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Fred Buscaglione

Turin singer, musician and actor (1921-1960): with Leo Chiosso he invented the «tough guy» of Che bambola and Guarda che luna.

Fred Buscaglione, born Ferdinando Buscaglione (Turin, 1921 – Rome, 1960), was a popular singer, musician and actor.[1][2] Trained as a jazz musician, together with the Turin lyricist Leo Chiosso he built the caricature character of the American-style «tough guy», with a weakness for whisky and women, and with songs such as Che bambola, Teresa non sparare, Eri piccola and Guarda che luna he found success. His career was cut short by a car accident, when he was thirty-eight.[1][2] Turin remembers him with a stretch of the Murazzi del Po, a plaque in Vanchiglia and a garden dedicated to his lyricist.

The Turin years and the discovery of jazz

He was born on 23 November 1921; his family — father Mattia and mother Ernesta Poggio — lived at piazza Cavour 3, where his mother worked as a caretaker. During his primary school years Ferdinando attended the Tommaseo school, a stone's throw from the Conservatory and a few blocks from the Teatro Regio: the register for the 1928-29 school year lists him in second grade, marked «commendable» for hygiene and «good» for conduct.[3] In the neighbourhood they called him «Nando of piazza Cavour».[4]

He graduated from his home city's Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory and became passionate about jazz from adolescence.[2] According to accounts gathered in the city, the spark was a small case of jazz records that happened to come into his hands.[4] A few weeks after his death, his mother gave a portrait of him that explains much about the public figure:

«He was so restless and unpredictable in his decisions, his gestures and even his words that he always seemed to me the boy who, at ten, would run off to have fun with his friends»

Ernesta Poggio, Fred Buscaglione's mother, 1960

The recollection is reported by Maurizio Ternavasio in the biography Il grande Fred.[5]

The war, Sardinia and the Asternovas

The Second World War took him to Sardinia, where he was taken prisoner by the Americans. It was there that, with the Pisano brothers, he played in a quartet first called «Gli Aster» and then «Gli Asternovas».[4] Back in Turin, from the 1940s he began working with Leo Chiosso, a friend of his own age: together they invented the comic, paradoxical «tough guy», a parody of American gangster-film characters, which would become his trademark.[2][1]

Chiosso, Vanchiglia and the songs

Chiosso wrote the lyrics for the 56 songs performed by Buscaglione.[6] Among them Che bambola, Teresa non sparare, Che notte and Eri piccola; the two friends used to talk in the garden of largo Montebello, which since 2023 has borne the lyricist's name.[7] Though he lived for many years in Milan and Rome, Chiosso kept his ties to the city and his neighbourhood; among his later lyrics is Parole, parole, sung by Mina and Alberto Lupo.[7]

Many songs were written in the house at via Bava 26 bis, in the Vanchiglia district, where Buscaglione lived and composed.[4][5] Among his greatest hits, encyclopedias recall Che bambola!, Eri piccola and Guarda che luna.[2][1] The exhibition «Una città per cantare. Un secolo di concerti a Torino», staged in 2022 at the city's Historical Archive, recalled his musical and theatrical performances as a many-sided figure.[8]

Cinema and final years

In the late 1950s the character moved to cinema: among the films of that period is Dino Risi's Poveri milionari.[2] Separated from his wife Fatima, in his final period he lived in Rome, in a room at the Hotel Rivoli in the Parioli district, and led a mostly nocturnal life among clubs and orchestras.[5]

On the evening of 2 February 1960 he had dinner at the Taverna degli Artisti on via Margutta, then went on to the Rupe Tarpea and finally to the Aeritalia terminal's night diner; in the morning he was due in Castelfusano to film some scenes.[5] Shortly before six on 3 February, at the junction where via Rossini becomes viale Aldrovandi, his pink Ford Thunderbird with Turin plates collided with a Lancia Esatau truck loaded with blocks of tufa stone, coming from the right: Buscaglione had tried to accelerate to pass first. He was found slumped over the wheel, with severe head injuries.[5]

Remembered in the city

On 28 September 2017 the City Council of Turin named the northern stretch of the Murazzi del Po after Buscaglione and the southern stretch after Gipo Farassino, unveiling the plaques in piazza Vittorio Veneto. The president of the City Council, Fabio Versaci, called him «a shooting star in the firmament of Italian song and popular culture».[6]

On 4 April 2025 a plaque was unveiled at via Bava 26 bis, on the initiative of the building's residents and the neighbourhood, in the presence of his nephew Ferdinando Buscaglione and Fred Chiosso, the lyricist's son. Circoscrizione 7 (one of Turin's circoscrizioni) has thus become a small «musical map», with the Leo Chiosso garden and the Murazzi just steps away. On the occasion, the director of Rai's Museum of Radio and Television, Alberto Allegranza, announced that the «pink piano» of his band, donated by the Dancing Leroi, is on display at the museum and that pianists can still play it during visits.[4] The Tommaseo school also remembers him among its illustrious former pupils, with images and texts in its main corridor.[3]

Pages linking here

Related articles: Piazza Vittorio Veneto

Sources

  1. Treccani
  2. Sapere.it (De Agostini)
  3. Istituto Comprensivo Tommaseo, Torino — 6 December 2023
  4. Cittagorà – Consiglio comunale di Torino — 4 April 2025
  5. Edizioni Lindau — 3 February 2016
  6. Cittagorà – Consiglio comunale di Torino — 28 September 2017
  7. Cittagorà – Consiglio comunale di Torino — 21 November 2023
  8. Cittagorà – Consiglio comunale di Torino — 24 August 2022

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