Sunday, August 30, 2009

Foil Versus Rotary Shavers

In memory of the Quartetto Cetra


She's gone the last male voice of the Quartet Cetra. Virgilio Savona died in Milan at age 89. And the vocal group who scored in the streets of jazz and variety of the First World War to the Seventies, now left with the wife, Lucia Mannucci, the "lady" of the group. "In America there were the Mills Brothers and many other vocal groups - Savona had told us a couple of years ago in a family home in Milan - a vocal quartet from us was a novelty. Started listening to jazz on the sly during the war and then, after liberation, we sang the songs of Louis Armstrong and the classics of blacks in the city on the South steps of the truck. " With Tata and
Giacobetti Felice Chiusano (respectively, disappeared in 1988 and 1990) and his wife Lucy has created an amalgam of voices and unique gag. Before they were called Rhythm Quartet, then in 1941 debuted on the radio, in the magazine as of summary Cetra. They are a new and fresh news in the Italian music scene, and when the year Enrico De Angelis is invoked in war, he joined the group bringing the lightness Mannucci clear voice and the touch that will define the characteristics of the group. The Quartetto Cetra I broke tracks with light, carefree and beautifully harmonized, most likely from the same Savona. Among the most famous Concertino (which made them known to the general public through a TV broadcast in four travelers are better), had a collar (that of Bella Gigogin flow-Sanremo in '54), in a stage of La Scala, on Old America music by Lelio Luttazzi, A kiss at midnight to music by Gorni Kramer and the old farm. "They were happy times - Savona remembered - those of the boom. Italy rediscovered a taste for fun, to do new things. The reference point for all was America, but we have tried to sing the swing seen from our point of view. "
Elegant, nice, a bit ' naive, became a symbol of the late varieties and the large crowd in the theater went to TV success, participating in historical programs such as Studio 1. Often performed in costume, like real actors or popular strolling players that won over audiences with the simplicity but without forgetting the class. They were precursors of what is known contamination and were overwhelmed by the wave beat. "We took around the old farm - Savona told us yet - who did not know that is a classic of Anglo-Saxon folk." And
Savona was also a great scholar of popular music. In 1970 he released the album et Sexus politics, with songs written by Giorgio Gaber, and in 2004 was awarded to the Club Tenco as "one of degree historical protagonists of Italian music and culture. " That year all of Tenco singers performed his songs in the album and then recorded and transcribed in the book follow Virgil. Hospitalized for a long time for the worsening of Parkinson's disease, was working on an album of old folk songs.