“TU VUO’ FA’ L’AMERICANO”
This was the result of my first collaboration with Nicola Salerno better known as NISA: Doctor Rapetti, who was then the director of RICORDI (MOGOL’s father) commissioned some songs for a radio competition and among the notes that NISA pulled out of his pocket was, Tu vuò fa l’americano, which really struck me. I sat at the piano, I put the text on the music stand and began to play with my left hand, while Rapetti and Nisa were expecting something to happen. The song was born in fifteen minutes, it was a real bomb and we all were so excited. We understood immediately that it would have become a great success.


“MARUZZELLA”
A lot of people wonder about the title of this song, however it is only a pet name for Marisa. I wrote it in ten minutes in 1955 while thinking of my wife.


“TORERO”
We didn’t have the twelfth song for the record, I was very worried because I was about to go on tour and there was very little time left. I kept repeating to myself: “you have to find something”. I kept thinking of Spain since that’s where we were supposed to go on tour and I thought: A torero! Nisa replied “do you have a sombrero on your head”. We went along with this idea and we decided that the rhyme should end in “è” of the sentence “cu ‘nu sicario avana e ‘a cammesella ‘e……” We consulted the rhyming dictionary we tried everything but we couldn’t think of anything! You would never believe where the whole thing took place, in the bathroom, I thought of the word “picchè” and I shouted in joy, the song was then finished. The Spanish thought it was a hymn to Toreros, it had a great success in America and a great success worldwide. Torero remained in the hit list for 14 weeks. I think that it was recorded in more than thirty versions and translated in every language.


“ ‘O SARRACINO”
Una mattina telefonai a Nisa per incontrarci: “Nicò ho un’idea per una nuova canzone. Immagina, all’orizzonte nel golfo di Napoli, si vede spuntare una nave tutta bianca, si avvicina, e sopra un uomo di colore, pure vestito di bianco. Un tipo orientale, di quelli che fanno impazzire le ragazze, insomma un “saraceno” ma americano, alla Harry Belafonte per intenderci. Nicola mi guarda un po’ assorto come se stesse già pensando ai versi della canzone e mi fa: ma perché proprio americano, può essere benissimo napoletano “ ‘sto sarracino”. Io di rimbalzo, Nicò, se mi togli il “negro americano” finisce la canzone. Renà non ti preoccupare, lo abbronziamo, ma deve essere napoletano; e nacque ‘nu bello guaglione coi capelli ricci e ‘o sole ‘nfaccia.


“CARAVAN PETROL”
One morning I called Nisa and asked to meet up with him: “Nicò I have an idea for a new song. Try to imagine a white boat in the golf of Naples which keeps getting closer and on it and colored man dressed in white. An Oriental type of man, the kind that drive the girls wild, you know a Saracen, but American, like Harry Belafonte. Nicola looked at me as if he were trying to think up the words for the song and then he says: why does he have to be American, this Saracen can very well be from Naples. I replied that if he took out the part about the colored man then the song would not exist. Renà, don’t worry, we’ll have him get a tan, but he has to be from Naples; and that’s how the beautiful boy with the wavy hair and the sun in his face was born.

Sandrino Aquilani