Amore: The Story of Italian American Song

by Mark Rotella

Amore  is Mark Rotella€™s celebration of the €œItalian decade€€”the years after the war and before the Beatles when Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Dean Martin, and Tony Bennett, among others, won the hearts of the American public with a smooth, stylish, classy brand of pop. In Rotella€™s vivid telling, the stories behind forty Italian American classics (from €œO Sole Mio,€ €œNight and Day,€ and €œMack the Knife€ to €œVolare€ and €œI Wonder Why€) show how a glorious musical tradition became the sound track of postwar America and the expression of a sense of style that we still cherish.  Rotella follows the music from the opera houses and piazzas of southern Italy, to the barrooms of the Bronx and Hoboken, to the Copacabana, the Paramount Theatre, and the Vegas Strip. He shows us the hardworking musicians whose voices were to become ubiquitous on jukeboxes and the radio and who

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published August 30, 2010

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! Mr. Rotella's enthusiasm for Italian-American songsters is infectious. This is a book you'll find yourself singing all day long!

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! It gave me insights into the different types of songs the Italian-American crooners sang and how their songs evolved from the old country. It's also packed with laugh-out-loud anecdotes about Frank Sinatra and others, and personal accounts of the author's interactions with the singers, their managers, wives, widows, and his own family. I learned a bit about music and Italian culture as well.

[Christopher Dalla Riva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic resource on Italian-American singers throughout the 20th century with a particular focus on the period between 1947 and 1963. The only downside is that each chapter is titled after a song but that song often only factors into the arc or that chapter marginally. In other words, if you’re here to learn about some singers, you’re in the right place. If you’re looking for a deep dive on each of the songs that constitute the chapter titles, you should look elsewhere.

[Amy Stilgenbauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful ode to musical history and heritage; not just technicalities, but also the way that music can influence and inspire people, individually and culturally.

[Megan Iranpour · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was exactly what I needed it to be: informative to my music educator understanding of the role of Italians in shaping American music. I think it might have made a better coffee table book - I would have loved pictures and captions. I could’ve read it faster, but I was too busy playing the songs he mentioned to better hear and understand. I have lots of facts in my back pocket now for trivia nights and for guessing the mystery artist on my Golden Oldies radio hour. Worth the read, but nothing to blow my bobby socks off narratively.

[J L Kruse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great books, like great songs, like great art, transcend time by encapsulating it, simultaneously bringing us memory and experience, thrusting them forward into the expectation of hope, and happiness, and resolution. Even tragic books, even love sick lyrics, carry within them that seed of sustainability of the human spirit, and these are the moments that are captured in "Amore". Written in a sparse, journalistic style that is simultaneously elegant and heartfelt, this book is able to capture those moments we all have listening to songs that speak to us, from the operatic style of Enrico Caruso, to the smooth passion of Frank Sinatra, and all of the singers of the "Italian Decade" of American music.

For me, personally, I've had the pleasure of seeing Tony Bennett perform live when he was honored at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center's "Salute to Greatness" Dinner, in recognition of his contributions to the Civil Rights movement. Bennett is a performer who sings from his heart, and experiencing his impromptu, acoustic version of "Lost in the Stars" is a moment I will never forget. In the last chapter of "Amore", Rotella describes a similar moment, watching Bennett perform at Radio City Music Hall two weeks after September 11, 2001:

"...He thanked his band and said to the audience, "You know, they don't make theaters like this anymore." He looked up at the control booth and spoke to the eaves: "Hey, Jimmy, can you do me a favor and kill the sound." Bennet then walked up to the front of the stage - without amplification, without accompaniment - and sang the saddest, the most yearning version of "Fly Me to the Moon" I had ever heard. It was as if he were standing on the piazza of his Calabrese town for all of the villagers to hear."

Moments like that, written and shared, read and re-read, documented and remembered are what make memorable art, and memorable books, because they tie us together, emotion to emotion, history to history, and allow us to transcend.

Read this book.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up only because of the SICP Choir concert on Italian music and while it's no "War and Peace" it was sort of interesting to learn that so many pop singers from WW2 until the Beatles were Italian-Americans. Many grew up in the same neighborhoods, all influenced by their families' listening to Enrico Caruso. And somehow even Elvis gets a mention.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was incredible. I'm not much for nonfiction but I couldn't resist this subject. Very well written, it brought back so many memories of growing up with my Italian grandparents. It's obvious that Mr. Rotella has a passion for great Italian American music and I share that passion. If you're Italian, love music, or even if you're not Italian, it's a great read.