Renato Carosone playlist

Renato Carosone

One hundred years after his birth, we remember Renato Carosone (1920 - 2001) with a collection of great hits, bearing witness to the exceptional talent who knew how to give the Neapolitan song new life, taste and irony, prefiguring its evolution as world music, nourished by Mediterranean, Arab and American elements. A piano virtuoso, Carosone graduated from the conservatory, and was the first Italian artist - simultaneously with Modugno – to make it on the overseas charts, with Torero (in 1958) while Tu vuo’ ffà l’americano (1956) was used in various Hollywood soundtracks, including "The Talented Mr. Ripley" where it is sung by Matt Damon and Fiorello. It is only the tip of the iceberg of a repertoire of timeless pieces that continue to be replayed on radio and television also thanks to new interpretations. Carosone’s style is found in that area between swing, night club and café-chantant: a mixture that exploded in that post-war Naples where American troops were stationed for long periods, favoring the assimilation of rhythms and expressions which then became our country’s daily bread. Combined with this musical base is a taste for parody inherited from the great Neapolitan humor tradition, precursor of that demented genre that goes from Spike Jones to Elio e le Storie Tese. Carosone's output of recordings is concentrated over a few years, from the mid-1950s to 1960, when he retired from the scene to return sporadically to television events that celebrated his career, tours and re-recordings of his classics.