The greatest album I've found in a thrift store recently:
- features not one, but two singers: an unintentionally funny operatic Mrs. Miller sort, and her husband, an astonishingly talentless songwriter with a nerdy nasally voice reminiscent of Eilert Pilarm, 'The Swedish Elvis."
- claims to be a tribute to the great Italian-American pop/opera singer Mario Lanza, though nothing on the album is anything like what Lanza sang.
- has amateurish, vanity-release artwork.
- was released in 1984, but has all the attributes of a '50/'60s easy-pop album
- features remakes of standards like "Sway," "Granada," and the worst versions of the oft-covered calypsos "Yellow Bird" and "Jamaica Farwell" you'll ever hope to hear.
- was recorded at Macola Records, famed for it's L.A. hip-hop, e.g.: pre-NWA Dr. Dre.
- sports lyrics like, "I have been thinking of you, and thinking of you."
- is entitled "Sir Anthony Lanza Cocozza and Contessa Elaine Lanza Cocozza Present This Album As A Tribute In Memory To The Great Mario Lanza" on the front cover and "A Tribute To My Brother 'Mario Lanza'" on the record label
- claims on the back cover that the missus was "Born in Oklahoma City, OK of German and English royalty on her father's side, she was given the title of "Countessa."
"A Tribute To My Brother 'Mario Lanza'"
1. Lolita
2. Sway
3. I Love You I Love You
4. Green Eyes
5. Granada
6. Jamaica Farewell (spelled "Jamaica Far Away" on the cover)
7. If You Really Love Me
8. How Could I Forget You
9. I Want To Love You My Love
10. Yellow Bird
You want this. You do.
5 comments:
As a Philadelphian, I sure hope for his sake no one around here hears this.
Ouch. I found some more recent evidence of Anthony's talent here.
Ah, yes, thank you Alfred, that was about all I could find, too. There's nothing on the web about this album, but that poem suggest that Tony might still be alive (sadly, he refers to his wife as the "late" Countessa.)
But this disc is not a fake?
Elaine Lanza Cocozza isn't granddaughter of Queen Victoria. A Tribute To My Brother 'Mario Lanza' isn't by Macola Records. Anthony isn't the brother of Mario Lanza...
...or no!?!?
Re: Macola Records - anyone could rent out the studio to make a recording, but Macola then had the option of whether to sign and distribute you. So that's plausible.
As for the rest: were they frauds? Crazy? Who knows...
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