Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Romano Bruno Mussolini was born on September 26, 1927 in Villa Carpena, Forlì,Italy. He was the fourth child and youngest son of Il Duce, Benito Mussolini. He studied music as a child, playing classical pieces with his father on the violin. After World War II, he started playing jazz under the alias Romano Full.

By the mid-1950s, he formed a trio and in 1956 released a self-titled record featuring Lilian Terry on vocals and trumpeter Nunzio Rotondo on RCA Records. The Sixties saw him form the Romano Mussolini All Stars, which became one of Italy’s foremost jazz bands.

The All Stars recorded a well-received record Jazz Allo Studio 7 in 1963 with At the Santa Tecla following a year later. Romano’s band toured internationally with Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Helen Merrill and Chet Baker, among others. In the 1990s he recorded two more albums, Perfect Alibi and Soft and Swing.

His playing style has been described as “like a slightly melancholic Oscar Peterson. Occasionally inspired, he was always efficient; he made the refrains run on time.

Pianist Romano Mussolini, who was also a painter and film producer, transitioned on February 3, 2006, at the age of 78, in a hospital in Rome, Italy from heart problems.

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