Roberto Murolo playlist

Roberto Murolo

Thanks to an artistic career that spanned over half a century (he released his first 78 rpm in 1947 and last CD in 2002), Roberto Murolo (1912-2003) more than anyone linked the present of Neapolitan song to its long tradition. In so doing, he revitalized the genre, removing that veneer of rhetoric that often weighed upon it. His 12-disc set Antologia della canzone napoletana, released between 1963 and 1965, is still today a monument of rigour and art, the most coherent and thorough compilation of its kind. Here Murolo retraces the important moments of an unsurpassed musical tradition, from the Middle Ages to the present. The songs are accompanied by a lone guitar (Eduardo Caliendo), thus imbuing a repertoire that has always been the prerogative of artists in search of applause with an air reminiscent of chamber music, almost classical. Yet his preferred venue was actually the nightclub, his first musical love being jazz: his recordings of the 1950s placed him among those wishing to bring innovation into this tradition, together with Renato Carosone, Ugo Calise and a very young Peppino Di Capri. This collection presents recordings from that time, all released as 78 rpm discs, in which Murolo murmurs in the typical style of a crooner – an absolute novelty for Neapolitan song – as he sings the famous melodies of the present and past. One of these is ‘Santa Lucia’, the first song written in Italian (from 1850); here it accompanied by the piano in a version produced for the ‘Night Club’ series.

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