Author Evokes Golden Era of Italian-American Singers

In 1956, Bobby Darin was 19 and had fallen for an aspiring singer named Connie Francis. He took the bus from the Bronx to Greylock Parkway and Forest Street in Belleville to see her. Though her overprotective father did his best to break them up, chasing Darin off the set of The Jackie Gleason Show with a gun, both Bobby Darin and Connie Francis went on to be musical legends.

It is vignettes like this - about Frank Sinatra, Louis Prima - and many other Italian-American singers that come to life in the pages of Mark Rotella's book "Amore, The story of Italian American Song."

Some of the singers, like Frankie Valli, had roots in Belleville and North Newark, others, like Sinatra, hailed from Hoboken. Jersey is nicely represented in the book, though the singers profiled come from all over the United States.

Rotella, of Montclair, spent six years crisscrossing the country interviewing Italian-American singers, their descendents, their managers and others involved in the music business for his book, which was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in September.

"I grew up listening to Italian music. To me it feels optimistic - it evokes my childhood," said Rotella. He said American standards sung by such vocalists as Tony Bennett, Dean Martin and Perry Como became even more poignant when he was in his early thirties and he and his wife listened to the music as she battled and survived cancer.

When he couldn't find a book to read about these singers, Rotella decided to write his own. "I was looking for their inspiration, their culture, how they ate, how they grew up," he said.

He started the book after publishing "Stolen Figs," a memoir of a trip he took with his father to Calabria, Italy, where the Rotella family is from.

The result is a collection of memories, stories and recollections that offer a snapshot, not just about the singers, but of what it was like being Italian-American in post-World War II America. There are stories of hard-working blue-collar fathers who shoveled coal and worked in paving, about mothers who baked bread and pinched pennies to help their children become a success, and about the singers themselves - who often had to change their names in order to succeed.

"It was Italian-Americans who gave style to pop music in the 1950s," said Rotella. "(They had) a certain smoothness and a little bit of an attitude ... There was a very vibrant feel to the music."

Rotella's book is available at Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, at Barnes & Noble stores, Borders.com and Amazon.com.

Rotella, who works by day in publishing, and is the married father of two children, said he hopes readers will take something away from his book.

"It's a celebration of the Italian influence on American pop music even Italian-Americans don't realize," he said. "Some of the singers were unsung. A lot of them had been forgotten."