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Pino Rucher

Pino Rucher (1 January 1924 – 16 August 1996) was an Italian guitarist active in orchestral settings and in film soundtracks.

Biographical notes and musical career

Early life

Rucher started playing the guitar when his father came back from the United States in 1933 and presented him with a guitar. His parents decided that he should take private music lessons. After a few years’ study, he started playing in public in his hometown and in Naples and Bari.

American influence

The presence of American troops in the province of Foggia (and particularly in the area of Manfredonia, Rucher's hometown), between 1943 and 1946 led to Rucher joining several Allied Army's orchestras, where he came into contact with American musical atmosphere and jazz.

In 1946, Rucher entered the Carlo Vitale orchestra after coming first in a competition for the position of guitarist at Radio Bari. After the dissolution of the Vitale orchestra, Rucher went to work for Radio Milano as a member of the Carlo Zeme orchestra. In the 1950s and the early 1960s he also worked with two forerunners of Italian "swing", Pippo Barzizza and Cinico Angelini.

Angelini Orchestra

Angelini selected Rucher as a member of his orchestra, with which Rucher worked for about ten years. He participated in events including the ' in 1955 and several San Remo Music Festivals, among which the Festival, where Claudio Villa came first with Corde della mia chitarra.

Pino Rucher collaborations

Rucher took part in many musical events and radio and television broadcasts (San Remo Music Festivals, Festival di Napoli, ', ' in Venice, Canzonissima, ', Studio Uno) playing in a number of orchestras and, at the same time, went on cultivating his passion for American music, as can be seen from his transcriptions, with his own arrangements. He devoted himself to jazz and performed in live concerts or in studios under the direction of many conductors. The influence of American music can be noticed from his performance of Italian songs E se domani, Una zebra a pois (sung by Mina) and Amore twist (sung by Rita Pavone). He also worked for orchestra conductor and composer Elvio Monti, who asked him to play in a number of his recordings. Rucher played the guitar in L’Estasi, a composition written by Monti for Andrea Giordana and Marina Solinas.

Rucher took part in Sorella Radio, a production with the RAI orchestra. From the second half of the 1970s to December 1983, Rucher was engaged in playing in concerts as a guitarist in the RAI orchestra Ritmi moderni, which came to be known as the RAI Big Band. In 1984, owing to health problems, he stopped working for RAI, left Rome and retired.

Other activities

Rucher performed in film soundtracks from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, with at least two hundred performances including those under the direction of orchestra conductors Luis Bacalov, Gianni Ferrio, Elvio Monti, Ennio Morricone, and Riz Ortolani.

Rucher was the first guitarist to play the electric guitar in Italian westerns, performing as "electric guitar soloist" in A Fistful of Dollars. Rucher also appears in some shots from ', a 1960 movie including scenes from the San Remo Music Festival. During his career he took part in musicals including ' and his guitar ideas are present in numerous Italian songs, including Casetta in Canadà (sung by Carla Boni), Flamenco Rock (Milva), Se non ci fossi tu (Mina), Andavo a cento all'ora (Gianni Morandi), Che m'importa del mondo (Rita Pavone), L'edera (Nilla Pizzi) and Adesso no (Neil Sedaka).

Rucher played not only the electric guitar, but also the folk (or acoustic), the classical, the bass and the twelve-string guitar, and then the banjo, the mandolin and the double bass.

Awards

  • The Municipal Authority of Manfredonia dedicated a street to Rucher.
  • On 5 October 2008, the local authorities supported a commemorative event to Rucher in his home town. The event took place in Piazza Giovanni XXIII (Manfredonia's central square).
  • On 16 October 2010, the Municipal Authorities of Manfredonia and of San Nicandro Garganico dedicated a special evening to Rucher. The event took place at the Cine-Teatro Italia of San Nicandro Garganico.

The main songs with Pino Rucher as electric guitarist

The main songs with Pino Rucher as electric guitarist:

Soundtracks

The main soundtracks with Pino Rucher as electric guitarist:

Bibliographical notes

  • d.a., Manfredonia: "La nemica" di Niccodemi al Teatro Pesante, in La Capitanata (Foggia), II (1945), n° 27 (28 October), p. 4
  • Musica jazz stasera all'Unione, in La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno (Bari), 17 November 1951, p. 4
  • l.m., Jazz e blues alla Sala Unione, in La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno (Bari), 18 November 1951, p. 4
  • Artisti pugliesi: Il chitarrista Pino Ruker, in Roma (Napoli), 27 March 1958, p. 4 (Cronache delle Puglie)
  • Mario , Giuseppe Rucher, in Lira musicale di Manfredonia: Musicisti del passato e del presente, Frascati, Tip. Laziale, [1966], p. 67
  • Carlo , Mario , Rucher Giuseppe (Pino), in Dizionario chitarristico italiano, Ancona, Edizioni musicali Bèrben, 1968, p. 63
  • Al Teatro Giordano: Domani prosa stasera jazz, in La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno (Bari), 9 November 1969, p. 19
  • Vittorio , Jazz della Rai (prima volta) esce dal Palazzo con tante «star», in Corriere della Sera, 28 January 1980, p. 9
  • Alla radio questa settimana, in Radiocorriere TV (Roma), LVII (1980), n° 13 (March), p. 61
  • Michele , Profilo di un musicista: Il chitarrista Pino Rucher, in il Sipontiere (Manfredonia), III (1986), n° 2 (April–June), p. 3
  • Michele , Manfredonia: Le intitolazioni a 14 concittadini simbolo: Vie e nuovi nomi nel quartiere «Algesiro-Gozzini», in La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno (Bari), 15 December 2005, p. 11
  • Maurizio , C'era una volta la RCA, Roma, Coniglio Editore, 2007, [Pino Rucher mentioned among RCA guitarists on p. 299]
  • Carlo , L'orchestra Angelini trasmise per radio musiche composte a Faenza, in Faenza... la città, Faenza, Tip. Faentina, 2008, p. 103
  • Francesco , Pino Rucher, con la sua chitarra wawa dalla trilogia del dollaro alla Carrà..., in l'Attacco (Foggia), 3 October 2008, p. 19
  • Michele , Omaggio a Pino Rucher grande chitarrista scomparso, in il Provinciale (Foggia), XX (2008), n° 10 (October), p. 3
  • Maurizio , Pino Rucher, in Dizionario Biografico di Capitanata: 1900-2008, Foggia, Edizioni Agorà, 2009, pp. 252–3
  • Fernando , Pino Rucher, in Raro!. Mensile di collezionismo, cultura musicale e cinema (Roma), XXI (2010), n° 217 (January), pp. 42–45
  • a.m.v., Il ricordo del chitarrista Pino Rucher, in La Gazzetta di Capitanata - La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, 8 January 2010, p. 10
  • Adriano , Il jazz in Italia: dallo swing agli anni sessanta, vol. II, Torino, EDT, 2010, [Pino Rucher mentioned on pp. 321, 348, 458]
  • Anna Lucia , La musica rende omaggio alla chitarra dei «western», in La Gazzetta di Capitanata - La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, 11 October 2010, p. 1
  • Anna Lucia , L'omaggio alla chitarra dei «western», in La Gazzetta di Capitanata - La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, 11 October 2010, p. 11
  • Dario , Ciao Pregadio, maestro di musica e di vita, in Il Tempo (Roma) - Edizione Abruzzo e Molise, 16 November 2010, p. 54
  • Lucia , Manfredonia ingrata dimentica Pino Rucher, il chitarrista di Sergio Leone, in l'Attacco (Foggia), 27 September 2011, p. 16
  • Mario , Le Bon, la Brute et le Truand - Coups de feu dans la Sierra Leone (2 partie), in Séquences. La revue de cinéma (Haute-Ville, Québec, Canada), LIX (2014), n° 291 (January–August), pp. 26–27 [Pino Rucher mentioned on p. 27]
  • Federico , Cicognini, Rota, Lavagnino, Savina, Trovajoli: tecniche di post-produzione a confronto, in Musica/Tecnologia (Firenze), n° 8-9 (2014-2015), pp. 39–55 [Pino Rucher mentioned on p. 46]
  • Germano , Voci dal lontano West italiano, in Raropiù. Mensile di cultura musicale, collezionismo e cinema (Roma), III (2015), n° 29 (November), p. 51 [Pino Rucher mentioned on p. 51]
  • Ulrich , Thrown into a Cruel World: Neil Young's Dead Man (1995), in All by Myself: Essays on the Single-Artist Rock Album, edited by Steve Hamelman, Lanham, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016, [Pino Rucher mentioned on p. 144]
  • FORUM: IL VILLAGGIO SOTTO LA BASILICA, in VINILE (Cernusco sul Naviglio), n° 7 (April–May 2017), [Pino Rucher mentioned on p. 83]
  • Mariantonietta , Pino Rucher, il musicista manfredoniano che suonò con Luis Bacalov, in ManfredoniaNews.it (Manfredonia), VIII (2017), n° 23 (December), p. 3
  • Giovanni , Ennio Morricone e quel legame con il manfredoniano Pino Rucher, in ManfredoniaNews.it (Manfredonia), XI (2020), n° 14 (July), p. 3
  • Julian , THE SABRES OF PARADISE: HAUNTED DANCEHALL (WARP,1994), in Prog (London), n° 113 (October 2020), p. 20
  • Giovanni , Pino Rucher nel ricordo del grande Gigi Proietti, in ManfredoniaNews.it (Manfredonia), XI (2020), n° 21 (November), p. 3
  • IL RICORDO: Quando Lina Wertmüller parlò del musicista manfredoniano Pino Rucher: “Era un ottimo chitarrista”, in l'Attacco (Foggia), 14 December 2021, p. 24

References

External links