A Little light Music to Enjoy the Afternoon - Featuring Ezio Pinza - Narrative from Bravo! by Guy Graybill

South Pacific - Tony Award!

Enzio Pinza (1892-1957, bass)

Ezio Pinza, a native of Rome, was born into a poor family. He considered two other professions--civil engineering or cycle racing--before setting on a singing career. Pinza's singing debut came when he was in his early 20's; but he is remembered, today, for the work he did while in his fifties.

His debut occurred in 1914 in Bellini's Norma in the Lombardy town of Soncino. Later, after military service in the First World War, he returned to singing. Ezio Pinza sang at La Scala
from 1922 and at the Met from 1926 until 1948. As the best-known bass singer of his day, Pinza sang all of opera's major Italian bass roles.

The total singing roles that he mastered were said to be near the hundred mark. His professional and personal reputations were both built on his role as the title libertine of Mozart's Don Giovanni...

During his frequent tours, from city to city and country to country, Pinza was reported to be steadily rehearsing Don Giovanni's behavior while away from the theatre.

Among Ezio Pinza's favorite roles was that of the title character in Modest Musorgsly's Boris Godunov, a role he insisted on singing in Italian, even when the rest of the cast was singing the English version!

When he was 56 years old, ancient by some standards, he moved out of the Metropolitan Opera House and onto Broadway, to star in a lead in South Pacific, for which he won a Tony award. 

He also appeared in another play, Fanny, as well as in operettas and motion pictures. 

One is left to wonder how successful he might have been if he had every learned to read music...

~~~

Many thanks to Guy Graybill, for allowing me to feature individual artists who appear in his book, Bravo!

His latest novel is... 

Spotlighting Frankie Laine Via Guy Graybill's BRAVO!

Answer me, my readers, do you remember Frankie Lane? Did you like him! I've chosen him to spotlight from the book Bravo: The Case for Italian Musical Mastery... I've spotlighted several others from this book, so, if interested, search by the name of the book or the author, Guy Graybill.

Here's two of my favorites!

Back then, I was a fan of Paladin and other movies of the time, so western-themes songs attracted my attention, LOL. But let's learn more about him...

The Big Voice Out of Little Italy
Frankie Laine

The parents of Francesco Paolo LoVecchio were Italian and he was born in Chicago's "Little Italy" section in 1913. For years, before he became Frankie Laine, he struggled with poverty and lack of recognition as a singer. He confessed to sneaking into hotel rooms or with trying to buy food with mere pennies in his pocket. One of his first singing jobs paid $5 per week! However, once established, his success carried him through more than a half century of singing and recording, until the number of records sold surpassed one-hundred million and his album sales exceeded the century mark! He also appeared in more than a half-dozen films and sang title songs for a similar number of movies. Part of Frankie Laine's appeal was his rugged, booming voice and part had to be the variety of styles he sang (mostly rhythm and blues, popular and country). Frankie Laine classic renditions include "Ghost Riders in the Sky," "Mule Train," "That's My Desire," 

"That Lucky Old Sun, "Jezebel," and the theme from the television western, "Rawhide." In February of 2007, one more of the great, original group

of Italian-American crooners was stricken from the list, when he died of heart failure. A memorial mass was celebrated a week later. The man, whom the U.S. Congress had recognized as a national treasure, was 93...

~~~

The Beginning of Jazz with Dominic James La Rocca from Bravo!

The Stormy Petrel of Jazz

The petrel is a seabird, known for flights that carry it very far from land. When it soars into view, its appearance is said to foretell the arrival of storms. This is why humans have long regarded troublesome individuals as being petrels...stormy petrels. One such human was the early jazz great, Dominic James La Rocca.

La Rocca was born in 1889 in New Orleans, to poor Sicilian immigrant parents. He began his musical career playing trumpet with a local brass band. In 1914 he formed the Original Dixieland Jass (now Jazz) Band.

Within a few years the band was popular enough to be playing in New York City and to be giving birth to jazz music's first recordings. La Rocca's penchant for trouble came in the great American metropolis, when he tried to pay rivals to return home and leave New York to La Rocca's group. He was also suspected of slashing the drum heads of a drummer from a rival band. He had some angry encounters with his fellow band members as well as with the press. His problems with the media--even into his later years--was in angrily trying to convince them to give him more credit for the development of jazz.

In 1925, La Rocca quit the band and returned to his hometown. He made an incredible career change when, for some years, he was a contractor in the construction business. He later got back into the music world, rejoining the band to successfully tour and record. In the last years of his life he became a harsh braggart. La Rocca only added to his reputation for graceless behavior by denigrating others in the field, including his own fellow band members. 

However, since his death, at the age of 71 in 1961, Dominic La Rocca's career can be balanced between his personality and his musical skills and original contributions.

On balance, it appears that dominic La Rocca had the first band to use the word jazz. His jazz band was also the first to perform in a motion picture, the first to cut jazz records and the first to have a jazz recording surpass the million mark in sales.

For Those Interested...More!

Excerpt authorized by Author

A Singer From Pesaro - Anna Maria Alberghetti - Spotlight from Guy Graybill's Bravo!

Anna Maria Alberghetti was born in
1936 in the resort town of Pesaro, home to about 90,000 souls today. Pesaro was also the hometown of Gioacchini Rossini...

At 13, Opens at Carnegie Hall

Alberghetti is a gifted soprano who was singing professionally by the age of six. As the years passed, she chose Los Angeles over La Scala. That is to say, rather than becoming am opera singer, Alberghetti became a concert soloist and the singing actress in a number of Broadway plays and Hollywood motion pictures. This success was expanded with the recordings that she made for several different United States companies. Her records, her stage and film appearances had the effect of helping American audiences to realize that Italian females could also have heavenly voices.

Bravo! Greatness of Italian Music - by Guy Graybill From Sinatri to Pavarotti and so Much More!

Be sure to find the latest updated and expanded Edition, dated 2014... Bravo! The Case for Italian Musical Mastery

Historian Guy Graybill undoubtedly loves music as well as history. So if you are a fan of either, I am certain you will want to consider his latest book, Bravo! Greatness of Italian Music, 

I must say immediately that I very much enjoyed this writer's brilliant presentation of what many will see as a major historical text with indepth, well-documented information on his chosen topic. This is very true! But there were subtle small touches that added to my personal delight, such as:

· His use of Acts rather than the common "chapter" to separate his material.
· His choice of highlighting both Sinatra and Pavarotti on the cover to show the breadth of his content.
· His inclusion of small asides of personal opinion and/or tidbits of humor that normally would never appear in a significant research effort; for instance his personal comment about ballet: "What perversity resides within the masculine soul that drives men to create ways to physically hobble females?" (p. 144)
· And, finally, the inclusion of many historical pictures as well as many beautiful hand-drawn portraits from the Dante University Press.

Do not doubt that this book will become a major reference for students of music!

The back cover states, "The Italians were so busy creating and performing superb music that they neglected to tell the great epic story of their wondrous achievement." Indeed, the author has "demonstrated...the Italian contribution to music is overwhelmingly superior." (p. 234) His Curtain on that same page provides 14 areas of music in which Italians excel! Obviously, creation of fine instruments, operas, and symphonies are just a few.

Let me illustrate by just highlighting names that many of you will readily recognize: Gregory who composed the Gregorian chants; Stradivari, makers of stringed instruments; Paganini; Monteverdi, opera's first genius; Verdi; Caruso; Pavarotti; and, one of my favorites, Andrea Bocelli, who is involved in both opera and more modern music and even has his singing in a commercial--how cool is that!

If you don't recognize those involved with classical music, how about: Anna Maria Alberghetti, Mario Lanza, Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell, Jim Croce, Dean Martin, Bobby Darin, Frankie Lane, Jerry Vale, Sonny Bono, Jerry Colonna, Perry Como, Tony Bennett, and, of course, Frank Sinatra.

Just imagine! I've highlighted only those individuals whose name you will probably recognize. I believe you will realize that this book is well beyond a students' text! Anybody who is interested in music will find the personal stories and biographical information on these individuals fascinating!

From Italians and Italian-Americans, there has been "more music lost" than has been created by others! That's a powerful statement, isn't it? Graybill has the statistics--the numbers, to back this up if that will interest you. I think anybody who stops to think about the great music they've come to love, they will realize the impact that Italy's musical genius has made on all of their lives.

Graybill has done an outstanding performance--a major triumph for both history and music! Consider this a must-read for music students and professionals! For others, enjoy this writer, like I did, as I read little tidbits like, "Do corpses really roll over within their graves if something disturbing happens in the world of the living? If so, there's no doubt that the corpse of operatic composer Amilcare Ponchielli took a couple of whirls during the 20th century...especially if he heard the "highly successful musical parody in which Amilcare's stirring music is sung to the opening words, "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah..." (pps. 98-99) You're going to enjoy this one!

 Two samples of rhymes follow:
The following title comes from
the word, 'century' that Nostradamus
used to identify a group of his verses.
It seems especially appropriate following
the Mayan Doomsday silliness.
CENTURIES
The fabled Nostradamus
Fooled simple-minded hacks,
With riddles that were riddled
With trash instead of facts.
Yet, ev'ry generation
Construes his mutant rhymes
In ways that fit their motives
And SEEM to match the times.
The truly thoughtful person
Will alwys be content,
To save each grand prediction
'Til AFTER the event.
]]] [[[
AN ACT OF SELF DEFENSE
Her smile is a rebel smile.
She knows the disarming art.
Her lips bring to light her guile:
A threat to my sov'reign heart.
Before my defiance slips,
I'll show that her threat is known.
I'll siege those rebellious lips,
To crush them beneath my own!
]]] [[[
Copyright, Guy Graybill