Bill BERKSON
Piazza Marina
At 04:11 PM 6/25/01 -0700, you wrote:
>Amelia, do you -- or does anyone -- know of an Italian theater composer
>whose name is -- or sounds like -- Gordon Kramer?
Here is the story:
50-something piano player at nice small Piazza Marina restaurant in Palermo knocks off standards with some handiness, much sweetness -- clearly he's heard Garner, Shearing, Fats, but it's basic barroom rhythm. He looks out at us occasionally, a polite, almost sighing, smile. So Connie says, he knows all
our old songs. Whereupon, not even having heard her, he slips into 3straight numbers with recognizable chordings but by whom??? I perk up. Finally I stare at him, he stares back; I say, managing some such riff in my limited Italian, WHO wrote those last 3 songs??!! "An Italian theater composer," he glows in answering. "Gordon Kramer." (Sounds like.) "Chebellissima," I aver. We are all three charmed, and the house red is warming up inside, as well. No Gordon Kramer so far shows up on any of my searches. It just now occurred to me that that guy at the piano might be "Gordon Kramer," or at any rate the actual composer of those tunes. Or did I get the spelling wrong?
As ever,
Bill
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Dear Bill,
About your musical puzzle. Gorni Kramer is a very famous person in Italy. He is a maestro, composer of beautiful and very popular songs in the ¹50s and ¹60s in Italy. He was conducting the Orchestra in the San Remo festival and he is the Italian Lawrence Welk.
He was born in Rivarolo, near Mantova in 1913 and was playing the piano and the "fisarmonica"
(accordion). His father, whose last name was Gorni, gave him the first name Kramer for a tribute to a cyclist. Everybody thought that his first name was Gorni and that he was a foreigner and that helped his fame. He was famous for nice songs ³Pippo non lo sa' Domenica e` sempre domenica² and a lot more. he
started with a jazz group after the war and become famous at the radio before the television. He died at 82 years.Are you satisfied of my memory and my research skills?
If you want to know more look into www. google.it
Ciao,
Amelia