Il Cantadisco and The Italian Rca orchestras

Thanks to the discovery of an lp releasd in 1967, I seize this opportunity to talk about the great arrangers of the Italian RCA which were, in the sixties, people of the calibre of Ennio Morricone, Luis Enriquez Bacalov, Franco Pisano, Carlo Pes, Guido Relly.

The record in question is  Cantadisco, predecessor of the modern karaoke, basically a collection of 14 tracks performed by RCA orchestras which  delighted us with the hits of the time. According to the back sleeve notes, the basics are the same as those used for the original records with an overdubbed organ arrangement so as to facilitate the vocal performance of the songs.

The track-list is as follows:

La fisarmonica – Ennio Morricone e la sua orchestra e I Cantori Moderni di A. Alessandroni


Piangi con me – I Rokes (brano non orchestrale)

Quando dico che ti amo – Franco Pisano e la sua orchestra

Domani – Guido Relly e la sua orchestra e I Cantori Moderni di A. Alessandroni

Ti vedo uscire – Ennio Morricone e la sua orchestra e I Cantori Moderni di A. Alessandroni

Lui – Luis Enriquez e la sua orchestra e I Cantori Moderni di A. Alessandroni

Te lo leggo negli occhi – Ennio Morricone e la sua orchestra e I Cantori Moderni di A. Alessandroni

Bisogna saper perdere– I Rokes (altro brano non orchestrale)

Il mondo -  Ennio Morricone e la sua orchestra e I Cantori Moderni di A. Alessandroni

Fortissimo - Luis Enriquez e la sua orchestra e I Cantori Moderni di A. Alessandroni

Se telefonando - Guido Relly e la sua orchestra e I Cantori Moderni di A. Alessandroni

Vivrò - Guido Relly e la sua orchestra e I Cantori Moderni di A. Alessandroni

Pensandoci ogni sera – Carlo Pes e la sua orchestra e I Cantori Moderni di A. Alessandroni

Se perdo anche te - Ennio Morricone e la sua orchestra

For those who are used to consider Ennio Morricone as an author of movie scores and contemporary music, it might be strange to find out about his activity as arranger of pop music .

Ennio arrives at RCA  in 1959 taking over the place previously occupied by maestro Marcello De Martino. He was awarded  with a Diploma at the Music Academy (Conservatorio) and he was a student of the great Goffredo Petrassi.....The year before he was employed in RAI (Italian Broadcast Radio-TV)  but his experience lasted very briefly because he handed over his resignations the same day he was employed because he felt his work in RAI would have been a routine job, his compositions would never have been performed by the orchestras and soon after  he was deployed to other office duties.

One of his first arrangements was for Il Barattolo of Gianni Meccia for whom he managed, in the introductory part of the song, to synchronize the noise of some tin-cans with orchestral rythmics. The  modus operandi of Morricone is very rigid, he is undoubtly an insatiable worker, the change of sounds and modulations produced by him are very refined and  put the designated orchestra through a very tough challenge in playing them: through his choices and method one can unequivocally  perceive his solid and classical training.

The sixties were a very profitable decade, during which jewels such as Sapore di Mare, Il mondo, C’era un ragazzo che come me che amava i Beatles e i Rolling Stones and Il cielo in una stanza were released , but the working relationship with the Roman label was destined to end due to the movie industry’s demands . According to the Maestro, however, a strange situation came alight: following the music revolution of those years the requests by the RCA to follow the American tendencies also became more pressurizing.  He returned at RCA  in 1978 to arrange the record Bandierine by Renzo Zenobi, where he used a new experimental technique which consisted in three different arrangements of the same track which during the mix phase, were overdubbed and interexchanged. The time of orchestras, however, was coming to an end and also the RCA was compelled, during the eighties, to shut down.

Luis Enriquez Bacalov arrived in RCA together with Morricone in 1959; he already was a recognized  brilliant arranger who, as soon as arrived in Italy from Argentina, he had his own way with the Cetra label: he cooperated, among others, with Claudio Villa (of whom was pianist and supporting musician up to the end of fifties) as well as Milva. One of his first  arrangements was Il Capello which crowned Edoardo Vianello’s  long list of hits. He continued to get further noticed by taking care of arrangements of other RCA artists: Nico Fidenco (remarkable the one of “Legata ad un granello di sabbia”), Sergio Endrigo, Rita Pavone (memorable the work done on the song Cuore) , Umberto Bindi, Neil Sedaka (his arrangement for La terza luna contributed to the great success of the song). Then, following contrasts with the Director Ennio Melis, Bacalov also left the RCA and dedicated the following years almost exclusively to movie scores.

Statistically, Bacalov is in net contrast with respect to Ennio Morricone, his style can be defined  simple and direct , more colored and expressive, with a tendency to produce effect in its most positive sense.   

Franco Pisano began his career as musician with his younger brother Berto with whom, in the fifties, interchanged jazz with the Asternovas Band of Fred Buscaglione.  At the same time, while working at RCA he was cooperating with the Radio Orchestra of RAI and this allowed him to count on a  well close-knit group. His training was based on American music, thanks to the listening of composers and arrangers from overseas.

The partnership with Tony Renis allowed him to arrange songs such as Nessun’altra che te, Quando dico che ti amo and many more, as well as other songs written by the Milanese singer and other artists such as Gianni Morandi with Tenerezza.

Carlo Pes got noticed in the environment as the lead guitarist of the Armando Trovaioli Orchestra: the relationship was very strong that when he left the orchestra, Pes continued to cooperate with the maeestro together with the group Marc 4 (also known with the name I Solisti di Armando Trovajoli)  with Maurizio Maiorana on bass, Antonello Vannucchi on  keyboards and Roberto Podio on drums and percussions.

By the end of the ‘50s he became part of the Orchestra Rai, but his role at the time also included that of arranger of RCA, where had the chance  to work, among other famous artists,  with Patty Pravo  (Ragazzo Triste), Josè Feliciano (Que sera), Jimmy Fontana and Dalida.