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Lazy Mary Backstory
THE BACKSTORY: Paolo Citorello
was a Sicilian seaman who would pass the time on long voyages by playing and singing folk
songs from his native land. Paolo didn't read music, so he strummed his guitar by
ear, singing what he could remember and improvising the rest. After one memorable ocean
trip, in the late 1920s, he returned with what he viewed as his own composition of one of
those songs: "Luna Mezzo Mare". The singing sailor from Sicily auditioned
it for the Italian Book Company, who also made phonograph records. They arranged and
copyrighted the song for him, although it's not clear how much of the tune Citorello
adapted and how much was from an older source. Did young Paolo ever frequent the opera
house? Had he ever heard a certain work by composer Gioachino
Soon after the initial copyright, recordings of various versions of the tune began to be made and released in the United States. Spelling his last name "Citarella", Brunswick records put out Paolo's rendition as "Luna Mezzomare" in September of 1927. As was common at the time, other versions were recorded for other companies; two more Citarella releases of the same song--but with titles taken from different lines in it--appeared a few years later: "Mamma a cu Maddari" on Okeh in 1929 and "Mi Vulissi Maritari" on Odeon in 1930. The lyrics were moving between Italian regional dialects, creating many different spellings of the title and its variations, including Paolo Dones recording for Columbia "A Luna 'Mmenzu 'u Mari"; as "Mi Vogghiu Maritari" by Rosina (Trubia) Gioiosa it was another Brunswick release, with Gioiosa credited as the writer. Joining the crowd were Silvia Coruzzolo on Victor with "A Luna Mezzo o' Mare" and still another Columbia release, an instrumental "La Luna in Mezzo al Mare (A Luna Mmezzu 'u Mari)" by I Diavoli with the Rossi Orchestra. All of this was part of a flourishing of Italian music from approximately 1894 to 1942. In their book Italian-American Folklore (1992, August House Inc., Little Rock), Frances M. Malpezzi and William M. Clements point out that some 473 individuals and ensembles made Italian-American records in that time-frame, more than any other non-English-speaking group in the United States. The authors include the song they call "E la Luna Mezzu Mari" and write:
But "Luna Mezzo Mare" might have had its day in the sun as only a favorite
recording of Italian immigrants in the United States if it weren't for a singer who rose
to fame in the early '20s at Yale University and began his career singing through a
megaphone at the Heigh Ho Club in New York City. Hubert Prior Vallee had renamed
himself after one of his idols, saxophonist Rudy Wiedolft, and he took the country by
storm beginni In 1929, Rudy Vallee and his Connecticut Yankees scored their first of many hit
recordings, on Harmony Records, with "Sweetheart of All My Dreams". The next
decade brought nearly 50 Rudy Vallee records to the Top 10, including the number one hits
"Honey", "The Stein Song", "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?"
and (in 1937) "Vieni, Vieni", an adaptation of a Corsican folk song. The stage
was set for "Luna Mezzo Mare" in English, and Vallee was the man to do it. In
1938, he recorded the song as a novelty tune called "Oh! Ma-Ma! (The Butcher
Boy)"* on Bluebird Records. The label categorized it as a Fox Trot
rather than a Tarantella. It re-worked the original Italian story of a daughter
(Daughter): Finally, the Fisher Boy also shows up, equally vying for Marie's affection, this time with "fresh-a fish" in his bundle. Who will she marry? For the answer, the road leads to the Andrews Sisters. As other acts soon jumped on "The Butcher Boy" bandwagon--notably
singer/songwriter Dick Robertson (who also hit the Top 10), New York bandleader
After the Rudy Valee era of the song, the original "Luna Mezzo Mare" surfaced
again in the 1950s with a version by Dean Martin and then with Lou Monte as "Lazy Mary". Martin's rendition, in 1951, is a silly
throwaway. But it's an interesting transition back from "Oh! Ma-Ma! (The Butcher
Boy)", since it uses the same musical arrangement. Dino does sing in dialect of the
Butcher and his Sicilian sausage, but he also adlibs about spaghetti, macaroni and
mozzarella. He also says in the record that it's not easy for him to sing the song, since
he doesn't speak very good, as he calls it, "Itralian". In the '60s, New
Orleans-born Louis Prima put his own spin on the song, calling it "Che La Luna",
performed in a Dixieland style (see Resources). Prima was probably the only star of the rock 'n' roll era
whose career went back as far as Cirorello's original (he started performing in the early
1930s). In one form or another, Citorello's ditty lives on as one of the archetypes of Italian-American music. As Malpezzi and Clements point out:
*Note: "Oh! Ma-Ma! (The Butcher Boy)"
should not be confused with the Irish/American folk song "The Butcher('s) Boy",
which is a sad tale of a girl who falls in love with the boy and hangs herself when he
abandons her. That song also appears in many variations, including "London
City", "Railroad Boy", "Go Bring Me Back My Blue-Eyed Boy" and
"I Died For Love". |
Rossini--famous for "The Barber
of Seville" and "The William Tell Overture" (which we know as the Lone
Ranger's theme)? As early as 1835, Rossini had written "La Danza", a Neapolitan
Tarantella with the opening line: Già la
luna in mezzo al mare, mamma mia... But
the bulk of Rossini's lyrics were about the sensuousness of the dance, not about the right
type of man to marry (see 
ng with broadcasts from the club heard on the New York powerhouse
station WABC. By 1928--the very year Paolo Citorello/Citarella was climbing the Italian
Hit Parade--Rudy Valle was hosting the first-ever radio talk/variety show, "The
Fleischman Hour". The program reached 200 million listeners, and Vallee was a
trendsetter, presenting many now familiar names in his broadcast, including Edgar Bergen,
Carmen Miranda, Eddie Cantor and Milton Berle. He also pioneered by inviting many black
artists to join him on the air, which led to his appearances with them at clubs in Harlem.
A special favorite was Louis Armstrong; for vacations from the radio show, Vallee insisted
that the sponsors hire Armstrong as his substitute. Rudy also wrote the 
asking her mother to find
her someone to marry,
with the mother considering various occupations of men and their drawbacks.
In "Oh! Ma-Ma!" the daughter is named Marie. Her voice is sung in a style that
sounds a bit like Olive Oyl from the Popeye cartoons; the mother's voice sounds to modern
ears somewhat like Julia Child. These vocals are credited on the label to Red Stanley and
the Gentlemen Songsters. Also heard are the voices of three of the various suitors,
beginning with the Butcher Boy, who speaks to Marie in an Italian accent and offers what
he has in his hand (in this case, the contents of a bundle of meat). Unlike the mother in
"Luna", this Ma-Ma approves of each boy, telling Marie that they're in love and
"love is grand". Thus, Vallee cleverly sanitized the risque original, with
the zany quality of the record making it a huge hit. And there would be no lawsuit here;
the sheet music credits both Vallee and Paolo Citorello as the writers, with the Italian
Book Company as the original 1928 copyright owner (although the copyright was assigned to
Shapiro, Bernstein in New York, who later list Lew Brown--a popular song writer known for
"The Beer Barrel Polka", "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries" and many
others--as a co-writer). Clearly stated, it says "Oh! Ma-Ma!" is "based on
the popular Italian song success 'Luna Mezzo Mare'". 
George
Hall, British singer and comedienne Gracie Fields--the Andrews Sisters joined the fray.
Ironically, although among the biggest stars of the '30s and '40s, Patty, Maxene and
LaVerne Andrews were turned down to appear on Rudy Vallee's radio show--one of his few faux
pas. They had previously had a hit with another Lew Brown song, "Don't Sit Under
the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me)", so the girls were the perfect choice
to record "Oh! Ma-Ma!", and to solve Marie's dilemma: She can't marry all three
boys--that would be bigamy.The Andrews Sisters' version added some new ending lyrics for
the solution: she'll marry the father of the three. Apparently the boys are
brothers, and their dad's a widower!
Martians" by Tony
March. Although a Rockabilly singer, Tony was himself Italian (Tony Marchianda) and this
release came in the wake of the first Chipmunk records, featuring the sped-up voices of
"Pasquale and Luigi"--Martians who sang in Italian! They performed snippets of
"Luna Mezzo Mare," "O Sole Mio" and (Louis Prima's) "Oh
Marie".
Then
in 1965 the group Tino & the Revlons recorded something called "Lazy Mary
Memphis." As the title implies, it was a hard-to-imagine combination of
"Luna" along with Monte's "Mary" lyrics, but sung to the tune of
Johnny Rivers' version of Chuck Berry's "Memphis." This oddity actually
charted for two weeks in September of that year on WMCA in New York. (For both records see
during the reception that he tells a Sinatra-like
crooner, "A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real
man." Meanwhile, the wedding guests take turns singing choruses of "Luna
Mezzo Mare." Unfortunately, the song is not on The Godfather
soundtrack. But it does make another appearance in a 1999 Hugh Grant movie, Mickey
Blue Eyes. There, it's performed by session singer Frank Simms, whose credits include
work with David Bowie, Harry Chapin and Peter Frampton, among others. His "Luna Mezzo
Mare" is featured on the soundtrack CD.
La
Danza - Rossini (RealAudio)
Lazy
Mary