Marino Marini - Il meglio di Marino Marini

Si on veut chercher un équivalent italien des Three Suns (lounge bon enfant, style alerte à large spectre), un chanteur en plus, il faut remettre sur la sellette le Quartetto Marino Marini. Le leader homonyme, fils de chef d'orchestre, devenu pianiste et chanteur, part aux Etats-Unis en 1948 rencontrer les jazzmen de l'époque : Dizzy Gillespie, Charly Ventura et Stan Kenton....Il se perfectionne également en matière électroacoustique, afin de traiter et optimiser le rendu sonore dans ses disques et concerts.
A son retour en Italie, il joue dans des cabarets romains ou napolitains. En 1954, il recrute des musiciens débutants par petites annonces et en 1955 il enregistre son premier disque sur le label DURIUM. En 1956, il fait sa première apparition à la télévision sur une chaîne italienne. Marino Marini et son quartette vont faire des tournées sur tous les continents. Ils iront même en URSS ou en Pologne et collaboreront avec Mikis Theodorakis sur la bande originale du film "Honeymoon", en 1956.
Formation italienne aimable et sans prétention, Marino Marini a donné plusieurs belles interprétations de ballades rétro (leur Kriminal Tango est même assez original) ; l'article anglais ci-dessous, plus élogieux que moi, les place au top...

Ce scopitone déniché sur Youtube est étonnant pour son traitement, plein de bruit de fond, flouté et surexposé, quasi onirique.



Marino Marini was born in Seggiano on May 1924 in a family dedicated to music. His father conducted a village band, his brother played trumpet in a symphony orchestra, another brother played drums, and his sister became a singer in Napoli. Marino initially did not share the family's musical traits: he studied electrotechnic in the Industrial Institute in Bologna.
In 1948 Marino travelled to New York, earning his passage by playing piano onboard a Polish ship Sobieski. He spent six months in the Big Apple, and made friends with many musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton and Charley Ventura.
Throughout the years Marino was honing his electro-acoustic skills and constructed the multiplicator of sound. By all accounts, Marino Marini was the first musician with a good background in manipulation of sound and he used this skill masterfully to boost the standing of his group on stage.
The first quartet consisted of Marino Marini - piano and vocal, Tony (Toto) Savio (guitar) - Sergio (later replaced by Angelo) drums and Ruggero Cori - bass and vocal. These musicians played together for around six years, 1955 – 1960, the most prolific and successful years of the group. The toured the Western Europe extensively: their arrivals in Paris were unprecedented musical feasts, gathering all: from the general public, through luminaries of French culture to Monsieur le Président.

In the end of 1963 Marino decided to rejuvenate his Quartet once again. His new musicians were Francesco Ventura - guitar, Sergio - drums, and Franco Cesarico - bass guitar and vocal. This group played until 1966, when Marino Marini, still highly regarded and popular, decided to change his life interests again.
The musical style of all three groups had a lot in common, but also varied considerably.

What is the overall significance of the Marino Marini group? After the WW2, popular music in Europe was pretty frail, being a mixture of reminiscences of pre-war years, sung by an older generation, and post-war influence of victorious armies: swing, boogie-woogie, this sort of things, which also belonged to a bygone era. New music was long in the making.
The Marino Marini ed il suo Quartetto was the first group in Europe to use sophisticated sound mixing and effects on stage. Their live recordings are not worse than studio ones: and some of them are even better, more relaxed, and more easygoing.
Marino Marini repertoire was based in 80 percent on Italian songs: to many of them he wrote music, and sometimes also text.
Marino Marini excelled also in several other fields. The Quartet recorded a first 16 RPM LP in the World. Nowadays, in times of compact disks, a 16 RPM vinyl seems pretty ordinary, but at the time it allowed to put 20 songs on a LP, instead of the usual 12. Out of other groundbreaking events, Guaglione was the first song in Europe which sold over five million copies.