightclub dancing Tu vuo' fa l'americano.
Renato Carosone died on Sunday 20 May 2001 in his home in Rome. Four hundred thousand people attended his funeral in Piazza del Popolo.

An extraordinary pianist, classical and jazz performer, Renato Carosone remains one of the greatest interpreters of modern Neapolitan music. He combined Tarantella with African and American rhythms and was, along with Domenico Modugno, the only Italian artist to sell his music in the United States without recording it in English.