Bruno Martino

Bruno Martino
Background information
Born	(1925-11-11)November 11, 1925 Rome, Italy
Died	June 12, 2000(2000-06-12) (aged 74) Rome
Genres	Jazz, pop
Occupation	Musician
Instrument	Piano
Years active	1944–2000

Bruno Martino (11 November 1925 – 12 June 2000) was an Italian composer, singer, and pianist.

Career

Martino's early working life was spent in European radio and night club orchestras, later composing for popular Italian singers and touring the world with his own orchestra. He had a late-blossoming career as a singer.

Internationally he is best known for the song "Estate", composed in 1960, a standard that has been performed by many jazz musicians and singers since the early 1960s, including João Gilberto, Joe Diorio, Chet Baker, Toots Thielemans, Shirley Horn, Eliane Elias, Michel Petrucciani, Monty Alexander, Mike Stern and Robert Jospé.

Bruno Martino's song "Dracula Cha Cha Cha" appears in the album Italian Graffiti (1960/61) and is performed onscreen in Vincente Minnelli's film Two Weeks in Another Town (1962).

It inspired the title of Kim Newman's novel Dracula Cha Cha Cha (1998), which takes place in Rome in 1959.