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.
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