Nico Fidenco died, he was 89 years old – Corriere.it

The singer-songwriter and composer died tonight in Rome at the age of 89 Nico Fedenco. The news was confirmed to Adnkronos by his wife Annamaria and daughter Guendalina. Born Domenico Colarossi in Rome on January 24, 1933, a brilliant singer-songwriter from the outset, Fidenco achieved success in the 1960s, with songs taken from soundtracks, first of all What a sky (in Italian Up in the sky), from Francesco Maselli’s film The Dolphins, but above all with the song Tied to a grain of sandconsidered the first summer hit in the history of Italian music.

In 1939, at the age of six, Fidenco moved with his family to Asmara, Eritrea, where he remained until 1949. In 1960, already in stable of the Italian RCA in Rome, where it was presented by Franco Migliacciespecially as an author. The artistic director Enzo Micocci also judges his voice as interesting. And when director Francesco Maselli is looking for a song for his film The dolphinsMicocci offers him an unreleased song, What a Sky, composed by maestro Giovanni Fusco.

The specimen is engraved by a young man Little Tonyby the son of Fusco and by Fidenco. But it is precisely the latter that is preferred by the production. The record company did not initially foresee the publication of the piece on 45 laps, but the pressure from shopkeepers and wholesalers, due to the requests of the public (the film was very favorably received in theaters), push the label not only to record the English version, but to rush Fidenco back to engraving room to record on the same orchestral backing track la Italian version Up in the sky to be put on the B side of the 45 rpm which has remained since 31 December 1960 at the top to the ranking for four weeks.

After What a sky Fidenco records other songs in English and Italian taken from soundtracks of big blockbusters like: Just that same old line from the movie The girl with the suitcase with Claudia Cardinale; The World of Suzie Wong from the film of the same name with William Holden which reached number one for five weeks in 1961; Exodusfrom the film with Paul Newman; Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany’s with Audrey Hepburn; The man who couldn’t love from the film of the same name with George Peppino and A Woman in the World from the film The woman in the world.

His successes don’t stop at only soundtracks. In the mid-60s, Fidenco put together a series of greatest hits in the standings: With you on the beach (second place in Un disco per l’estate 1964), If you lose me, How love is born, A casa di Irene, The desire to dance (finalist in Un disco per l’estate 1965), Drop of the Sea, Not true, All the people, but above all Tied to a grain of sand (1961), considered the first example of summer catchphrase Italian in history, with 14 weeks of permanence at the top of the hit parade, the first 45 rpm to exceed in Italy the million of copies sold (it even reached one and a half million).

In 1966 Fidenco left RCA to move to Parade but, henceforth its made popular undergoes one bendingdespite a participation, his only one, at the Sanremo Festival in the 1967 edition, remembered above all for the tragic Death from Luigi Tenco. The singer, who presents the song signed by Gianni Meccia Ma piano (per nonwake up) paired with Cherfails to enter the final. After reducing their own pop recordingsFidenco returns to take care of again soundtracks,
composing for the so-called genre cinema throughout the seventies and eighties, ranging from spaghetti western (the first soundtrack for In the shadow of a colt) to the films of the so-called sexual exploitation like The Strange Law of Dr. Menga (1971), The little girl (1975) and the cult series Emanuelle, also attending thehorror for the 1980 film Zombie Holocaust and the crossroad Joe D’Amato’s Holocaust Porn.

The only pop album made in this decade My summer with Cinziareleased in 1970 on the Ri-Fi label. In the late seventies and early eighties he finds a unexpectedly popular among the youngest audiences, also in terms of sales, thanks to the numerous acronyms engraved for the souls japanese, custom phenomenon television of that period. The acronym Don Chuck Castoro manages to sell over four hundred thousand copies, bringing Fidenco back to the charts. In this decade he too returns to record pop albums such as My Mania from 1981 and Direction Prohibited from 1989.

In the decade 1984-1994, with colleagues Riccardo Del Turco, Jimmy Fontana And John MecciaLife Trust a I Super 4quartet with which he re-proposes hits taken from the respective repertoires of the Sixties rearranged in modern keywith which he released three fairly commercially successful albums. In 2007 she performed live within the Lucca Comics & Games, singing live someone soundtracks And acronyms from cartoons become cult. In the wake of this revival, the Siglandia label released in 2019 a collection of all the acronyms of the Cartoon of Fidenco in remastered edition And limitedto make up for the absence of these recordings from the digital record market.