Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Marinella - Oscar Alemán In Soundtrack of a Tino Rossi Movie (1936)

Tino Rossi
Tino Rossi  (1907 – 1983) was a French singer and film actor. Born Constantin Rossi in Ajaccio, Corsica, France, he became a tenor of French cabaret and one of the great romantic idols of his time. Gifted with an operatic voice, a "Latin Lover" persona made him a movie star as well. Over his career, Rossi made hundreds of records and appeared in more than 25 films. His romantic ballads had women swooning and his art-songs helped drawing sold out audiences wherever he performed. He is the only French singer to have sold over 700 million records. (excerpt of Wikipedia article ,here ).

Oscar Alemán with National Tricone guitar, 1930s
Tino Rossi began his film career in Les Nuits Moscovites (1934), but his first real success came with Pierre Caron's Marinella (1936), a musical film which was written specifically for him. Needless to say, the theme song from the film proved a great hit. All his films were musicals and capitalised on his success as a singer.- We were pointed to a YouTube video featuring the theme song Marinella copied from the original film, as it is supposed to have Oscar Alemán playing the guitar in the accompanying sound-track. Earlier there have been assumptions that Alemán particpated in recordings with Tino Rossi, but up till now we have not been able to confirm this from lack of discographical info on Tino Rossi's output. However, judging from the soundtrack of the song, it seems likely that Alemán actually participated in the recording of this particular take of Marinella as an anonymous studio musician. The guitar part behind Rossi's vocal sounds much like other recordings by Alemán from the 1930s in Paris, where he from time to time contributed his skills on the National tricone metal guitar as accompaniment for vocal artists like Lina d'Acosta and the Jean, Jac & Jo trio a.o.. - You have the opportunity to download a legal and free mp3 copy of the soundtrack recording of Marinella here. Below is inserted the YouTube video featuring the original 1936 Tino Rossi performance of the song on screen.



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Jo
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