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Banda Osiris,
Enrico Rava, Gianmaria Testa, Stefano Bollani, Enzo Pietropaoli, Piero
Ponzo
"GUARDA CHE LUNA..."
A TRIBUTE TO FRED BUSCAGLIONE
This original show is not
a concert or a musical, theatre or cabaret - it is all of these
together. As well as making audiences laugh, above all it provides the
opportunity to hear some beautiful Italian songs from another era.
This was the age of the night club and of the small dance halls which
were the haunt of a comic underworld and femme fatales. A version of
Italy with overtones of film noir, an Italy dreaming of America,
ostentatiously drinking whisky and playing jazz.
It was the age of Ferdinando “Fred” Buscaglione, a songwriter of great
talent (with lyricist Leo Chiosso), a singer (with a voice like
sandpaper), an actor and comic who played the part of a small-time
gangster. With his Clark Gable moustache and gallons of hair cream on
his head, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth and a glass
in hand, eternally performing a balancing act between sentimentalism
and caricature, Fred personified this period of Italy’s recent past as
nobody else did. Or with such success. His song “Che bambola” sold
almost one million copies!
This show is a tribute to Buscaglione, and the cast, performing
together for the first time, includes some of the finest names of
Italian jazz (Enrico Rava, Stefano Bollani, Enzo Pietropaoli, Piero
Ponzo), Banda Osiris and Gianmaria Testa, the singer-station master
from Turin (like Buscaglione), a cult artist who was first discovered
in France several years ago.
In recent years, several Italian jazz musicians (along with others)
have been rediscovering the songs from Italy’s past. Last year Umbria
Jazz presented “Abbassa la tua radio” at Orvieto, and before that
there was “Radio Days” by the Rava-Sellani duo.it was natural that
sooner or later musicians would arrive at (or go back to) Fred
Buscaglione, Italy’s fifties-version of Tom Waits.
A short biographical note about Buscaglione is in order, as many who
come to Umbria Jazz were not yet born when Fred died in Rome on 3
February 1960 when his pink Thunderbird crashed into another car. Born
in 1922, he studied music at conservatory and served a long
apprenticeship playing in dance halls before becoming famous. At one
stage he received some help from Gino Latilla, another important pop
figure of the day, but Fred’s talent was a natural gift, he knew how
to write fantastic songs and soon met with enormous success on his
own. Many of his songs have stayed in the real book of Italian popular
music: Eri piccola così, Guarda che luna (which was not written by
him), Porfirio Villarosa, Whisky facile, Love in Portofino, and many
others.
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