Gino Vannelli - Oddities & Rarities

Gino Vannelli was born into an Italian family in Montreal, Quebec. Vannelli and his brother, Joe, moved to Los Angeles in 1972. Herb Alpert, the co-owner of A&M Records, signed Vannelli and released his debut album, Crazy Life, in the summer of 1973. Vannelli was one of the first Caucasians (Dennis Coffey being the very first in January 1972) to appear on the television dance program Soul Train. In 1974, he was invited to tour with Stevie Wonder.

Vanelli then released his albums, Gist of the Gemini (1976) and Brother to Brother (1978) through A&M Records, which produced the single "I Just Wanna Stop", which reached No. 4 on the Billboard magazine chart, No. 1 in Canada, and received a Grammy Award nomination. In 1980, Vannelli signed with Arista Records. His sole Arista album, Nightwalker, provided him with a top-ten pop hit, “Living Inside Myself.” When Vannelli opted to follow it up with a stripped-down, edgier album called Twisted Heart, for the first time in his career he found himself with a less than enthusiastic label, unwilling to release an album. For the next three years Vannelli and his record company engaged in a long battle of creative wills—songs being the sum and substance of the contention.

After a four-year hiatus, Vannelli had finally come through the dark forest and was released from his Arista contract and in 1985 he released the successful Black Cars album and landmark video in Europe. It soon became Vannelli’s most successful international work to that date. Two years later, he recorded Big Dreamers Never Sleep for CBS, whose single, “Wild Horses,” stormed its way to the Top 10 in several countries.  Despite the success of singles "Hurts to Be in Love" and "Wild Horses", Vannelli departed a bit from the pop idiom, and he renewed his interest in western classical music and jazz. Signing with Verve Records, both Vannelli’s commercial outlook and output took a radical swing with the largely acoustic-jazz albums Yonder Tree and Slow Love, released in 1995 and 1997 respectively. Later the song "Parole Per Mio Padre" (Words For My Father), dedicated to his late father, came to the attention of Pope John Paul II who requested a performance of the song at the Vatican. The event caught the attention of the head of BMG Records who subsequently asked Vannelli to record a contemporary classical disc in the style of "Parole per Mio Padre". Canto, released by BMG in 2003, features songs sung in English, Italian, Spanish and French, as is considered by fans and Vannelli himself to be one of his strongest musical accomplishments. In 2008, Vannelli became a symbol of sorts for the National Basketball Association championship run by the Boston Celtics. After each blowout home victory during the 2008 season, the video crew at the TD Banknorth Garden played a clip from Dick Clark's American Bandstand that featured a bearded disco dancer clad in a tight Gino Vannelli T-shirt. The tradition became known in Boston as "Gino Time" and Gino T-shirts became common at Celtics games. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2008 that the dancer in the Gino shirt was a young man named Joseph R. Massoni, and that he had died from pneumonia in 1990.

In 2005 Gino released These Are the Days under the Universal label. It was a compilation that combined seven of his earlier classic hits with seven new songs, marking the debut of yet another phase of Vannelli’s continually fascinating career and a return to the pop genre that made him an icon. 2007, culminated in the 2009 release of a cd/poetry book entitled, A Good Thing.

In late 2009, Gino managed to find the time to re-record many of his better known songs for a cd entitled, The Best & Beyond. Gino Vannelli remains impassioned and true to his art as ever. Gino Vannelli’s standing as a powerful and innovative live performer, his well hewn musical skills as composer, poet, producer and arranger, (his engaging persona notwithstanding) keep his career rising to greater heights.

His collaborations, rarities and the re-recordings of his beter known songs are included on this playlist.