Roberto Murolo

Italian Neapolitan singer and guitarist

Son of Ernesto Murolo (who wrote the lyrics to Piscatore 'E Pusilleco and Napule Ca Se Ne Va, among many other songs). Roberto Murolo was a musical institution, both in his home of Napoles and all of Italy, during the middle and second half of the 20th century. The son of poet Ernesto Murolo and the former Lia Cavalli, he was born in 1912 and showed a strong interest in music from an early age, especially singing and playing the guitar, at which he became extremely proficient. He spent his early professional years as a member of a quartet, with which he performed away from Italy from 1939 through 1946. His solo career -- focused almost exclusively on Neopolitan song, traditional and popular alike, began with his return to Italy in 1946. In addition to establishing himself as a concert artist and a popular figure on radio, with his romantic, sentimental sound, he also did some acting in movies, appearing in the 1953 crime drama The Counterfeiters, made in Italy by director Franco Rossi. Murolo became virtually a cultural ambassador from Naples to the world, and it was because of his recordings and performances that Neopolitan song was spread across five other continents.