Renato Carosone

In 1960, at the height of his success, Renato Carosone stopped performing in public, returning afterwards only when it suited him. Behind that decision lay a career built at speed: piano studies completed at the Naples Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella while he was still a teenager, then a departure in 1937 for Italian East Africa as a working musician, where he remained through the war absorbing the international dance styles that passed through. Back in Italy from 1946 he formed small groups in which piano, percussion and comic stagecraft together did the work of a much larger band. Tu vuò fà l'americano — a sharp joke at the expense of second-hand Americanism — along with Torero, Caravan petrol, 'O sarracino and Maruzzella carried Neapolitan song a long way beyond Naples. He died in 2001.