Oscar's stories #01: Four steps in Paradise

 
"Tell me thank you ",Piero Bentivoglio, the Florentine orchestra manager, told me on the phone.

"Thanks for what?" I asked with mixed curiosity, why not, with a certain apprehension.

"Because I signed a contract for your band for May June in a prestigious club on the Adriatic ... Have you ever heard of the Paradiso Club of Rimini?"

Of course I had heard of it. Madonna what news! But we were practically a quartet of off-course students in different subjects, from medicine to law.

Playing in a night club as important as the Paradiso Club in Rimini meant a promotion on the pitch by our agent who represented us nationally. But it also meant that we would have to face a sophisticated audience, different from that of the dance halls and recreational clubs of Florence and the province in which we used to perform to save a little money and also because - let's face it - we really liked it.

"Listen, Mr. Bentivoglio: why did you choose us from among the dozens of orchestras you represent? Excuse the perhaps impertinent question ..."

"Because you have an international repertoire, French-English-Spanish standards, and then you are beautiful ... Now put yourself to rehearsal after rehearsal and see not to let me take back a decision that some define risky ..."

The Paradiso Club was a little outside Rimini, on the Covignano hill. A very elegant structure in a refined atmosphere that was detached from that of the Rimini dance halls in which we had worked the previous summers.

My Florentine agent knew his job well: you entered the platform at 10 pm and until midnight you had to play without interruption, serving an audience made up mainly of young and beautiful Swedish girls who made the brave playboys of the coast spin.

From midnight onwards, the volume of the amplifiers had to be turned down so as not to disturb the guests of nearby guesthouses and hotels.

The Floor Show interrupted the dances for half an hour and the three or four artists featured on the billboard performed on the floor. Then began the real intimate night-club evening with the customers who wanted to find in the orchestra a valid ally to build the many mutual lies that lighten the evenings washed down with champagne.

Bentivoglio, my agent, was right: my songs by Aznavour and Becaud liked them very well and also the standards of Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.

My great inspiration in professional terms was Bruno Martino who I had admired at the Caprice in Forte dei Marmi a couple of years earlier when he had fled from Lebanon upset by yet another revolution.

Just think what life I was leading then: I worked as a salesman at the Auto Emporio in via Nazionale in Florence (200 meters from the Santa Maria Novella station) .. At seven in the evening I took a train to Viareggio, then a bus to Lido di Camaiore. Just enough time to change and put on the "musician's uniform" (in those days it was asked that the orchestras show up on stage in suits and ties, in that heat).

At two in the morning, just enough time to cross the canal taking refuge inside the Caprice to listen to Bruno Martino, the great singer pianist.

At seven o'clock train to Florence and back to work at the Auto Emporium. He says: when did you sleep? On the train and thanks to my colleagues in the shop, I took a few naps, especially during the lunch break. And to think that in that period I took the best exams of my contested law degree.

But in addition to the French, English, Spanish songs and those of Italian songwriters on the crest of the wave of the moment we were able to copy the best songs of a long playing of Jamaican Calypso. And they liked a lot, capers if they liked! T

They were especially liked by Marzio Ciano, son of Edda Mussolini, married to Count Galeazzo Ciano. At the Paradiso Club Marzio Ciano was the master. Dead drunk every night and certainly stuck, Marzio had a nice optimistic disposition that made him a friendly presence among the most assiduous patrons of that night club.

Marzio loved our repertoire very much and above all the calypso which he had heard several times live in his travels in the Caribbean.

When 'the night' (around three, four in the morning) we finished playing, the waiters were careful not to disturb Count Marzio who was snoring like a diesel sprawled on a sofa in the club. Marzio, better: the count, should not have been disturbed even by the cleaning ladies who would have come in at eight in the morning to clean up the rooms in the rooms.

Marzio Ciano had an open account with the Paradiso Club which was honored every 15 days by his mother Edda, the beloved daughter of Benito Mussolini, who among the various lovers had favored the Marquis Emilio Pucci, a great Florentine gentleman who made himself a title of honor in denying any more than friendly relationship with the countess. Following in this the principle expressed by Gianni Agnelli according to which a gentleman never admits to having had an intimate acquaintance with a lady.

The Paradiso Club was run by two managers, or so they called them waiters and service staff. One, let's call him Paolo, carried the full weight of management on his shoulders.

The other, let's call him Armando, was the public relations man, tall, super gym, totally tanned, curly brown with green eyes, a great consumer of females of any nation-religion-culture, age.

And kept in a big way by mature ladies who revived in his bed the last glimpses of their compressed marital sexuality forgotten by some powerful husband captain of industry, finance, politics in quite other busy matters.

The convertible Maserati with which Armando was performing arriving late in the evening at his club had been given to him by a gentlewoman over the years who stormed him with phone calls, precious gifts in order to have the privilege of being in intimacy for a few minutes. with the precious and statuesque lover.

The recurring gossip between the restaurant kitchen and the waiters was that Mr. Armando was a kind of easy hand, that is: he did not refrain from using violence against his mistresses and in particular against the one who at that moment was financing him greatly .

One evening, it must have been 9:30 PM and we had to start playing, we heard screams, weeping pleadings, blasting of the convertible Maserati and screeching tires outside the door of the club.

It had happened that the elderly Milanese lady who financed Armando had been found at the door of the Paradiso Club and had awaited the arrival of her precious (it should be said) lover.

"Give me the keys to the Maserati" shouted the lady, a type of extreme dryness, conquered so to speak, giving up all the pleasures of the table to be able to maintain (so her expensive trainer told her) a teenage silhouette. But the problem was that forced fasting accentuated the web of wrinkles that ravaged the face of the lady who should have undergone a marbling plastic within a month following the not too veiled suggestion of her Rimini ganzo.

"Give me the car keys, bastard," the lady screamed and tears streaked the mascara of her eyes.

The poor woman resembled in her violent malnutrition those little birds wet from the storm trying to shake the water from their feathers.

"Give me the keys, you bastard," the lady kept screaming, who by now had pounced on the Armando's chest and was hurting him with a kilo of sharp gold bracelets that she wore on her wrists.

Armando was impassive, or so it seemed as he felt a few hundred eyes on him from the customers and club staff who witnessed the scene.

He repeatedly tried to block those wrists armed with gold hardware that could cause deep scratches on his chest.

To the face the lady was trying to reach him but without success since she must have been a maximum of one and a half meters high while the Armando was close to two meters.

The icing on the cake: Natasha, a symptomatic blonde beauty of dying Soviet Russia, who was brought to Italy thanks to the high-level acquaintances that Armando boasted among the club's customers, had also crept among the bystanders.

Since the scene could not last much longer and a solution had to be found, the Armando adopted his specialization which had made him attentive to the local police station for previous episodes.

The bold super-tanned playboy loosened a pair of butcher-style lips to the shouting financier of his luxuries and took her by the neck and placed her in a Fiat 123 taxi, the first of the waiting column that immediately took off despite the cries of the lady, thanks to the hefty tip.

The Armando brushed the powder that had stuck on his linen shirt with the fingers of his right hand and handed the keys of the Maserati to Giulio the ferocious bodyguard, telling him: "Take it immediately behind the farmhouse because it must not be found ..."

When he entered the Paradiso club, he approached a telephone from the dresser and dialed a number. "Put the Maserati on sale immediately ... There was that guy, the other night who wanted it at any price ... Let me know." Then, approaching one microphone of the orchestra, he said to the customers: "I'm sorry for the little incident you were spectators of. The first drink is at my expense. Have fun".

The audience of the paradise club varied substantially according to the hours. From 10 and midnight, before the show on the platform, it was mainly composed of the best young playboys of the coast who earned a title of merit in attending each evening intimately the crowds of very tall Swedes in search of Italian love.

Dancing they hugged and groped them, grinning with those who at that moment were doing their job which was that of a singer guitarist. And the grin was very significant.

But it must be said that sometimes, when the couple turned and it was the girl's turn to have eye contact with the musician, well: then it was easy to set up a date with gestures, while the young playboy ignored the affair.

The young stallions of the Adriatic coast went on to Simpamina and even something more. They came under the stage of the orchestra and announced that they were going to go out with the blonde on duty but that they would return shortly after.

Indeed, they did so by boasting of their widely repeated sexual performances. Among these young playboys was a practicing journalist from the Resto del Carlino who would become an international signature.

"Look, there's a customer at that table over there who'd like to offer you a glass of champagne with his wife." This is the message from the head waiter whispered in my ear as we played 'Misty' just to rest and enjoy good music.

"Well, tell him to come here near the orchestra ..."

"Listen, don't trouble me ... the customer is consuming great. He wants you at his table with his wife..."

"This is exactly what I would like to avoid because we were together in a biblical way with the lady for a week ... And now what does this want ... Maybe we'll get a fist fight ..."

 "Of course I know. But make sure you don't get me in trouble because he's a good customer and this is his last evening in Rimini. I can be found near the table with a bottle of champagne as he ordered ... But get busy Now."
 
I approach the table where the customer was sitting who wanted to offer me a drink, a two-meter beast next to the abundant bride I knew well and smiled lowering his eyes in a virginal pose.

The guy gets up, clicks his heels and smiles (definitely a former Nazy officer?). He fills the glasses with the horrible sparkling wine of San Marino and after saying the word Prosit he tells me with great affability: "I have to thank you very much because you have allowed my wife to spend a week of great rest. Arriving from Monaco I found her truly blossomed. And Nicole told me that this is your merit. We are an open couple. "

At least three or four times a week there was a girl who arrived around eleven, natural red hair of fire and a fame gained in her frequentation of the trendy clubs on the Adriatic coast.

Alberta was an opera singer, mezzo soprano. Her admirers considered her not so much for the rare occasions in which she experimented with Bizet's Carmen, but rather for her reputation as an aggressive man-eater, used as she publicly claimed without any precaution because "ham is not eaten with paper".

The kind lady performed on the dance floor in contortions and shuffles with the various horny dancers who huddled against her and to whom she communicated by way of personal introduction that she had reached the 24th abortion.

Many strange characters in the years spent entertaining people in the various dance clubs had passed me many. But that Alberta just gave me the stomach.

The artists who performed at midnight on the Floor Show had contracts that lasted no more than two weeks. Towards the end of June it was the turn of a trio of Jamaicans, two women and a man who had a 'number' based only on percussion that was very effective and appreciated by the public.

At the end of the show the two dancers, who were married to each other, took a taxi and were taken to the boarding house where they were staying.

The dancer instead sat at a table near the orchestra platform, on my side. He asked me to sing some songs of those celebrated by Frank Sinatra. He particularly liked Angel's Eyes which tells of a man sitting at the counter of a bar, now drunk, who remembers the eyes and the expression of a beloved girl.

One morning, it must have been 4:30 am, I had concluded a long night of great commitment because the Paradiso Club had been stormed by a few hundred crazy customers who had to celebrate a dozen birthdays together.

John, the dancer asks me if I could give him a ride on my 500 Fiat to reach the rented apartment with the two other girls.

"Look, I only have a 500 while the other colleagues are traveling on Alfa Romeo" I told him hoping to cancel the request for a ride. (Okay, we made good money, but there were several family situations that weighed on me and didn't allow me to indulge like other musicians did.)

John opened the passenger door and settled into the super mini car. I drove very carefully, first because I was really very tired and then because the numerous whiskeys drunk during the evening certainly had an effect even though I had diluted them all with bottles of seltzer.

At a certain point the dancer begins to groped me and declares his love for me.

I rejected him trying not to lose control of the car. I stopped on a pitch, got out of the car, opened his door, grabbed him by the shirt and yelled at him that I wasn't the type he expected.

John, the dancer, was crying sitting on a curbstone while I started the engine of the little 500 and left it. He would surely find some passage.

Call from our agent Bentivoglio: "So, after Rimini you have to go to Grado where you will work for the whole month of July and August before moving to Venice to play at the famous Antico Martini. The place in Grado is not a night-club like Paradiso but a Dancing Hall where you close every night at 1am. Very familiar atmosphere ... I forgot to tell you that in the afternoon you will have to do the "concertino" for an hour and a half ... "

"No, not the concertino, Bentivoglio ..." I tried to protest to no avail.

Great success (especially among children!).

At the end of August I met a beautiful and sophisticated girl to whom I proposed to be together for fifteen days (my contract expired before going to play in Venice).

 The fortnight happily and fortunately turned into 53 years.


August 7th 1961 at the "Isola d'Oro"  dancing hall in Grado (Italy)
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Wonderful, Oscar!
Which one are you in the picture?
Lead guitar?
All the best,
Grant R. Berning
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Ciao Oscar.
Fantastic story and photo. I hope you and your family are doing well.
Regards,
Gigot Hudspeth