On 26th January 1960 at 10 pm, on the Secondo Programma Radiofonico (2nd Radio Channel), a programme called “The Jazz Cup” kicked off. For eight weeks 16 bands played two by two, paired off by a drawing of lots. For the first time RAI had committed itself to a broad scale Jazz project. Already in the preceding months Jazz had gone into a state of frenzy: the competition rules drew no distinction between professionals and amateurs, the young and not so young. Anyone could sign up, no matter what their genre or their style. The “jazz “specific” nature of the piece would have been accepted or rejected by a commission of experts. For months, in the scant yet tetchy world of jazz, people spoke of nothing else. Over 80 bands signed up, the most with a good bit of professional experience behind them, and were then cut down to 16 after a series of selections in the various RAI studios. These were the final 16: Enrico Intra Trio (Milan),Quartetto Sergio Mondadori (Bologna), Seconda Roman New Orleans Jazz Band (Rome), Quintetto di Torino (Turin), Modern Jazz Gang (Rome), Riverside Jazz Band (Milan), Gil Cuppini Quintet (Milan), Rheno Dixieland Band (Bologna), Bohukus Trio (Turin),Vittorio Paltrinieri e il suo Complesso (Milan), Amedeo Tommasi Trio (Bologna), Riverside Syncopators Jazz Band (Genoa), Giampiero Fontana e il suo Complesso (Milan), I Quattro del Sud (Bari), Lazy River Band Society (Asti), Quintetto Moderno (Udine). “The Jazz Cup” was born out of an idea thought up by Vittorio Zivelli and Piero Vivarelli, who were already well-known in the worlds of jazz and of modern music. Zivelli, a Neapolitan, the man who had created the successful programme “Il Discobolo”, or discus thrower, among the first RAI managers to have spent part of his working career in the USA (in years during which the gap in terms of radio programmes between Italy and America was truly vast), despite his many intuitions, was on the point of leaving radio (to which he would have later gone back) to look after the nascent Secondo Canale or second TV channel. Piero Vivarelli, a director and journalist, was living his frenetic rock and roll years: he had just written Il tuo bacio è come un rock (Your Kiss is like a Rock and Roll) and shortly after wrote, always for Adriano Celentano, 24.000 baci (24,000 kisses). At the end of the first phase the jury gave the impression of having fallen totally apart: fights, accusations of incompetence and technical quibbles led to inevitable resignations. The jury was nevertheless composed of well-known specialist critics and musicians of considerable standing. These were its members: GiancarloTestoni, Piero Piccioni, Livio Cerri, Roberto Nicolosi, Giovanni Attilio Baldi, Salvatore G.Biamonte, Mario Cartoni, Alfredo Luciano Catalani, Mino Caudana, Angelo Nizza, Piero Umiliani, and its president Angelo D’Angelantonio. The concept of a tournament should not however lead to the impression that this was a purely competitive event. Unlike what was to have happened in future, the competing bands were given all the time they wanted,there were no fade outs or cut solos. To this was added the meticulous “cage” set up by the authors, which meant that each band had to play a piece of their choice (either written by them or someone else), one “obliged” piece, a one-minute theme on which to improvise and at times even a jam session between the two competing bands. As is obvious, this was certainly no “Canzonissima” for jazz, but rather an artistic springboard of considerable importance, indeed, complex in its articulation. Perhaps it was for this reason that the musicians not only did not protest about the unusual competition but actually showed themselves to be enthusiastic. The semi-finals gave the following verdict: Quintetto di Torino (92,00), Enrico Intra Trio (88,90), Gil Cuppini Quintet (85,08), Modern Jazz Gang (83,63). But clearly the match was not over. Our record presents the four finalists, with a selection of the repertoire they played during the programme, a programme that fully reflected the Italian jazz climate of that period, basically divided between “traditionalists” and “modernists”. The former, indefatigable supporters of Dixieland and the New Orleans style, were thoroughly organised and could count on the strong support of very keen fans who followed them everywhere by bus. The “trads” wore Montgomery style overcoats and had crew-cuts and for them jazz had ended in Chicago. The modernists were split into two camps: the followers of the West Coast, or the so called Californian jazz, a prevalently white genre, and those who had instead chosen hard-bop, a style that gave a new slant to its Afro-American origins and that had its heart in New York. Perhaps a rather primitive concept of jazz, based on empty neologisms – typical the incorrect translation of the terms “hot” and “cool” into Italian as “caldo” and “freddo”– but in effect full of appeal and frenetic enthusiasm. What won in the end was modern jazz, a term in effect used in Italy alone, to indicate all the styles that had their moment from be bop on, and thus as of the mid forties. This the final verdict: Gil Cuppini Quintet (96,27), Quintetto di Torino (94,63), Enrico Intra Trio (90,77), Modern Jazz Gang (88,33). The hard bop played by Cuppini, at the time the best known percussionist in Italy, prevailed upon the Californian style of the quintet led by Dino Piana. Yet, styles aside, the “Jazz Cup” imposed itself for its aim to bring to the general public a type of music that until then had remained in the wings of radio’s palimpsests. Naturally, the polemics that followed were not few, and went on for months in the specialised press. The concern of jazz lovers – and indeed of the selfsame jury – was fundamentally that of evaluation, which did not take the different genres into account nor who played them. It was the competing bands that in effect proposed what they would play, alternating original and standard pieces, but perhaps the true problem was in effect in the diverse nature of the jazz players themselves. The bands were a mix of pros, who for reasons of survival almost always alternated jazz with modern music and stints in nightclubs (some even at the circus), and amateurs, in other words those who, skills aside, had other jobs. Not to mention the plethora of musicians from RAI orchestras, whom jazz players snobbishly saw as “employees” (perhaps because they were regularly employed by RAI on open-ended contracts), despite the fact that those orchestras had the best Italian soloists. The programme, with its formal rigour, including the presentations by Brunella Tocci and the embarrassment of the musicians, always somewhat uncomfortable when they spoke, harks back to an unforgettable moment of Italian jazz. An authentic item that the true lover of this genre cannot do without, that shows how those musicians were ready to put themselves on the line, without a care. Something that would be entirely unthinkable in today’s jazz scenario. The repertoire, recordings and level of jazz proposed show how and in what way Italian jazz was about to become highly popular, thanks to the contribution of young and good musicians, luckily for the most still active.