Caterina Caselli

Caterina Caselli was the most successful of Italy’s female beat singers. She found fame in the 1966 San Remo song contest with Nessuno mi può giudicare and went on to become a big star in 1960s Italy.

She was born on 10 April 1946 in Sassuolo, near Modena. She quit school at 13 and got a job in the accounts department of a local firm.

However, music was her main love. She took singing lessons and at the age of 14, she joined the group Gli Amici as both singer and, more unusually, bassist. Together they performed in local dance halls and nightclubs, earning a name for themselves in the area.

After taking part in the Castrocaro song contest, the young brunette was offered a recording contract with the Milan-based MRC label. However, despite TV promotion, her debut single, Ti telefono tutte le sere, issued in 1964, didn’t sell. (She might have done better to flip the record, to make Sciocca, a take on Lesley Gore’s She’s a fool, the A-side.)

Italian singers were proving popular in Spain with translated versions of their domestic hits, and despite her lack of success, Caterina re-cut her single for an EP issued in Spain. Perhaps realising the earlier mistake, the Lesley Gore song – retitled No está bien – became the lead track on the release.

At home, a switch of record label in 1965, to CGD, and hair colour, to blond, saw her release Sono qui con voi, a version of Baby please don’t go, a hit for Northern Irish group Them. Thanks to her participation in the Cantagiro contest, the song attracted radio attention, but failed to provide a breakthrough hit.

However, it prompted the label to enter the singer in the 1966 San Remo song festival, the Italian competition that had served as inspiration for the Europe-wide Eurovision song contest. When established star Adriano Celentano turned down the energetic Nessuno mi può giudicare, Caterina was offered it instead. The practice at the time was to have two singers perform each entry and both Caterina and US star Gene Pitney came to sing the song at the final.

It didn’t win, but no matter – it went to number one in the Italian charts in February 1966 and remained on the top spot for nine weeks, outselling Pitney’s version and also the winning song from the contest, Domenico Modugno/Gigliola Cinquetti’s Dio come ti amo.

The song established Caterina as a star and for the remainder of the year she could do little wrong. She won the Festivalbar contest in the summer with Perdono, which reached number five in the charts in July 1966 and was backed with the equally popular L’uomo d’oro, which Caterina had performed at the Un disco per l’estate contest, finishing fourth.

She also re-recorded her San Remo song for release in France (as La vérité je la vois dans tes yeux) and in Spain (as Ninguno me puede juzgar).

Meanwhile, in Italy, she was teamed up with American group We Five for her first album, the imaginatively entitled Caterina meets the We Five. In reality, the artists didn’t perform together – the album was little more than an attempt to satisfy demand while recognising that Caterina didn’t have enough material in the can for a whole LP. Instead, her CGD singles and B-sides were merely compiled along with some of We Five’s best tracks. Although collectors are now happy to shell out generous sums for it, the album offered fans poor value at the time.

Further hits followed, in the form of the emotionally charged Cento giorni and even its B-side, Tutto nero, a version of the Rolling Stones’ Paint it black.

Caterina’s first proper LP, Casco d’oro (a humorous reference to her helmet of blond hair), rounded off the year. In addition to the singles, highlights of the album included È la pioggia che va (originally Bob Lind’s Remember the rain), Puoi farmi piangere (the Alan Price Set’s I put a spell on you) and the Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil-penned Kicks.

The choice of Il cammino di ogni speranza for the 1967 San Remo contest proved disappointing.