It was an Italy split in two. In the North the Germans, who were hostile to Jazz (even though at the start to the War many Italian musicians had found work in Germany attracted by high salaries and more stable working conditions), in the South the Americans, who were already pervading an air of liberation. In a climate of hunger, am-lire (the allied currency), desperation, lack of victuals and great uncertainty for the future, jazz did not have a smooth ride. Good jazz musicians were not lacking, but they were reduced to clandestine activity, pretending to be members of orchestras that played at vaudeville type shows and in dance halls. It was within such a scenario that in the early months of 1944 Rome, in Piazza dell’Esedra, saw the debut of the big band led by pianist and arranger Piero Morgan. A pseudonym behind which was Piero Piccioni, the son of an important politician, Attilio Piccioni, rising star of the Christian Democrat Party, and at the time considered to be Alcide De Gasperi’s successor and future Minister for Foreign Affairs. Piero Piccioni was 22 but could already boast a certain amount of experience. He had listened to jazz since he was a child and had taught himself how to play. He first heard jazz orchestras play at the EIAR in Florence and was even able to write a few songs published by Carisch. Heavily influenced by Duke Ellington, he tried for a radio audition in 1937, managing to obtain a solo piano afternoon programme, twice a week, on air from Radio Firenze. A precocious talent was his, a musician with an innate sense of swing, the only Italian jazz player to have had the opportunity of playing with a be-bop genius like Charlie Parker. It happened in 1949. Piccioni was in New York, where he stayed for a year and a half, when he was asked to substitute for Al Haig of the Bird Group for a TV programme, playing alongside no less than Kenny Dorham, Tommy Potter and Max Roach. The famous critic Charles Delaunay happened to be there, who gave the event his seal of approval and said that the Italian pianist had played extremely well. Going back to Italian events, it is superfluous to point out that the 1944 episode was not presented as a jazz concert but as ‘syncopated music’, a neologism behind which jazz was peddled during the War period. Piccioni was not new to this kind of thing. On 13th May 1940 he managed to present an authentic jazz concert at EIAR – that time under the name of Giampiero Glauri – presenting songs by Guido Cergoli and Vittorio Mascheroni, but also Night and Day, which autarchic needs transformed into an Italian Notte e giorno, I Know that You Know, which became Io so che voi sapete, and Midnight in a Madhouse, inevitably translated as Mezzanotte in un manicomio (or midnight in a lunatic asylum). But if this first attempt remained virtually isolated, that of ’44 immediately had a follow on. The fact that the Americans were getting nearer, the enthusiasm of the young Piccioni and his crazy jazz band, the real need for swing, but also the musician’s circle of friends and the more outrageous wing of the capital’s night-life, made it so that the experiment succeeded. A lot of the credit goes to Neki Libohova, son of the ex Prime Minister of Albania, and to the lawyer Nicola Ercole. The orchestra was composed of Stelio Subelli and Giovanni Tomaino on trumpets, Ennio Gabbi on the trombone, Riccardo Rauchi and Salvatore Tortorella on contralto sax, Dasy Messana on tenor sax, Enzo Grillini and Franco Mingrino on guitars, Werther Pierazzuoli on the double bass, and Mario Ammonini on drums. Piero Piccioni was its leader, the pianist being its principle composer and arranger. A highly respectable big band, with some of the best soloists, many of which had already well steeped in the swing of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton and Glenn Miller. A few months after the piazza Esedra event, the big band made its debut in RAI. The opportunity of playing live, directly in the prestigious ‘A’ studios of via Asiago, was to come from the brother of Corrado Mantoni, Riccardo Mantoni, a radio director, as well as a great jazz lover and the man behind a first attempt at the emancipation of radio. It was indeed Mantoni who chose the orchestra’s name: “013”. In the meantime some of the members changed: the violinist Tino Fornai arrived, followed by the trombone player Carlo Capodieci, whilst Paolo Tagliaferri replaced Ammonini on the drums. Very important was the arrival of Bruno Martino, a pianist little more than an adolescent, initially not in the leader’s grace, whose preference was for musicians that were of easy interpretation, above all in consideration of the not so simple arrangements proposed. Even though the reading of music was not Bruno Martino’s speciality, Piccioni had to change opinion, given the musicality, swing and the ability to improvise shown by the new arrival. Martino – destined to a great career as a singer and orchestra leader, unjustly relegated to the so called “night” genre, was to show himself the absolute master of the so called confidential musicians – was only 18. He came from the roman neighbourhood of San Lorenzo, where his home had been bombarded; he was an orphan and earned his keep working at the Ministero dell’Aeronautica (air force ministry), but was present at every single one of Rome’s nightlife jam sessions. It was to be Stelio Subelli, trumpet player, to insist on having Bruno Martino in 013. From Trieste, one year older than Piccioni, a musician who had grown up in the school of Guido Cergoli, Subelli had already had occasion to distinguish himself in the orchestras of Armando Fragna, Arturo Strappini, Nello Segurini, and Pippo Barzizza, always much appreciated for his precise intonation and the immediacy of his interpretations. From a point of view of style he seems to have been greatly influenced by Muggsy Spanier (1906-1967), the Chicago trumpet player appreciated for his musical dynamism. Exactly at the time when Italy appeared to be at the height of ruin, lacerated by internal strife, hammered by bombardments, with the task of rebuilding everything yet to start, when, as said by Elsa Morante, the writer from Testaccio on the verge of great fame, “there is no census of those dead and those alive”, 013 improved itself yet more. The orchestra was joined by Riccardo Rauchi, a clarinet and saxophone player, from the famous music school of Santa Cecilia in Rome. With his personality, Rauchi consolidated the sax section and, once his experience with Piccioni ended, went to play with orchestras of Armando Trovajoli and Renato Carosone, before becoming highly successful as an able arranger and leader of a highly sought after group in the fifties and sixties. The Americans had by then reached Valmontone near Rome and 013 finalised its members, those we hear play on this recording: Stelio Subelli, Mario Rogani, Giovanni Vallone and Gianni Tomaino (trumpets), Carlo Capodieci and Ennio Gabbi (trombones), Riccardo Rauchi (alto sax and clarinet), Mario Cattaneo (alto sax), Gino Callegari (alto sax), Dasy Messana (tenor sax), Nino Dell’Aquila (tenor sax), Bruno Martino (piano), Enzo Grillini (guitar), Werther Pierazzuoli (double bass), Paolo Tagliaferri (drums). Piero Piccioni was of course its leader, its arranger (together with Subelli) and at times the pianist. This recording represents and exalts a whole jazz season. The season of enthusiasm and enjoyment, of passion and high hopes. The adventure of 013, albeit brief, indicated a climate that was perhaps unrepeatable, in which jazz represented the starting point for many young musicians enthralled by Afro-American sound. It was these youngsters who, with few others, launched Italian jazz. It was no chance that a few months later, on 15 August 1945, the twice-monthly magazine Musica e Jazz, founded and directed by Giancarlo Testoni (and later by Arrigo Polillo) first appeared. An historic review, which after a few months became a monthly (also removing from the name the useless conjunction) and which still today is the most authoritative source of information for the sector. Our recording, albeit through a laborious process of restoration, gives all this once more, filling a gap in the history of Italian music and probably ascending to the highest level of documentary value that our series has been able to reach. Alongside highly enjoyable standard pieces, such as Honeysuckle Rose, On the Sunny Side of the Street and My Blue Heaven (two pieces executed by the Seven of 013, the orchestra reduced to its soloists only) and I Met Her on Monday (in which one can hear the impressive voice of Norma Linder), we can also dig out some pieces that pay homage to the great Neapolitan tradition, ’O sole mio and Ohi Mari’, together with some other rediscovered pieces worthy of attention. These are Is You Is, or Is You Ain’t My Baby (once again with Norma Linder as the highlight), a piece by Louis Jordan, one of the great names in jazz, but also jive and rhythm and blues, very popular in those years in the USA, as singer, sax player and band leader, but little appreciated by Italian purists. Special attention deserve those pieces written and arranged directly by the orchestra’s components: the title theme Daylight (Subelli-Piccioni), Ritmando con la 013 (Vallone), Boogie-woogie (Subelli-Piccioni), Incespicando n.2 (Subelli) and Boogie-woogie for Seven (Subelli). Of great historic value and not to be missed are also the bonus tracks, taken from Piccolo concerto jazz, a programme of 7 June 1967 presented by Adriano Mazzoletti. Twenty-three years after the orchestra was disbanded, Stelio Subelli became the leader of a notable quartet that paid homage to that adventure. Alongside the trumpet player, there was Antonello Vannucchi on piano, Carlo Loffredo on double bass (who had also on many occasions played with the Seven of 013) and the eighteen-year-old Bruno Biriaco on Drums.